ABSTRACT
The first question that has to be asked about the concept of “secularization” is whether it continues to serve any useful purpose for sociological theory at the end of the twentieth century. Despite numerous criticisms of its assumptions and inherent ambiguities (Shiner 1967, Martin 1969, Luckmann 1977), its usefulness has been defended on the grounds that it acts as a “sensitizing concept,” giving the user a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances (Dobbelaere 1981). Whilst accepting that it may have been a useful sensitizing concept for analyzing the passage from traditional to modern society, it can be argued that the collapse of the meta-narratives of “history as progress” and “progressive rationalization,” of which it was a part, renders that usage redundant in the analysis of culture in the period of late or postmodernity. If the concept is to serve any useful function it needs to be redefined as an on-going cultural process in a dialectical relationship with its opposite— “sacralization,” rather than equating it with the decline of the influence and scope of religion as an institution.
