CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Castillo Cardenas, Sidney Alberto |
|---|---|
| Title | (Not) The Faith of Our Fathers: A Social and Cognitive Approximation to the Changing Religious Landscape in Peru Among Young Adults |
| Summary | A major change in the contemporary global religious landscape is currently in progress, and Peru is not a stranger to it: the rise of the religious nones and unaffiliated, the incidence of religious institutions or groups in local politics as part of transnational efforts, and the emergence of ever-evolving nuanced religiosities have been also part of Peruvian daily life for the past 25 plus years. Such general process, defined by a departure from exclusively institutional religious worldviews towards more diverse ones, is in tune with what occurs at the latin american/regional and local levels; and yet at the same time it’s also far from being homogeneous to all social realities in which it takes place, as the Peruvian case provides also with examples. Given this contrasting relationship between the local and the global, it is worth questioning as to what is the cause (or causes) attributable for these shared differences in form, but not in content. In the present thesis, I will address this question in arguing that religious socialization experiences, in the form of Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs onwards), are one of the main conditioners for shaping contemporary Peruvian religious and secular worldviews. CREDs are related to instances of observable behavior from an individual’s peers that generate an impact on them, based on how they act accordingly to what is stipulated in their respective religious belief systems or expressed religious convictions. In turn and over time, different CREDs will allow for the acquisition, maintenance or relegation of religious belief and their negotiations, which give rise to diversified worldviews. For this purpose, I have placed as unit of analysis the age group of Peruvian young adults, (18-29 y.o.) all of them being university students located in Lima-Peru, since, as it will be argued, Peruvian youth within this age group experiences religious socialization in differentiated ways to previous generations, namely, in their general socialization experiences; in the accessing of novel media elements; in the engagement of social movements; and, in the adoption of a consumer ethos. An interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approach will be the basis for the elaboration of the argument, in which concepts from the fields of Cognitive Science of Religion and Sociology (in the form of theories of religious socialization) will serve as analytical tools; while grounded techniques based on Q-methodology have been used for the data gathering process of 320 surveys, 43 q-sorts, and 43 structured interviews. As a result of this exploration, a preliminary proposal of ideal-type models of religious and secular worldviews will be outlined. With this exercise, my thesis expects to contribute, not only to the study of contemporary religious worldviews but as an effort for interdisciplinary dialogue between disciplines and fields of research. Keywords: changing religious landscape, worldviews, religious socialization, credibility enhancing displays, Q-methodology, young adults, Peru |
| Supervisor | Vlad Naumescu |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/castillo_sidney.pdf |
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