Social Dimensions of Religion in the Age of De-Globalisation: A Framework for Future Research

De-globalisation is reshaping the conditions under which religion is governed, mobilised, and contested. This article proposes a framework for analysing religion in this emerging conjuncture. It interprets de-globalisation not as the erosion of transnational connectivity, but as a politically driven re-bordering of global flows; that is, the selective reassertion of state sovereignty, national prioritisation, and domestic jurisdiction in domains that were previously managed through, or legitimated by, multilateral norms and institutions. By restoring the state as a central architect of borders and hierarchies, de-globalisation reconfigures the religion–society nexus worldwide. The article contends how sovereignty-forward programmes unsettle core markers of globalisation, including multilateral rulemaking, predictable mobility regimes, and cosmopolitan rights vocabularies. It then revisits discussions on secularisation, rational choice perspectives, and religiously framed violence, specifying what these approaches illuminate—and where they require retooling—when authority, legality, and mobility are re-territorialised. Finally, it identifies three interconnected research fronts—statecraft and nationalism, majority–minority relations, and migration and diaspora—and formulates guiding questions for comparative research across regions and regime types. Collectively, these strands constitute an agenda for elucidating religion’s renewed salience in the de-globalising present.