Doctoral Dissertation Research: Resilience, Religion, and Political Change

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).The separation of religious institutions from governmental affairs is a common principle of democratic governments. In settings where religious affiliations are associated with other aspects of heritage and individuals’ identities, the principles of secularism may be implemented in varying ways. This doctoral dissertation research investigates reciprocal relationships between secularism and political change through the theoretical lens of resilience, asking whether and how devout individuals incorporate new concepts and identities to accommodate political shifts away from secularism. In addition to training a doctoral student, the project plans to disseminate findings widely to academic and non-academic audiences. Specifically, this project tests the hypotheses that democratic political transformations result in increasing proximity between religion and secularism, and that individuals leverage this proximity as a means of resilience to political changes targeting identity. Over twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, the investigators use a combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, digital ethnography, and diary methods to test these hypotheses. Research questions include (1) how religious individuals understand and interpret secularism as a way of responding to political change; and (2) how individuals use traditional religious principles in conjunction with novel elements in response to political change. The research contributes a novel synthesis of resilience theory and religion to investigate the broad means by which humans adjust to changing political environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.