The changes religion is experiencing in Spain can be analysed through the prism of three broad social dynamics or logics. The first is the sweeping individual secularization seen among the Spanish population. The second is the separation between Church and State, which is experiencing major difficulties. The third is the recent settlement in Spain of a large immigrant population, which is causing fractures in a previously homogenous religious community. The first two follow the lines of religious modernization seen in other European countries. The third, however, is more inherent to the contemporary era of globalization.

The notion of secularization as an incompatibility between modernization and religion derives from the analysis of the process of modernization of Western European societies. This process led to a weight loss of religion in society and to a progressive differentiation of social spheres, such as religion, politics, science, etc. Following on from this analysis the category and the theory were extended to take on a universal scope in order to describe the modernization processes that would occur in other societies. From the very beginning, sociology has provided exceptions to the rule of secularization. The first was noted by de Tocqueville: American exceptionalism. Then came the processes of rapid economic growth of some Asian Pacific countries (Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc.). Progressively, the entry of new countries into the field of interest of sociologists is showing the Eurocentric nature of the concept. The case of Western Europe, which was the rule, became the exception. Even the notion of religion as a separate social sphere is considered by some social scientists to be ethnocentric. Despite its previous Eurocentrism, the notion of secularization remains useful for sociologists. It has served to account for European religious change, and its analytical instruments can be applied to other cases and may be useful for interpreting these cases either with regard to how they adhere to the Western European model, or how they differ from it -still further, if we consider the huge extent of contemporary international migration. If sociologists want to understand the new Western European societies, they must reapply this analytical rather than predictive version of the concept.

Parece haber entre los científicos sociales un consenso progresivo 1 sobre la consideración de la Nación como algo que pertenece primaria y fundamentalmente al mundo de la conciencia de los actores sociales. La Nación es, pues, una categorización social (hecha por los actores sociales) de una realidad colectiva; y no es primariamente una categorización cientí-fica (hecha por los científicos sociales) de una realidad social. Esto es algo que debemos tener claro: cuando los sociólogos nos interesamos en el problema de la Nación, nos interesamos en por qué (causas) y a través de qué (mecanismos) los actores sociales llegan a categorizar una realidad social en términos de Nación.

P a la b ra s c la v e Religión Identidad colectiva Política Cultura ResumenEl presente artículo sociológico trata de establecer la relación entre dos nociones que provienen de ámbitos diferentes: el psicológico y el sociológico. Desde el punto de vista psicológico, se toman como referencia dos niveles de la identidad individual: el personal y el social, aunque éste último se presenta como más relevante para el sociólogo. Desde la llamada sociología histórica el artículo trata de establecer las cambiantes relaciones entre religión, identidad, cultura y política. En primer lugar, durante el periodo histórico de modernización; y, en segundo lugar, en nuestros días, cuando el proceso de globalización difumina los límites precisos de nuestras sociedades. This sociological article tries to establish the relation between two concepts from different areas: psychological and sociological. From the psychological point of view, two levels of individual identity are taken into consideration: the personal and the social, although the latter is presented as more relevant for the sociologist. From the so-called historical sociology, the article tries to establish the changing relations between religion, identity, culture and politics. First, during the historical period of modernization; and, secondly, in our days, when the process of globalization blurs the precise limits of our societies.

Sociology was born as a discipline that analyzed the process of modernization of Western European societies. However, in turn, this science was developing a predictive, prophetic vision of the future of human communities, assuming that they were all going to follow paths similar to those followed by Western Europeans. This prophetic dimension reduced the capacity of sociology to analyze new phenomena including, on the one hand, phenomena relating to other societies, on the one hand, but also, on the other hand, phenomena related to the transformations suffered by Western European societies after their process of modernization. This last case constitutes the objective of this work, in which I try to recover the purely analytical character of sociology. To this end, I intend to relate the general model of the political modernization of Western European societies elaborated by historical sociology to the theory of social differentiation, avoiding the evolutionary drift of this theory. From that position, I try to specify the analytical nature of some conceptual instruments of sociology, in order to make them more useful to understanding the contemporary social transformations of Western European societies. Some of these transformations have changed the tendency towards the cultural homogenization characteristic of modernization, because after the two world wars these societies began to receive strong flows of immigration.