Learning from the Navajo: Rethinking Religion for a Post-Colonial Era

This address explores the importance of generating concepts from non-Euro-American religious spaces to understand religions worldwide. As an example, it shows how the Navajo concept of hózhǭ highlights the socially transformative role of experience in religious settings — something that Euro-American sociologies typically fail to grasp. It then argues that such insights are of universal rather than of parochial importance. A truly post-colonial sociology needs to put treat insights from all societies, cultures, and civilizations as potential sources of understanding.