Resumo

BOTELHO MONIZ, Jorge. Societalization as secularization? Correlation between indexes of societalization and religiousness in Europe. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2020, vol.43, n.1, pp.235-260.  Epub 27-Abr-2020. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v43n1.75307.

The so-called modernization of European societies after World War II and at the beginning of the 1960s, led to great changes in the organization of societies. The most significant ones were the growth of urbanization, the acceleration of industrialization, the proliferation of mobile and digital mass communications media, and the rise in geographic mobility. These elements essentially shape the theory of societalization and its perspective of modernization as a process of transition from a community-based organization (typically traditional and religious) to a socially-based organization (typically modern and secular). The idea of transitoriness, typical of theories of secularization, stands out in the theory of societalization and marks its understanding of the place of religion in contemporary societies. According to the criteria of societalization, some social phenomena contribute to the reduction of community bonds and lead to the loss of plausibility of the moral and religious systems normally associated with community life experiences. Despite the critiques of typical theories of secularization, such as societalization, and the emergence of a variety of conceptual and theoretical alternatives, social scientists have found it difficult to give a solid answer to a fundamental question: which process of modernity (if there is one) manages to describe better the current changes or displacements of religion in contemporary societies? This article seeks to reply to two fundamental arguments: the idea that the discussion regarding secularization has reached a standstill, and the idea that new methodologies and theoretical and empirical strategies are necessary to understand the effects of modernization on religion. Inspired by the premises of one of the most prominent and systematized theories of secularization - societalization -, we suggest the creation of an index of societalization that can be correlated to a measurement of individual religiosity. We conclude that the theory of secularization according to which the more societalized societies are less religious is empirically valid for the sample of European countries selected and for the period examined (1999-2015).

Descriptors: modernization, religion, sociology of religion, urbanization.

Palavras-chave : index; religion; secularization; societalization.

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