Making sense of worldview-analysis

The newly published Oxford Handbook of Global Studies provides an overview of the emerging field of global studies, including contributions that explore analytic and conceptual approaches to research in global studies.

Senior researcher Mona Kanwal Sheikh contributes with a chapter on worldview analysis. The chapter scrutinizes methods to analyze and comprehend the vertical dynamics between worldviews and action, and the horizontal dynamics between the precepts, imageries and grievances that stem from transnational views of religion, politics and society.

Initially, the chapter reviews the most dominant definitions and applications of the worldview concept as it has been used in the study of global phenomena in the social sciences and how they differ from the way the concept of ideology is applied. This opens up a critical discussion of the link between worldview on one side and behavior on the other. By drawing on 'sociotheology' – an analytical approach that is interested in the social embeddedness of theology - the final part engages with the question of how to embrace context and culturally sensitive methods to study transnational worldviews.

Read more about the publication The Oxford Handbook of Global Studies, edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Manfred B. Steger, Saskia Sassen, and With Victor Faessel.