'Religion’ and ‘Secular’ Categories in Sociology

Mitsutoshi Horii is Professor at Shumei University in Japan, and Principal of Chaucer College, UK.

Informed by the ‘critical religion’ perspective in religious studies and postcolonial self-reflection in sociology, this book interrogates the ideas of ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’ in social theory and sociology. It argues that as long as social theory and sociological discourse embeds the religion-secular distinction and locates itself on the ‘secular’ side of the binary, sociology will continue to serve the very ideologies it tries to subvert – namely Western modernity/coloniality. 

Horii raises fundamental epistemological questions and deep ontological issues in the field of the sociology of religion. Innovative and provoking, the book will inspire the reader to discuss and question established concepts from new perspectives.” —Per Pettersson, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Karlstad University, Sweden 
 “This is a superb book that … calls into question sociology’s own understanding of itself as secular and ‘rational,’ distinguished from the ‘non-rational’ understandings of those it presents as other.” —John Holmwood, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Nottingham, UK. 
 “This book is a valuable contribution to the critical demystification of general categories that sustain the illusions on which the humanities and social sciences are based.” —Timothy Fitzgerald, Honorary Research Associate Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland, Australia, and Research Associate, the Center for Critical Research on Religion, USA. 
“A must-read for any scholar who wants to learn how to think beyond the confinements of modern social theory.” —Jayne Svenungsson, Professor of Systematic Theology, Lund University, Sweden. 
“By decolonizing the secular-religion binary, Horii provides an important challenge to sociology’s self-understanding as a secular discipline and he calls into question a number of its conventional scholarly abstractions. This is a fascinating book that furthers crucial debates and thus will definitely be of interest to scholars in a range of disciplines.” —Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, Professor of Religion and the Chair of Science & Technology Studies, Williams College, USA.