VOL 5, NO 1 (2012) of Religion and Society In Central and Eastern Europe is now available at http://www.rascee.net/index.php/rascee/issue/view/5/showToc

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIAL
Editorial

ARTICLES

Studying Religion and Power: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges
Pål Repstad

Religion in Central European Societies: Its Social Role and People’s Expectations
Branko Ančić, Siniša Zrinščak

What about Our Rights? The State and Minority Religious Communities in Croatia: A Case Study
Ankica Marinović, Dinka Marinović Jerolimov

Extremist Manipulations of Apocalyptic Fears: A Case Study of de-Christianisation and Islamisation Discourses on the Romanian New Right Blog
Adela Fofiu

REVIEWS

András Máté-Tóth and Cosima Rughiniş (eds.) Spaces and Borders: Current Research on Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter,
James T. Richardson

Gert Pickel and Kornelia Sammet (eds.) Transformations of Religiosity. Religion and Religiosity in Eastern Europe 1989 – 2010 Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2012. 216 pages. ISBN: 978-3-531-17540-9. € 34.95 (paperback)
Peter Török

Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 287 pages. ISBN: 978-0-19-533710-5. US$ 65 (hardback)
Monica Grigore

Milda Ališauskienė and Ingo W. Schröder (eds.) Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society. Ethnographies of Catholic Hegemony and the New Pluralism in Lithuania Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. 226 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4094-0912-0. £45.00 (hardback)
Smoczynski Rafal

Giuseppe Giordan and Enzo Pace (eds), Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World, Brill, 2012.

Individualization of believing and the logic of pluralism today inevitably bring a redefinition of the role of religion in the lives of individuals as well as societies themselves. New concepts and new theories are necessary to try to describe and understand how such processes work: this is without doubt the most problematic and intriguing aspect of the processes of change that characterize our era. This is a difficulty that makes us use only partially, and often with much caution, words, concepts and theories that until not long ago had a convincing heuristic and explanatory power and were, at least apparently, indisputable. Once it is established that under the sacred vaults of religion nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, but everything is preserved and transformed, what are the connections that are now being established with the sacred in society? The concepts “spirituality” and “post-secular” give important insights into the new religious landscape.

This volume will be of interest both to those interested in the responses of traditional religions to conditions of postmodernity and to those seeking to interpret the postmodern “experience” in religious terms.

Giuseppe Giordan is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Padua. From 2007 he has served as Secretary of the Sociology of Religion Section of the Italian Sociological Association, and from 2009 as General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR/SISR). With Enzo Pace and Luigi Berzano he edits the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, also published by Brill.

Enzo Pace, Professor of Sociology and Sociology of Religion at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Padua, is the Director of the Department of Sociology and of the Interdepartmental Center on Intercultural Studies of the University of Padua. He is also Past-President of the International Society for the Sociology (ISSR/SISR) and a Directeur d’Études at ÉHÉSS in Paris.

Contributors include: Anhony J. Blasi, Yong Chen, Monica Chilese, Emanuela Contiero, Elisabetta di Giovanni, Anat Feldman, Isabella Jonveaux, Ruth Illman, Liselotte Frisk, Fatma Sundal, and Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud

Religion in the Neoliberal Age Political Economy and Modes of Governance
Edited by François Gauthier, University of Fribourg, Switzerland and Tuomas Martikainen, University of Helsinki, Finland Ashgate 2013
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409449782

This book, together with the complementary volume Religion in Consumer Society, focuses on religion, neoliberalism and consumer society; offering an overview of an emerging field of research in the study of contemporary religion. Outlining changes in both the political-institutional and cultural spheres, the contributors offer an international overview of developments in different countries and state of the art representation of religion in the new global political economy.

‘Tuomas Martikainen and François Gauthier seek to break new ground and work toward a synthesis and clarification of the diverse and often contradictory approaches to understanding the transformation of religion in today’s globalized world. The contributors to the volume analyze these changes as integral to the recent economic shaping of culture in the form of consumerism and neoliberalism. They explore the changing landscape of relations between religions and states in the context of the rise of market-oriented, neoliberal modes of governance and management, including as concerns religious organizations.’- Peter Beyer, University of Ottawa, Canada

Contents
Introduction: Religion in Market Society François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen and Linda Woodhead
PART I Religions in the New Political Economy
1 Entrepreneurial Spirituality and Ecumenical Alterglobalism: Two Religious Responses to Global Neoliberalism Joanildo A. Burity
2 Making Religion Irrelevant: The ‘Resurgent Religion’ Narrative and the Critique of Neoliberalism James V. Spickard
3 The Decline of the Parishes and the Rise of City Churches: The German Evangelical Church in the Age of Neoliberalism Jens Schlamelcher
4 Catholic Church Civil Society Activism and the Neoliberal Governmental Project of Migrant Integration in Ireland Breda Gray
5 Faith, Welfare and the Formation of the Modern American Right Jason Hackworth
PART II Political Governance of Religion
6 Neoliberalism and the Privatization of Welfare and Religious Organizations in the United States of America David Ashley and Ryan Sandefer
7 Multilevel and Pluricentric Network Governance of Religion Tuomas Martikainen
8 Regulating Religion in a Neoliberal Context:The Transformation of Estonia Ringo Ringvee
9 Neoliberalism and Counterterrorism Laws: Impact on Australian Muslim Community Organizations Agnes Chong
10 From Implicitly Christian to Neoliberal: The Moral Foundations of Canadian Law Exposed by the Case of Prostitution Rachel Chagnon and François Gauthier
11 Religious Freedom and Neoliberalism: From Harm to Cost-benefit Lori G. Beaman

Whatever Happened to the Islamists?: Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims, and the Lure of Consumerist Islam Eds. Amel Boubekeur & Olivier Roy Columbia/Hurst, 2012
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15426-0/whatever-happened-to-the-islamists

Widespread confusion over the use of the terms Islamism or Political Islam often obscures the fact that these are not new phenomena and can be traced back more than a century. But like all utopian beliefs, such as Communism, Islamism cannot entirely resist the broader currents of political and social change that confront it today, especially globalisation. Through meticulous on the ground and theoretical research in to the trajectories of current and former Islamists, the contributors to this book seek to understand what has become of political Islam. While many scholars have focused on the drift to violence of historical Islamism, they look at the other side of the coin to describe the continuities and not the ruptures of Islamism with its own ideology. Political Islam remains relevant to a new generation of militants but the channels through which it is expressed have changed. Jihad is often conducted electronically, via membership of Islamist e-mail list-servers; Islamist activism has been personalised, domesticated even, through the consumption of Islamic soft drinks and other lifestyle choices; and, the street protests that characterised the Islamist struggle in its heyday face competition from Islamic rap stars’ concerts. These are among the issues addressed in this innovative volume.

Reviews

Although recent events in the Middle East seem to answer the question posed by this volume’s title, news headlines obscure a tectonic shift in Islamism that has occurred over the last couple of decades. Whatever Happened to the Islamists? represents one of the most exciting and innovative analyses of contemporary dislocations in the ideological project of political Islam to be published in recent years. It points the way forward for an entire field of study. (Peter Mandaville, George Mason University and author of Global Political Islam )

Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy present a refreshing and provocative collection of essays, including several by younger scholars and others whose writings are rarely available in English. They display the iconoclasm, unanticipated fusions, and the modernity of contemporary Islamic activism, much of which does not see conquest of state power as a central objective. Islamic activism today is manifested in all-women heavy metal bands, consumerism, corporate big business, and individualised consumer and cultural choices. This book deserves to be widely read and debated, especially by journalists, pundits, and public policy makers who may have thought they already knew what Islamism is. (Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University )

Whatever Happened to the Islamists? will be welcomed by all who seek to understand the impact of the Arab uprising and the role of Islamists during this historic period of political transformation in the Arab world. (John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of The Future of Islam ) About the Authors Amel Boubekeur is a research fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. She has been an Associate Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Centre for European Policy Studies. Working on Islam in Europe and Arab politics, she is the author of European Islam : Challenges for Public Policy and Society and Le voile de la mariée.

Olivier Roy is a professor at l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. A world authority on Islam and politics, Roy’s books are Secularism Confronts Islam, The Failure of Political Islam, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, and, with Mariam Abou Zahab, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection.