Brief introduction:Secularization (or secularisation) is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward nonreligious (or irreligious) values and secular institutions.

Jose Casanova, Sociology, Georgetown UniversityJose Casanova is Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. Previously, he served as Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York for twenty years. He has published widely in the areas of sociological theory, religion and politics, transnational migration, and globalization. His most important work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994) has appeared in Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Arabic editions and is forthcoming in Indonesian. He is presently working on two main projects, Rethinking Secularization: A Global Comparative Perspective and Transnational Migration, Transnational Religion and Diversity.