A discursive approach to 'religious indifference': Critical reflections from Edinburgh's Southside

Abstract

This chapter takes as its starting point the sustained and rigorous critique to which the category of 'religion' has been subjected in recent decades, in combination with contributions from contemporary studies of 'non-religion' and 'secularity'. Whether understood at an individual, institutional or societal level, constituencies that have remarkably little investment in the concept of 'religion', or who explicitly articulate stances of 'indifference', clearly have much to say to the theorisation and critique of both 'religion' and 'non-religion'. In this chapter I discuss prevalent academic understandings of 'indifference', and outline my reservations surrounding conceptualising it in an ideal-typical manner, and as a form of 'non-religion'. I then introduce a discursive approach as a possible alternative before providing empirical examples from my ongoing research examining discourses on religion in the Southside of Edinburgh, which both address my critique and conceptualise instances of 'indifference' as contextually meaningful discursive acts.