Religion and the New Wars Debate

Abstract In this article, we analyse the converging of research on religion with the debate over the so-called ‘New Wars.’ Our aim is to present a state of the art of the broad literature which relates religion as an explanatory and causal factor of contemporary organised violence with the criticisms that have emerged in response to the objectivist methodology of mainstream scholarship. The work is divided into three sections, the first being a presentation of the mainstream literature, where religion is perceived as a category with causal powers. The next two sections are divided between two types of critique. The first challenges the identitarian perspective of organised violence, adding other explanatory dimensions to the analysis of contemporary conflicts. The second questions the notion of religion as an autonomous, universal and transhistorical concept, exploring genealogically the varied meanings religion may acquire and the different powers the demarcation of non-religious spheres authorises. In the concluding sections, we seek to relate those three types of methodology on religion and violence to the types of questions each one makes regarding its research object.