Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia

IN APPARENT CORRESPONDENCE with the increasing interconnectedness of the world we live in, evident in the popularity of terms such as globalisation, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, the objects and methods of social scientific research have undergone major changes in recent decades. Thus in the study of religion scholars have tended to move away from the classic Durkheimian argument that approaches religion as a collective representation of society (Durkheim 1917) and instead addressed the establishment of global networks. ¹ At the same time social scientists (particularly anthropologists) have continued to insist on the significance of place and local variation. The culinary experience of McDonalds in East Asia is not what it is in North America (Watson 1997). As with food, so with religion: conservative Protestantism has been successfully disseminated from ‘the West’, but it has taken on myriad local forms and meanings, in which collective as well as individual identities are at stake.