Worldview Analysis

In a global era, the challenge to worldview analysis is to embrace both a context-sensitive but also a culturally sensitive approach to concepts and ideas. The purpose of this chapter is to identify solid methods to analyze and comprehend the vertical dynamics between worldviews and action, and the horizontal dynamics between the precepts, imageries and grievances that stem from transnational views of religion, politics and society. The chapter reviews the most dominant definitions and applications of the worldview concept as it has been used in the study of global phenomena in the social sciences and how they differ from the way the concept of ideology is applied. This opens up a critical discussion of the link between worldview on one side and behavior on the other. By drawing on sociotheology, the final part engages with the question of how to embrace context and culturally sensitive methods to study transnational worldviews.