This article analyses the complexities of religious identity and stakeholder discourse concerning religious education (RE) reform in Scotland and Malawi. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘social space’, it explicates the extent to which religious identity and conflicts over symbolic power in the social space of RE reform engender polarised debates imbricated by entrenched ideological positions because agents’ discourse in the social space draw on elements of their particular culture, tradition, spiritualties, and theologies. A comparative analysis of qualitative data from Scotland and Malawi reveals stakeholders’ reflections, frustrations, and insights on the conflicting nature of religious identity in the discourse of RE reform in a social space where symbolic struggles are inimical to the production of common sense. Despite the data arising from two countries with different socio-cultural contexts—one African and religiously conservative (Malawi), the other European and secular-liberal (Scotland)—the findings reveal similar challenges regarding how agents engage with RE reform in the social space, and the complications that religious identity engenders in that dynamic.

本文分析了苏格兰和马拉维关于宗教教育 (RE) 改革的宗教认同和利益相关者话语的复杂性。借鉴布迪厄的“社会空间”概念，它解释了在可再生能源改革的社会空间中宗教身份和对象征权力的冲突在多大程度上引发了被根深蒂固的意识形态立场覆盖的两极分化的辩论，因为社会空间中的代理人的话语借鉴了他们特定的文化、传统、精神和神学。对来自苏格兰和马拉维的定性数据的比较分析揭示了利益相关者对在象征性斗争不利于产生常识的社会空间中的可再生能源改革话语中宗教身份的冲突性质的反思、挫折和见解。