Culture Wars and Their Socioreligious Background

Dear Colleagues,

Emphasis is placed on "cultural conflict", but not so much on political–ideological conflict, such as the one that manifests itself through the code of political differentiation, conservative versus progressive (Luhmann, 1982). Cultural conflict manifests itself as a conflict between forms of classification—sacred/profane, normal/pathological, male/female, east/west, white/colored, etc.—(Durkheim, 1912; Bourdieu, 1985; Zerubavel, 2018), between values (Joas, 1997), between different systems of moral understanding (Davidson Hunter, 1991, 42), between competing positions on the meaning of memorials and statues (Tunzelmann, 2021), etc. Culture wars refer to struggles for the monopoly of legitimate representation of the world in the normative elucidation of controversial value-linked issues. Issues such as abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, education in values, stem cell research, cloning, creationism, race, gender, immigration, etc., burst into the civil sphere of advanced societies as paradigms of a battle between supporters and opponents of each of the legislative decisions that concern these issues. In this context, public culture would consist of a set of complex classificatory systems of symbols and meanings that constitute a semantic field in permanent dynamic tension (Giesen, 2010: 15) involving national life, national identity, who and what we were in the past, who and what we are now, and last but not least, who and what we aspire to become in the future. We will analyze what the milestones, fundamental waves and semantic changes are that have shaped these culture wars over the last 100 years, in the form of a social and semantic genealogy of the concept: 

1. The thesis of the "new warrior gods" (modern polytheism) formulated by Max Weber in 1920.
2. The post-industrial neo-romantic cultural critique that emerged in the 1960s. 
3. Neoconservative pendulum cultural criticism.
4. S. A. Huntington's neo-Schmittian "clash of civilizations" theory (as opposed to Ulrich Beck's neo-Kantian "cosmopolitanism").
5. Progressive modernities, regressive modernities and neo-populism:
6. From economic sovereignty to cultural sovereignty.
7. The elective affinities between racism, victimization, resentment, and fear of the diminishing status of the white minority.
8. The white Christian nationalist backlash.
9. A new heroism.
10. A white mobilization and assault.

The issue will analyze the structure and meaning of today’s culture wars.

The main aim of this monographic issue is to focus on the mix of cultural contents (mainly socio-religious) which underly the today´s culture wars, using a comparative perspective of different countries and civilizations today.

Neopopulism has replaced the left as a voice of the protest. The economic crisis has offered the chance of revenge to the adversaries of the radicalism of 1960s. The radicalism of the cultural critique of the 1960s forgot that the human condition is tragic and forgot that the utopian reenactment of the free associated workers society of Marx, redefining the role of nature, should face a relentless increase in social complexity and as a result of that undoing came the first disappointment of our time (Cohen, 2021). The betrayal of the conservative revolution, entrusting everything to the invisible hand of the market, is the second great disappointment of our time. The jouissance of the 1960s brought with it, as a countermovement, the neoliberal competitive individualism of the 1980s and 1990s. The noble confrontation between emancipation and the return to tradition witnessed a great schism between, on the one hand, the winners—autonomous, emancipated from conventions— represented by the “society of singularities” (Reckwitz, 2017) which emerge as triumphant of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, of the convergence of biotechnology, nanotechnology, Big data and Artificial Intelligence shaping the “new reflexive class” in the terms of Bourdieu and Gouldner, and the losers, which seek in tradition one justification to negate the tradition of others—immigrants, the poor, women, Afro-Americans, etc. The migration of part of the working class towards to the neopopulist parties is the third great disappointment of our time.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors (Email A) or to /Religions/ editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Tentative completion schedule:

• Abstract submission deadline: June, 2022
• Notification of abstract acceptance: October, 2022
• Full manuscript deadline: March, 2023

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NORRIS, P., INGLEHART, R. (2019): Cultural Backlash. Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism, New York: Cambridge University Press

RECKWITZ, A. (2017): Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.

ROSS, R. J.  (1998): The Failure of Bismarck´s Kulturkampf: Catholicism and the State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871-1887, Washington DC: Catholic University of America.

WEBER, M. (1978): Economía y Sociedad, México: FCE.

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Dr. Josetxo Beriain
Dr. Javier Gil-Gimeno
Dr. Celso Sánchez Capdequí
Guest Editors

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• culture wars
• religion
• race
• class
• civil sphere