Toward a sociological hermeneutics of narrative secularization: secular stories in the Spanish case of religious transformation (1960–2019)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to present a dimension of the study of religious transformation that can help us to continue the debate on secularization from an approach of sociological history: narrativity. After the presentation of the conceptual and methodological bases that support this study, I explore a specific case of secularization: Spanish society between 1960 and 2019. The acceleration of the secularization process in the second half of the century was particularly condensed in the gestation of a whole series of narratives, which led to the formation of an ‘epistemic secular regime’. This article will reflect on the particularities of three specific historical moments: the late 1960s, the period immediately after Franco’s death (from 1975 until the end of the 1980s), and the beginning of the twenty-first century. My research concludes by confirming the importance of narrative secularization to understand this process from a socio-historical perspective and proposes the study of the narrative dimension as a line of explanation for the particular acceleration and extension of secularization in other European societies.