This response takes the concept of plausibility structures as a starting point to reflect on the case studies and approaches this panel presents. It asks how combining approaches may change how we think about the link between thinking and sensing and how individuals and social structures interact.
Paper long abstract:
The critique of secularization theories has challenged how we study the changes once subsumed under the heading of “modernization process”. Diverse attempts have been made to include body practices, perceptual orders, and cognitive models of how humans engage with the world. This response takes the concept of plausibility structures as a starting point to reflect on the case studies and approaches this panel presents, and asks what we can learn from them to understand better how the religious/ secular divide became part of what is possible to think, feel and sense in a given moment in history.