Nur Vergin’in Din Sosyolojisi

Abstract

Nur Vergin has left an important legacy of thought on behalf of the social sciences literature of our country with her works based on her academic and intellectual background. A rough overview of the content of this legacy reveals a wide range of ideas produced under the headings of politics-religion relationship, urbanization and political attitudes, social change and family, civil society, secularism, political system debates, etc. Vergin's ideas in the field of sociology of politics and religion are particularly prominent aspects of this legacy. Analyzing Vergin's legacy from different perspectives in various areas of sociology will provide essential gains for the social sciences literature of our country. In this respect, the subject of this study is Vergin's ideas in the sociology of religion. The main problem of the study can be summarized with the following question: "What are Nur Vergin's thoughts on the relationship between religion, politics, and society, and what is the place of these thoughts in the Turkish sociological tradition?". My study aims to address the ideas on the relationship between religion, politics, and society in Vergin's works from the perspective of the sociology of religion and to pave the way for new studies and discussions on her works. The importance of the study is that it will be a pioneering work in this field due to the limited number of studies on Nur Vergin's works and will pave the way for new discussions on his thoughts. A qualitative research method was used in this study. Therefore, qualitative data collection techniques were utilized. The data obtained were analyzed and evaluated descriptively and in terms of content. First, Vergin's life, works, cultural and intellectual background, social science understanding, and methodology are discussed. Afterward, the studies produced by Vergin within the scope of the sociology of religion were analyzed. With this study, it is understood that Nur Vergin aims to analyze social phenomena at the macro level by following the course of historical change within historical integrity and without ignoring the relationality between them. In this respect, it has been observed that Vergin analyzes issues such as secularism, Alevism, the relationship between religion and social change, etc., which are the subjects of her sociology of religion studies, with a long-term approach, in the plan of historical continuity and parallel with the verstéhenian tradition. In this respect, Vergin's approach to the phenomenon of religion is within the framework of the new axis, which constitutes an alternative to the evolutionary positivist approach, which was the dominant paradigm in the Turkish sociological tradition in the 1970s and 80s, and which manifested itself in names such as Şerif Mardin and Nilüfer Göle. * This paper is based on the master's thesis study titled "Nur Vergin's Sociology of Religion" conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Celaleddin Çelik at Erciyes University Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology of Religion.