The Institute inaugurated the Yves Oltramare Chair on "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary World" on 28 February. Mr Oltramare has generously provided financing for this Chair for a ten year period. Martin Riesebrodt was recently nominated as the holder of the Chair and Adjunct Professor at the Institute.
Watch the video interview carried out by Professor Shalini Randeria.
Read the interview of Professor Riesebrodt from the Institute's Magazine Globe below.
Could you describe your path from the Max Weber Archives in Munich to the University of Chicago Sociology Department and Divinity School?
After my appointment at the new Max Weber Edition had ended in 1981, I received a John F. Kennedy Fellowship at Harvard. Instead of doing what I was supposed to do, I analysed Protestant fundamentalist programmes on TV. Since hardly any academic at Harvard or in Germany took the emerging fundamentalism seriously, I became an instant expert and later wrote my habilitation on a comparison between Protestant fundamentalism in the US and Shiite fundamentalism in Iran. Based on this study, I received an offer from Chicago in 1990, which I happily accepted.
What attracted you to the Graduate Institute and motivated you to take up the Oltramare Chair?
After meetings with Yves Oltramare, Philippe Burrin, Director of the Institute, faculty and students, I was convinced that this is an excellent institution. I like the cosmopolitan profile of the Institute, its programmes, faculty, and students, which will be beautifully captured by the new campus with its splendid architecture. Last but not least, I am committed to the ideas informing the Anthropology and Sociology of Development Department (ANSO). I always regarded the separation of anthropology and sociology as an awkward heritage of colonial thinking. And in my view, pluralistic theorising is the best training for students. It protects them from naïve technocratic thinking by enabling them to better understand that “problems” and “solutions” can be defined from various social locations and perspectives.
What courses and conferences do you plan to organise here in the coming years?
This spring, I will offer a class on secularisation theories and the need to revise them. For the conferences, I plan to address issues like the freedom of speech, intentional provocation of religious sensibilities, and the organisation of outrage; tensions between the freedom of religion and human rights, or between religious pluralism and social integration.
How do you explain the current dynamics towards an increasing intertwining of religion and politics, for example, in the USA, in the Middle East and in South-East Asia?
The re-politicisation of religions seems to be at least partially provoked by the deficiencies of nation states in an age of globalisation. If the state is no longer adequately responding to expectations of solidarity and social justice, other principles of association will substitute.
Could you share with us some of your insights into the competing fundamentalisms that seem to characterise the world today?
Of course, there are the fundamentalisms in various religious traditions we all like to hate. But we should not forget that many of them emerged in opposition to occasionally rather aggressive forms of secularism or extreme forms of economic liberalism. In order to find pragmatic solutions people can accept, we all have to overcome rigid ideological positions, be they religious or secular.
Professor Martin Riesebrodt delivered the Inaugural Lecture of the Yves Oltramare Chair “Religion and Politics in the Contemporary World” on Thursday 28 February, 6:30 p.m., Auditorium Jacques-Freymond.
Read more from the latest edition of Globe N°11 | Spring 2013.
Read the full inaugural lecture here.