Regards critiques sur la notion d’institution en sociologie des religions

This article looks at the uses of the notion of “institution” in social sciences of religion, based on a comparison between three empirical studies on different contexts and religiosities (Pentecostalism in Sweden, Buddhism in Southern Europe, and Catholicism in Italy). Institutionalization, understood as a continuous social process, is not antithetical to forms of deinstitutionalization, if this notion theorized by Danièle Hervieu-Léger is reworked to describe situations of redeployment of constraints in the sociology of religious actions, rather than as a paradigm about secularization. We suggest tackling tacit paradoxical institutionalizations such as the sociopolitical categorizations of “religion,” external constraints in religious roles and practices, and interinstitutional individual trajectories.