Call for Papers: “Religion and Social Inequality"

The 36th Congress of the German Society for Sociolgy (Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Soziologie – DGS) will be held from October, 1st to 5th
2012 in Bochum and Dortmund.
http://www.dgs2012.de/english

The Section for Sociology of Religion is organizing a panel on during this conference. The call for paper is
only in German, http://www.dgs2012.de/wp-content/uploads/Sektionen/CfP_Sektion_Religionssoziologie.pdf
but papers in English are also very welcome.

In the early sociology of religion the relationship between social class and religion was a central topic. Weber for example analysed social strata as carriers of religious ideas. Following Weber this research question was picked up by Niebuhr in his exploration of the social sources of denominations and by Bourdieu in his analysis of the religious field. In the last decades, the problem of social inequality has been mostly neglected as a research question in the sociology of religion.

Papers presenting empirical findings, quantitative as well as qualitative, from a national or transnational perspective, about the
impact of social class and life conditions on religious beliefs, practices and affiliations are invited. The religions of the upper
classes and the lower classes, of the privileged and the “negatively privileged” are of special interest for this panel.

Please send abstracts of 2500 characters maximum (including spaces) until March 15th to the organizers:
Prof.Dr. Gert Pickel: pickel@rz.uni-leipzig.de
Dr. Kornelia Sammet: sammet@uni-leipzig.de