Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal
Edited by Amarnath Amarasingam
“Studies in Critical Social Sciences/Studies in Critical Research on Religion” Book Series SCSS/SCRR 25/1
Brill Academic Publishers (hardcover) 2010
Haymarket Books (paperback) 2012
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/religion-and-the-new-atheism-amarnath-amarasingam/1110792395?ean=9781608462032
Author Archives: SISR/ISSR General Secretary
Religion Inside Medicine: Epistemology, Law, and Everyday Experience and Practice
Call for Papers
WORKSHOP
Religion Inside Medicine.
Epistemology, Law, and Everyday Experience and Practice
February 15-16, 2013
Organizers: Prof. Hansjörg Dilger (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, FU
Berlin) Dr. Małgorzata Rajtar (Humboldt Fellow, FU Berlin/University of Gdansk)
Venue: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Keynote speakers: Prof. Helene Basu (University of Münster) & Prof. Thomas J. Csordas (University of California, San Diego)
With the growing resurgence of religious practice and healing in many parts of the world, and the simultaneously ongoing medicalization of different areas of everyday life, this workshop suggests to debate how religious and medical phenomena and practices have become interrelated in emerging assemblages of a globally interconnected world.
While both religious and medical traditions seek to provide wellbeing and health to their believers and patients respectively, the approaches they use in treatment and healing, and the epistemological and legal-institutional foundations on which their ideas and practices rest, are often very different. Furthermore, especially in European and North American settings, the split between religion and medicine goes back to the Age of Enlightenment, resulting in structural and ideological arrangements that have often entered into friction and may appear less reconcilable in nature than comparative research from „non-Western‟ settings suggests. In recent decades, the various configurations that were established here, have been challenged – and sometimes transformed – by globally circulating technologies, ideas and practices; as well as the transnational movement of people as patients, doctors, and healers; and finally ongoing shifts in relations between government, the commodification and liberalization of healing landscapes, and the parallel imposition of new legal-bureaucratic practices.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the participants‟ various research settings, the aim of this workshop is to creatively engage in discussion on religious and medical entanglements and/or disruptions in the contemporary world. We are particularly interested in papers that address how religious and medical meanings concerning health, mind, healing, and the body are negotiated and acted upon in everyday encounters and practices – including, but not restricted to, the way these encounters and actions make reference to legal-ethical documents, bureaucratic regulations, and/or historical texts. Contributors are invited to consider some of the following themes and questions:
(1) “Religion” and “science”: Between epistemological friction and convergences. What is the current place of religion as envisioned by medical scientists and health practitioners in specific settings of biomedical care and research? In what ways are religious issues addressed in clinical practice, and how does this shape the interactions between health staff and patients? How are treatment, medication and technology choices of physicians influenced by their personal religious convictions, and how do they establish evidence for their respective treatment methods? How in turn do religious experts integrate their healing approaches into “scientific” evidence and practice – and how does the potential incorporation (or rejection) of biomedical science contribute to their own reputation, authority and charisma?
(2) The intersection of politics, ethics, religion, and bureaucracy. How has the historically grown relationship between religion and medicine been incorporated in legislation and legal texts, and how do bureaucratic and legal-ethical procedures shape the practices and interactions in hospitals and clinics as well as among religious healers and experts? How are legal and ethical barriers and restrictions concerning the relationship between religion and medicine challenged by the considerations of individual medical professionals – as well as the priorities of patients? What is the rationale behind public policy decisions on the introduction and implementation of treatment, medication, technology and health education programs while delegitimizing others? How do new political-bureaucratic arrangements influence and regulate healing choices of people, especially with regard to the religious priorities and affiliations that they may articulate beyond the narrow confines of medical and religious healing settings?
(3) Shifting boundaries in healing practices. How are the religious and (bio)medical dimensions of healing practices embedded and embodied in the everyday lives of patients? How is the drawing and redrawing of boundaries between religious and medical healing experienced and enacted through specific emotional and mental states (such as anxiety or uncertainty)? How are these intersections – as well as the drawing and affirming of boundaries – differentiated by factors such as gender, race, age or educational background? How do doctors and religious healers appropriate symbols, substances, and technologies from the respective “other” healing domain, and how does this appropriation lead to a perceived shift (among patients and healing experts alike) in the properties as well as the efficacy of healing instruments and materia medica?
Abstract submission and deadlines:
The deadline for abstract submission is October 10, 2012. Accepted abstracts will be confirmed by October 25, 2012. While there is no conference fee for the workshop participants, the organizers are unable to cover costs for travel and/or accommodation. A publication arising from the workshop in form of an edited volume or a peer-review journal special issue is envisioned.
Please send paper title, abstract (no more than 250 words), affiliation, and contact information to:
Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Dilger
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology Freie Universität Berlin Landoltweg 9-11
14195 Berlin
Email: hansjoerg.dilger@berlin.de
Dr. Małgorzata Rajtar
Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Social and Cultural
Anthropology Freie Universität Berlin/Institute of Archeology and
Ethnology,University of Gdańsk, Poland
Email: mrajtar@yahoo.com
Call for papers – deadline approaching – SOCREL TEACHING AND STUDYING RELIGION SYMPOSIUM
Socrel / HEA Teaching and Studying Religion, 2nd Annual Symposium
Call for Papers
The 2012 Socrel / HEA Teaching and Studying Religion symposium will explore the theme: Religion and Citizenship: Re-Thinking the Boundaries of Religion and the Secular.
The symposium is organised by Socrel, the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group, with funding from the Higher Education Academy, Philosophy, and Religious Studies Subject Centre. Last year’s inaugural symposium was over-subscribed and therefore early submissions are encouraged.
Keynote speaker: Dr Nasar Meer, Northumbria University
Venue: BSA Meeting Room, Imperial Wharf, London
Date: 13 December 2012
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Religions today are implicated in a wide variety of publics. From contests over the environment and democracy to protests against capitalism, religions remain important factors in political and public life across diverse, and interconnected, global contexts. A variety of diverse responses have been articulated to the so-called ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere, drawing into question relations between the religious, the non-religious and the secular. As scholars have developed new theoretical understandings of the terms of these debates and questioned how these are bound up with cultural conceptualizations of citizenship, education – in schools, universities and less formal educational contexts – has often been a site where contestations of the religious and the secular have been acutely felt.
The aim of this symposium is to consider the interrelation between conceptions of the religious, the secular, citizenship and education, and to explore how these issues affect the study of religion in higher education. We hope to attract presentations of sufficient quality to lead to an edited publication.
The day will be highly participative and engaged. The symposium will be organised as a single stream so that the day is as much about discussion as it is about presentation, and therefore the number of formal papers will be limited.
Papers are invited from students, teachers, and researchers in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, geography, theology, history, psychology, political science, religious studies and others where religion is taught and studied.
Empirical, methodological, and theoretical papers are welcomed.
Presenters will circulate a five-page summary of their paper before the day so that all participants can come prepared for discussion. Presentations will last 10 minutes and will be structured into three sessions, each followed by a discussant drawing out key points. The day will conclude with a discussant-led, focused panel discussion.
Key questions to be addressed may include, but are not limited to:
What are the relationships between the religious, the secular and the public sphere, and how do these affect the study of religion, in both universities and schools?
How do different historical constructions of religion and secularity shape understandings of the civil sphere and citizenship, and what are the implications of this for the study of religion?
Does the increased public visibility of religion in national and global contexts affect how we study it?
What is the role of religious education (school and/or university) in forming citizens and shaping understandings of citizenship?
Are there distinct regional, national or international conceptions of the secular?
Are there distinct regional, national or international conceptions of citizenship?
How do different disciplines approach and study these conceptions, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches?
Abstracts of 200 words are invited by September 15 2012. Please send these to: Dr Paul-François Tremlett p.f.tremlett@open.ac.uk
Costs: £36.00 for BSA/SocRel members; £45.00 for non-members; £20.00 for SocRel/BSA
Postgraduate members; £25.00 for Postgraduate non-members.
New religiosity in migration
International workshop on “New religiosity in migration”
Convenors: Nelly Elias and Julia Lerner
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel May 27-30, 2013
What are the relations between a spiritual quest and an intercultural migration experience? Why immigrants become more religious than they were before immigrating? How do host national contexts influence immigrant religiosity? What are the patterns
of immigrant religiosity within the global boom of religion and spiritual movements? Based on these questions we suggest bringing together the research insights on immigrant religiosity emerging in the host cultural contexts and to examine new forms, languages and meanings constituted by this intercultural religious transformation.
The workshop will be organized as an exchange of ideas rising in empirical investigations of various migration contexts and immigrant groups in Israel, Europe, US and the post-Soviet space with a special focus on postsocialist spiritual trends and religious trajectories in the Russian-speaking diaspora. We believe that juxtaposition and comparison of different manifestations of migrant religiosity will encourage new ways of conceptualization of these phenomenon.
As a space of extensive migration, Israeli cultural and political context introduces a variety of immigrant groups that bring with them different religious and spiritual worldviews or reinvent them in their new country. In this sense Israel serves as a strategic location for a workshop on immigrant religiosity. Apart from intellectual discussions we invite the participants to take advantage of the immediate surrounding and conduct fieldwork tours to the spaces of immigrant religiosity in the area.
We invite scholars from social and cultural studies of migration, contemporary religion, spirituality & new age, and post-socialist cultural condition to join our working colloquium organized according to the following themes:
Religiosity as a device of national belonging and citizenship
Religion provides symbols, rituals and scripts that immigrants can use to affirm, pass on, or reinvent their collective identity and position themselves vis-à-vis the host and the home countries. Therefore, religion choices could teach us on migrants’ relocation strategies. In some national contexts the religious practices represent imitative adoption of the local cultural and political patterns, while in the other contexts they represent an alternative or resistance to the host society and its way of life.
Immigrant religion as acquisition of a new habitus
Any migration implies some degree of cultural change, all the more adopting religious rules and prescriptions of everyday practice in migration intensifies the need for adopting a new habitus. Adult migrants work to change their everyday practice, body appearance and visibility, consumption behavior, social network, patterns of interpersonal communication and family relations. Using their new and old cultural repertoire, immigrants develop everyday strategies to keep and maneuver the cultural worlds they live in, separate or mix them together.
Therapeutic powers of religion in migration
Migration and settling down in a new country are often associated with various individual and group “crises”: crisis of identify, psychological stress, family crisis etc. In this regard, religious affiliation and practice perform a therapeutic function when religious doctrine and religious community serve as an emotional shelter in the state of instability, as a surrogate family symbolically replacing distant relatives, or as a source for a new collective meaning instead of the one that was lost in migration. The proximity of psychological and religious discourses in the contemporary religious and spiritual movements makes the therapeutic appeal of religion in migration especially powerful and evident.
Immigrant religiosity as intercultural translation
Immigrant religiosity often involves work of intercultural interpretation, converting the code of the core religious ideas and symbols. As they acquire religious thinking and practice in a new language, immigrants learn simultaneously to speak locally and religiously. Reinventing their beliefs in a new context they are preoccupied with the translation of cultural ideas creating a hybrid religious code. This eclecticism becomes intertwined with the tendency of the contemporary religious and spiritual rhetoric to bring together discourses of different and even contradictory cultural origins.
Transnational immigrant religiosity and new media
Religious life in and through new media represents a crucial factor that affects the ways of belief and practice of contemporary religiosity. It is especially prominent for immigrant religious communities that cross and challenge national and cultural borders. Immigrants use new media platforms either to reestablish their affiliation with religious communities of their home countries or to create completely new local or transnational frames of belonging.
Those who wish to take part are invited to send us a short proposal (up to 250 words) of your research related to one of the workshop themes as well as your CV by October 5, 2012 to julialer@bgu.ac.il and enelly@bgu.ac.il. Answers are expected at November 15, 2012. Some contribution towards participants’ expenses will be available.
About the workshop venue and the convenors:
The workshop is will be hosted by the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer Sheva, Israel). BGU is known for its expertise and extensive research on the issues of contemporary religion, migration and diaspora.
Prof. Nelly Elias and Dr. Julia Lerner are conducting a joint research on “Belief and Practice of Belonging: Religious Transformation of Post-Soviet Immigrants in Israel”. The study traces the routes of the Russianspeaking religiosity in Israel, focusing on the newly established Christian and Jewish movements and communities. Elias as a scholar of immigrant media (from the Department of Communication, BGU) and Lerner as an anthropologist of knowledge (from the departments of Sociology and Anthropology, BGU), bring together their theoretical lens and emphasize the cultural and discursive turn of the new post-soviet religiosity manifested in immigrants’ narratives and experience of everyday life.
Religion and the Question of Materiality (book announcement)
Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality
Edited by Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer
Fordham University Press, August 2012 (496 pp.)
About the book
This volume addresses the relation between religion and things. That relation has long been conceived in antagonistic terms, privileging spirit above matter, belief above ritual and objects, meaning above form, and “inward” contemplation above “outward” action. After all, wasn’t the opposition between spirituality and materiality the defining characteristic of religion, understood as geared to a transcendental beyond that was immaterial by definition? Grounded in the rise of religion as a modern category, with Protestantism as its main exponent, this conceptualization devalues religious things as lacking serious empirical, let alone theoretical, interest. The resurgence of public religion in our time has exposed the limitations of this attitude.
Taking materiality seriously, this volume uses as a starting point the insight that religion necessarily requires some kind of incarnation, through which the beyond to which it refers becomes accessible. Conjoining rather than separating spirit and matter, incarnation (whether understood as “the world becoming flesh” or in a broader sense) places at center stage the question of how the realm of the transcendental, spiritual, or invisible is rendered tangible in the world.
How do things matter in religious discourse and practice? How are we to account for the value or devaluation, the appraisal or contestation, of things within particular religious perspectives? How are we to rematerialize our scholarly approaches to religion? These are the key questions addressed by this multidisciplinary volume. Focusing on different kinds of things that matter for religion, including sacred artifacts, images, bodily fluids, sites, and electronic media, it offers a wide-ranging set of multidisciplinary studies that combine detailed analysis and critical reflection.
About the editors
Dick Houtman is Professor of Cultural Sociology at the Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology (CROCUS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His principal research interests are the spiritualization of religion and the culturalization of politics in the contemporary Western world. His most recent books are Paradoxes of Individualization: Social Control and Social Conflict in Contemporary Modernity (with Stef Aupers and Willem de Koster); Religions of Modernity: Relocating the Sacred to the Self and the Digital (edited with Stef Aupers) and Farewell to the Leftist Working Class (with Peter Achterberg and Anton Derks). He is a member of the editorial boards of Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Politics and Religion, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, and Sociologie.
Birgit Meyer is professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. She has conducted research on missions and local appropriations of Christianity, Pentecostalism, popular culture, and video-films in Ghana. Her publications include Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana; Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (edited with Peter Geschiere); Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (edited with Peter Pels); Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere (edited with Annelies Moors); and Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses. She is vice-chair of the International African Institute (London), a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, and one of the editors of Material Religion.
Call for Papers – Date Extended – Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion
Call for Papers
Last date for submission of abstracts extended to 21st September 2012
Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion
16th November 2012, Enterprise Centre, University of Derby
Organised by the Centre for Society, Religion & Belief
<http://www.derby.ac.uk/health/social-care/research-groups/society-religion-and-belief-research-group>
(SRB), University of Derby
Funded by Digital Social Research<http://www.digitalsocialresearch.net/wordpress/>
(DSR)
http://www.derby.ac.uk/digital-methodologies-in-the-sociology-of-religion
Within an era of a growing reliance on digital technologies to instantly and effectively express our values, allegiances, and multi-faceted identities, the interest in digital research methodologies among Sociologists of Religion comes as no surprise (e.g. Bunt 2009; Cantoni and Zyga 2007; Contractor 2012 and Ostrowski 2006;Taylor 2003). However the methodological challenges associated with such research have been given significantly less attention. What are the epistemological underpinnings and rationale for the use ‘digital’ methodologies? What ethical dilemmas do sociologists face, including while protecting participants’ interests in digital contexts that are often perceived as anonymised and therefore ‘safe’? Implementing such ‘digital’ research also leads to practical challenges such as mismatched expectations of IT skills, limited access to specialized tools, project management and remote management of research processes.
Hosted by the Centre forSociety, Religion, and Belief at the University of Derby and funded by Digital Social Research, this conference will bring together scholars to critically evaluate the uses, impacts, challenges and future of Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion. We envisage that the conference will lead to an edited textbook and are currently in discussion with key publishers. For the purpose of the conference and textbook, digital research is broadly defined as research that either works within digital contexts or which uses either online or offline digital tools. Abstracts for papers that focus on one, or more, of the following themes are invited:
1. Epistemological Positioning
2. Ethical Dilemmas
3. Implementation & Practical Challenges
4. Wider impacts beyond Academia
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, as well as the title of the paper, name of the presenter, institutional affiliation, and contact details to Dr Sariya Contractor (s.contractor@derby.ac.uk<mailto:s.contractor@derby.ac.uk>) and Dr. Suha Shakkour (s.shakkour@derby.ac.uk<mailto:s.shakkour@derby.ac.uk>) by 5pm on Tuesday 21st September, 2012. Shortlisted participants will be notified by 28th September 2012 and will be expected to submit summary papers (1000 words) by 1st November 2012 for circulation prior to the conference. A registration fee of £30 will apply for all speakers and delegates. A few travel bursaries are available for post-graduate students – please enquire about these by e-mail. Further details about the registration process will be circulated by mid-September2012. Please visit our website – http://www.derby.ac.uk/digital-methodologies-in-the-sociology-of-religion for further details.
Religion in Public Spaces: A European Perspective
Religion in Public Spaces: A European Perspective
Ashgate, September 2012
Edited by Silvio Ferrari and Sabrina Pastorelli, both at The University of Milan,
Italy Series : Cultural Diversity and Law in Association with RELIGARE
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&title_id=12052&edition_id=12431&calcTitle=1
This timely volume discusses the much debated and controversial subject of the presence of religion in the public sphere. The book is divided in three sections. In the first the public/private distinction is studied mainly from a theoretical point of view, through the contributions of lawyers, philosophers and sociologists. In the following sections their proposals are tested through the analysis of two case studies, religious dress codes and places of worship. These sections include discussions on some of the most controversial recent cases from around Europe with contributions from some of the leading experts in the area of law and religion.
Covering a range of very different European countries including Turkey, the UK, Italy and Bulgaria, the book uses comparative case studies to illustrate how practice varies significantly even within Europe. It reveals how familiarization with religious and philosophical diversity in Europe should lead to the modification of legal frameworks historically designed to accommodate majority religions. This in turn should give rise to recognition of new groups and communities and eventually, a more adequate response to the plurality of religions and beliefs in European society.
Contents: Religion and rethinking the public-private divide:
introduction, Marie-Claire Foblets; Part I Religions and the Public/Private Divide: Public and private, a moving border: a legal-historical perspective, Kjell Å. Modeer; Socio-historical perspectives on the public and private spheres, Adam Seligmann; The ‘public-private’ divide on drift: what, if any, is its importance for analysing limits of associational religious freedoms?, Veit Bader; Religious freedom and the public-private divide: a broken promise in Europe?, Alessandro Ferrari; The ‘public’ and the ‘private’ in the common law and civil law traditions and the regulation of religion, Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens and Noura Karazivan; Contested normative cultures. Gendered perspectives on religions and the public/private divide, Hanne Petersen; Religion in the European public spaces: a legal overview, Silvio Ferrari. Part II Religion and the Dress Codes: From front-office to back-office: religious dress crossing the public-private divide in the workplace, Katayoun Alidadi; Religious dress codes: the Turkish case, A. Emre Öktem and Mehmet C. Uzun; Religious dress codes in the United Kingdom, Javier Garcia Oliva; Religious dress codes: the Italian case, Sabrina Pastorelli; Religious dress codes: the Bulgarian case, Maya Kosseva and Iva Kyurkchieva; Comparing burqa debates in Europe: sartorial styles, religious prescriptions and political ideologies, Sara Silvestri. Part III Religion and the Places of Worship: The right to establish and maintain places of worship: the developments of its normative content under international human rights law, Noel G. Villaroman; The places of worship in France and the public/private divide, Anne Fornerod; ‘Stopp Minarett’? The controversy over the building of minarets in Switzerland: religious freedom versus collective identity, Vincenzo Pacillo; Places of worship: between public and private: a comparison between Bulgaria, Italy and the Netherlands, Tymen J. van der Ploeg; Index.
About the Editor: Silvio Ferrari is Professor of Canon Law, University of Milan and President, International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies, Italy. His research interests are in the areas of Church and State in Europe; Comparative law of religions, and Vatican-Israel relations. He has published widely on these and related areas.
Sabrina Pastorelli is research fellow at the Institute of International Law -section of Ecclesiastical and Canon Law – University of Milan, Faculty of Law. She is also a member of the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL-CNRS/École Pratique des Hautes Études-Sorbonne) and teaching assistant at the Catholic University of Paris – Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences. Her research interests include sociology of religion; new religious movements; law and religion in Europe; religious education; regulation of religious pluralism; state public policy and religion. She is a member of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR); the Association for Sociology of Religion (ASR); the Italian Sociological Association (AIS).
Reviews: ‘This book offers more than its title promises. It is not only about Europe or about religion. Insightful, suggestive and as diverse as its contributors, it contains a persuasive reflection on the need to rethink the very notion of public space that Western democracies have used since the nineteenth century.’
Javier Martinez-Torron, Complutense University School of Law, Spain
‘This is a highly important book in a remarkable controversy. Silvio Ferrari and Sabrina Pastorelli present a rich volume full of information, thought, and insight -presenting masterpieces of interdisciplinary research and political guidance. The book is a most valuable contribution to freedom and equality throughout Europe.’
Gerhard Robbers, University of Trier, Germany
The Religions of Canadians
The Religions of Canadians is a book about religions and the making of Canada. Drawing on the expert knowledge and personal insights of scholars in history, the social sciences, and the phenomenology of religion, separate chapters introduce the beliefs and practices of nine religious traditions, some mainstream, some less familiar.
The opening chapter explores how Aboriginal Canadian traditions continue to thrive after centuries of oppression. Subsequent chapters follow in the footsteps of Catholic and Protestant Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Baha’is as they have made their way to Canada, and reveal how different immigrant communities have adapted their rich religious heritages to a new life in a new land. Each chapter is divided into five sections: an introduction; a succinct overview of the tradition; its passage to and transformation in Canada; a close study of contemporary Canadian communities; and an afterword suggesting possibilities for future research. Chapters conclude with a list of important terms and dates, related websites, a concise bibliography of further readings, and key questions for reflection.
The Religions of Canadians is a timely and unique contribution to the field, introducing readers to the religions of the world while simultaneously building an overall picture of the development of Canada’s multicultural, pluralist society.
For more details to order copies, please see: http://www.utppublishing.com/The-Religions-of-Canadians.html
Towards a Symmetrical Approach: The Study of Religions After Postmodern and Postcolonial Criticism
Towards a Symmetrical Approach: The Study of Religions After Postmodern and Postcolonial Criticism
29 November – 1 December 2012 * Brno * Czech Republic
http://www.phil.muni.cz/relig/symmetry2012/
“The symmetry postulate”, as David Bloor formulated it, “enjoins us to seek the same kind of causes for both true and false, rational and irrational beliefs.” Such a principle seems to conform to the common sense. At the same time it is often neglected in the field of social sciences. In the light of consequences of this principle, the academic study of religions seems to be predominantly an exercise in asymmetry: neglecting the voices of women and favouring men’s worlds; preferring the voices of experts over those of lay participants, of elites over ordinary people; siding with the winners against the losers. The postmodern and postcolonial criticism of the Western scholarly tradition have brought number of such asymmetries to our sight. Yet, the symmetrical ways are still an unexplored territory.
This workshop on the symmetrical approach would like to offer a chance to explore this unexplored territory together. We therefore invite students of religions, qualitative sociologists, anthropologists, and historians to exchange ideas and scholarly experience and examples of good practice at a workshop on the symmetrical approach in the study of religions held in Brno, Czech Republic.
See the call for papers for a more detailed overview:
http://www.phil.muni.cz/relig/symmetry2012/call-for-papers.php
Organizing bodies
Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University
Czech Association for the Study of Religions (CASR)
Religious Diversity and Accommodation in the European Workplace
You may be interested in knowing about the publication of the following book, the first in the Ashgate Religare series:
A Test of Faith? Religious Diversity and Accommodation in the European Workplace
Edited by Katayoun Alidadi, Marie-Claire Foblets and Jogchum Vrielink, all at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
See the following link for a fuller description and free access to the contents and introduction chapter:
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&forthcoming=1&title_id=11755&edition_id=15297