Aportes y desafíos para una sociología de la no-religión en América Latina

The presentation explores the growing academic literature on people with no religious affiliation in Latin America. It highlights what we already know about this heterogeneous group of people who increasingly prefer not to identify with a religion (unaffiliated), and points to areas that require further research. While the growing interest in this previously invisible segment of population is positive, the presentation argues that focusing on individual religious (non)identification from census and survey data has limitations. This approach overemphasizes individual religious (non)identification as a negative or residual measure, assuming that it is central to a person's self-concept, and ignores other collective phenomena, practices, and discourses related to non-religion. Therefore, I proposed a shift from a “sociology of religiously unaffiliated” to a “sociology of non-religion” to better understand socio-religious dynamics in the region. This relational approach would consider the social frameworks and imaginaries constructed around (non)religion and how non-religious positions are configured in each social context.