Local Traditions and World Religions: The Appropriation of "Religion" in Southeast Asia and Beyond – LOTWOR

1.5. Résumé
Drawing upon their ongoing scientific collaboration, the French and German participants to this research project aim at investigating various processes of localization and appropriation of “religion” by peoples in Southeast Asia and beyond, specifically by contrasting the modes of rationalization and secularization resulting respectively from Semitic religions (Christianity and Islam) and Asian traditions (Hinduism and Buddhism). On the whole, in the name of modernity and progress, the contemporary states in our region tend to press their populations, including marginal ones, to have a “religion”. In this respect, we address religion as a process – the process of “religionization” -, implying that adherents of indigenous religions are “not yet religious” and therefore are expected to be “religionized”. With this perspective in mind, our working hypothesis is that, in the various cases we are investigating, there exists an ongoing and shifting tension between proponents of local world views and customary ritual practices, who consider them as both self-sufficient and deserving the label “religion” in their own right, and advocates of a translocal religion of foreign origin, having a claim to universalism, who commonly deny those local traditions the qualification of “religion”. Accordingly, in each of our case studies, we purpose to elucidate what gets identified and legitimized as “religion”, by whom, for what purpose, in which circumstances and under what political conditions.