Religion and Violence in Contemporary Society

On completion of the course, students will be able to:

• explain the existence of various phenomena from the late modern era that are understood as being violence in the name of religion
• present an independent critical understanding of the relationship between religion and violence
• discuss and problematise different ways of defining religious systems of meaning, and be able to classify them in different ways
• apply theories of violence and religion at different analytical levels, such as individual (micro), group-oriented (meso) and societal (macro)
• critically argue for the applicability in different perspectives on religion and violence, and compare sociological, socio-economic, geopolitical and religious psychological perspectives in an informed way
• critically evaluate and rank different theoretical interpretive models regarding religiously motivated violence
• explain the complexity of a pluralistic democratic society and discuss the value of freedom of opinion including extreme opinions, as well as the value of value pluralism.

In this course, religiously inspired violence is studied, as is the way in which the phenomenon can be interpreted and understood on a micro, meso and macro level from different perspectives from religious studies. The course deals with how violence can be based purely in ideology, how it can be explained within religious frameworks and also how it can be understood from, for example, religious psychological perspectives or sociological relational perspectives, as well as perspectives in which the societal geopolitical context also forms part of the discussion.

A written report combined with an obligatory individual conversation with the examining teacher.

Lectures and an obligatory individual discussion with the examining teacher. The language of instruction is English.

The Swedish grades U–VG.

For web-based courses, students must be able to communicate in sound and video using a computer or equivalent equipment.