Religion and Violence in Contemporary Society

Overview

What you will learn

On completion of the Religion and Violence in Contemporary Society course offered by Dalarna University, 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.