Historicizing the Sociological Belief/Knowledge-Composition: Theories and Method

As a response to the post-secular critiques of the belief-category, I want to introduce an alternative analytical framework for thinking sociology’s relation to belief, one which doesn’t advocate for the rejection of the category but for its historicization, as an assemblage of historical languages and meanings. Turning to intellectual-historical anthropology as a privileged instrument for constructing such a framework, I intend to make clear how such a method can help us better understand how the relation between the sociological discipline and languages of belief could be thought and investigated, both in its historical unfolding and in its present condition. As a result, we can gain a novel understanding of early sociology’s usage of ‘social beliefs’ as a conceptual toolset, as well as present a broader and more nuanced framework of what the category can mean for the present, post-secular age.