Author Archives: Jim

Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life

Posted on by

Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life
The Paissiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv
July 26th –August 8th, 2015

The 2015 Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life (BSSRPL) will be devoted to the theme Conversion and the Boundaries of Community. As with previous schools, it proceeds from the idea that religion and other forms of collective belonging are central for the life of both individuals and society, and that our religious communities are often those to which we devote our greatest loyalties. In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas,
moral beliefs and communal loyalties.

The goal of the Summer School is to provide a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its focus is on religion as providing the fundamental terms of moral community and its aim is to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by “differences”. The Balkan Summer School takes up this very real challenge and tries to critically define differences, especially communal and religious differences between people as the starting point of a publically shared life. Its basic aim is to help participants realize their prejudices and question their taken-for-granted assumptions of the other through the construction of a safe social space of exploration and interaction that includes an innovative mixture of academic teaching, experiential field experience (practicums) and affective engagement with the challenges of “living together differently”.

Our 2015 summer school will explore the issue of conversion, (both religious and non-religious), in the Balkans and elsewhere. We will explore conversion in its legal, social, and religious aspects, as well as its place within families, as an aspect of gender identity and as a form of accommodating the power differentials in a given society. Inquiry into different forms of conversion as lived practice in the area of the Rhodope Mountains and the Thracian plain around the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv will serve as the sharp lens of our inquiry. Ultimately, however we shall be focusing on the experience of our own boundaries, preconceptions, lived practices, prejudices and preconceptions – to better appreciate how to live with difference rather than deny, trivialize or abrogate it.

Drawing on over twelve years experience of CEDAR-Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion (www.CEDARnetwork.org) the BSSRPL seeks to bring together fellows from different walks of life and different religious and confessional communities, (as well as those who define themselves as members of no such communities and have no religious identities) to explore these themes together, in conditions of mutual respect and recognition. We look forward to an enriching mix of post-graduate students, professors, NGO leaders, journalists, religious leaders, policy analysts, and teachers from the area of the Balkans, Europe and beyond to join us for the two weeks of the school.  The BSSRPL combines more traditional academic lectures with field-work, practical, experiential learning and more affectively orientated forms of group learning; in a innovative approach to learning that goes far beyond the purely cognitive.

The successful candidates will be expected to fund their own transportation to Sofia, Bulgaria. The BSSRPL maintains a needs-based tuition policy and bursaries are available.

Please send your Application to desislavadimitrova@uni-plovdiv.net or fif@uni-plovdiv.net. The deadline for Applications is 23 February 2015.

The post Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

New Book: Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox by Grace Davie

Posted on by

Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox
Grace Davie
February 2015, Wiley-Blackwell
Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox (1405135964)

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405135964.html

Description
Religion in Britain evaluates and sheds light on the religious situation in twenty-first century Britain; it explores the country’s increasing secularity alongside religion’s growing presence in public debate, and the impact of this paradox on Britain’s society.

  • - Describes and explains the religious situation in twenty-first century Britain
  • - Based on the highly successful Religion in Britain Since 1945 (Blackwell, 1994) but extensively revised with the majority of the text re-written to reflect the current situation
  • - Investigates the paradox of why Britain has become increasingly secular and how religion is increasingly present in public debate compared with 20 years ago
  • - Explores the impact this paradox has on churches, faith communities, the law, politics, education, and welfare

Table of Contents
Part I Preliminaries
1 Introduction: A Framework for Discussion
2 Contexts and Generations
3 Facts and Figures
Part II Religious Legacies
4 Cultural Heritage, Believing without Belonging and Vicarious Religion
5 Territory, Politics and Institutions
6 Presence: Who Can Do What For Whom?
Part III Shifting Priorities: From Obligation to Consumption
7 An Emerging Market: Gainers and Losers
8 Proliferations of the Spiritual
Part IV Public Religion and Secular Reactions
9 Managing Diversity
10 Religion in Public Life
Part V Thinking Theoretically
11 Religion and Modernity Continued

The post New Book: Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox by Grace Davie appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Conference: Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge

Posted on by

Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge: Strategies of Acculturation and Cultural Resistance in Early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Traditions

Conference 22-24 April 2015
Department of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Origins,  Faculty of
Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen

For information and registration see:
http://www.rug.nl/ggw/news/events/2015/sharing-and-hiding-religious-knowledge?useCache=no

Knowledge in Antiquity was always cherished as a scarce good and its character and transmission always tainted with an esoteric allure. Not only the production and cultivation of knowledge took place within the reduced circle of “initiated”; also its diffusion was channeled by the close relationship teacher–disciple.

The esoteric aspect plays a central role in scholarly, scribal, religious and philosophical contexts. Not only was knowledge intended for a reduced group of followers; it also seemed to provide a higher
form of consciousness that not everyone was willing or able to bear. If from an existential perspective, knowledge provides individuals with a holistic framework to supersede a fragmented reality, from a social viewpoint, it provides them with the means to advance in the social hierarchy. On the one hand, possessing or lacking knowledge determines social status; on the other, sharing or hiding knowledge is used in strategies of inclusion and exclusion that are highly productive both at micro (within religious communities themselves) and at macro level (within multicultural societies at large).

Whether religious knowledge could or should be shared with others or rather kept for oneself was one of the central issues by which Jews, Christians and Muslims defined themselves in relation to each other and the world around them. The formative stages of these traditions were characterized by a wide diversity of attitudes towards and means of knowledge sharing and hiding.

The post Conference: Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Call For Papers: This American Muslim Life: The Cultural Politics of Asserting the Familiar

Posted on by

Call For Papers:

This American Muslim Life:  The Cultural Politics of Asserting the Familiar

-Proposed Panel for 2015 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Denver, Nov. 18-22
-Conference theme:  “Familiar/Strange”
-Organizers: Maria Curtis (University of Houston-Clear Lake) and Alisa Perkins (Western Michigan University)

Recent coverage of the Charlie Hebdo incident in France casts a long shadow over Muslims living in the West, publically asserting an austere face of Islam that is far “stranger” than the everyday experience of most practitioners.  This panel asks why must Islam in the West be “made strange,” and what does a lived Islam grounded in ethnographic perspective look like once it is plucked from the familiar/strange duality and instead viewed as an American Muslim “way of knowing.” We aim to collectively examine how Muslims in America are blurring lines by carrying out aspects of their everyday lives “in a Muslim way” (Henkel 2008). Papers may cover a wide range of topics examining how familiar ways of doing things take on novel meanings for Muslims as they are rehearsed in American spaces; and/or how non-Muslims reinterpret American spaces or cultural life by engaging with Muslim minority cultural, material, and institutional forms. The aim of the panel is to build an understanding of how Muslim minorities expand religious and cultural boundaries in an American scene already crowded with multisecularisms on the one hand, and neoconservatisms on the other. What is at stake for Muslim Americans when they are called upon to answer for the “stranger” articulations of political Islam, and in an environment of overdetermined “strangeness” is an authentic Muslim American “familiar” tenable?  Papers may include a focus on space and public culture, materiality, institution building, conversion, the poetics of personal life, festivals and demonstrations, performance and artistic production, political activism, legal and civic engagement, interfaith movements, cityscapes, education, cultural brokerage, Muslim business and finance, and halal foodways.

Please send a 250 word abstract and a title for your proposed contribution to both Maria Curtis (Curtis@UHCL.edu) and Alisa Perkins (alisa.perkins@wmich.edu) by Saturday, Feb 14th.  Authors of accepted proposals will be notified via email by Monday Feb 16th.  Please contact us in advance with any questions about this proposed panel session.

The post Call For Papers: This American Muslim Life: The Cultural Politics of Asserting the Familiar appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Call for Papers for ASR’s 77th Annual Meeting in August

Posted on by

Call for Papers for ASR’s 77th Annual Meeting in August

The Program Chair for this year’s Annual Meeting, Grace Yukich, is now accepting session/panel proposals and individual paper abstracts for consideration for this year’s program.  All of the details for making these submissions are available on the ASR website.  Proposals for sessions should be sent directly to Grace at Grace.Yukich@quinnipiac.edu by March 31, 2015, and individual abstracts should be submitted through the ASR Member Portal by April 30, 2015.    

The post Call for Papers for ASR’s 77th Annual Meeting in August appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Call for Papers for the journal Sociology of Religion

Posted on by

Call for Papers from Sociology of Religion for Advanced Graduate Students

The editors of Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review are now soliciting essays (25 page maximum or 7,000 words, all inclusive) from advanced graduate students built on dissertations in process. The essay should speak specifically to your scholarship, yet generally to sociologists interested in religion by presenting a central idea of relevance to our readership. In addition, the essay should also reflect on the process of developing as a sociologist whose scholarship includes a clear focus on religion, which may include observations on how “sociology of religion” as a sub-field is currently being shaped, where it is heading, why that matters, etc. While the essay may address one’s own experiences and in the first person, all aspects of the essay should remain of relevance and interest to rigorous scholarship, which therefore can include things like aspects of our training, professional development, conceptual breakthroughs, and empirical surprises. Be sure to cite sources and develop ideas and arguments adequate to the high standards of our journal. 

All manuscripts should follow standard author guidelines for the journal (e.g., 12 pt Times Roman, double space throughout), and be submitted through Manuscript Centralhttps://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/socrel. 

The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2015. Any questions should be addressed to the Editor in Chief, Gerardo Marti, sorjournal@davidson.edu.

The post Call for Papers for the journal Sociology of Religion appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Pew Report: Decline in Europe’s Jewish Population

Posted on by

Pew Research Center
Fact Tank – Our Lives in Numbers
February 9, 2015
The continuing decline of Europe’s Jewish population
By Michael Lipka

Jewish Population in EuropeIt’s been seven decades since the end of the Holocaust, an event that decimated the Jewish population in Europe. In the years since then, the number of European Jews has continued to decline for a variety of reasons. And now, concerns over renewed anti-Semitism on the continent have prompted Jewish leaders to talk of a new “exodus” from the region.

There are still more than a million Jews living in Europe, according to 2010 Pew Research Center estimates. But that number has dropped significantly over the last several decades – most dramatically in Eastern Europe and the countries that make up the former Soviet Union, according to historical research by Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1939, there were 16.6 million Jews worldwide, and a majority of them – 9.5 million, or 57% – lived in Europe, according to DellaPergola’s estimates. By the end of World War II, in 1945, the Jewish population of Europe had shrunk to 3.8 million, or 35% of the world’s 11 million Jews.

About 6 million European Jews were killed during the Holocaust, according to common estimates.

Since then, the global Jewish population – estimated by Pew Research at 14 million as of 2010 – has risen, but it is still smaller than it was before the Holocaust. And in the decades since 1945, the Jewish  population in Europe has continued to decline. In 1960, it was about 3.2 million; by 1991, it fell to 2 million, according to DellaPergola’s estimates. Now, there are about 1.4 million Jews in Europe – just 10% of the world’s Jewish population, and 0.2% of Europe’s total population.

Read the full story:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/09/europes-jewish-population/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=68566b4d8e-Religion_Weekly_Feb_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-68566b4d8e-399907533

The post Pew Report: Decline in Europe’s Jewish Population appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

News from the ISSR

Posted on by

We would like to inform you about the following:

  • The registration for the ISSR conference to be held in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 2-5 July 2015 is now open. Please go to the ISSR web site and follow the link to be found on the home page or under “Conferences’. The deadline for registration is May 15, 2015.
  • The deadline for proposals for the ISSR Best Article Award and the ISSR Student Paper Award has been extended to February 28, 2015. For more details, please go the ISSR web site. The link is on the home page (http://www.sisr-issr.org).
  • We would like to remind you that we are still seeking nominations for Council members to represent various countries / regions. Nominations should be sent to the General Secretary no later than March 15, 2015. Elections will be held in April 2015. For further details about the procedures to follow and the Council positions to be filled, please see Network 48, available on the web-site (“Newsletters”).
  • Please note also that only members in good standing can participate in the conference, be nominated or vote. If you have not yet paid your membership fee for the 2014-2015 period, we encourage you to do so as soon as possible.You may pay your membership through the web site, under “Join”.

Kind regards,

Siniša Zrinščak

ISSR General Secretary

The post News from the ISSR appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Travel grants to 2015 ASR Meeting, Chicago

Posted on by

The Association for the Sociology of Religion is pleased to announce the 2015 Ralph A. Gallagher Travel Grant competition.  Gallagher Travel Grants are awarded to scholars living outside the US, and to graduate students both inside the US and overseas, who seek funds to help defray the cost of staying at the ASR travel hotel during the Annual Meeting to present their research. International scholars may also request funds to help cover the cost of airfare. This year’s meeting will be held in Chicago from August 20-22, 2015.  Applicants must be active members of the Association for the Sociology of Religion at the time of application, and must plan to attend the entirety of the meeting. For details on the application procedure, please see our webpage at http://www.sociologyofreligion.com/lectures-papers/2013-ralph-a-gallagher-travel-grants/.

Please refer any questions to Damon Mayrl, Chair of the International Liaison Committee (dmayrl@clio.uc3m.es).  The deadline to submit applications is April 15, 2015.

The post Travel grants to 2015 ASR Meeting, Chicago appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

New Book: The Intimate: Polity and the Catholic Church.

Posted on by

The Intimate: Polity and the Catholic Church. Laws about Life, Death and the Family in So-called Catholic Countries. KAREL DOBBELAERE & ALFONSO PÉREZ-AGOTE (eds.). KADOC Studies on Relgion, Culture and Society nr 15. Louvain: Leuven University Press: February 2015. http://upers.kuleuven.be

For centuries the Catholic Church was able to impose her ethical rules in matters related to the intimate, that is, questions concerning life (from its beginning until its end) and the family, in the so-called Catholic countries in Western Europe. When the polity started to introduce legislation that was in opposition to the Catholic ethic, the ecclesiastical authorities and part of the population reacted. The media reported massive manifestations in France against same-sex marriages and in Spain against the de-penalization of abortion. In Italy the Episcopal Conference entered the political field in opposition to the relaxation of several restrictive legal rules concerning medically assisted procreation and exhorted the voters to abstain from voting so that the referendum did not obtain the necessary quorum. In Portugal, to the contrary, the Church made a “pact” with the prime minister so that the law on same-sex marriages did not include the possibility of adoption. And in Belgium the Episcopal Conference limited its actions to clearly expressing with religious, legal, and anthropological arguments its opposition to such laws, which all other Episcopal Conferences did also. In this book, the authors analyse the full spectrum of the issue, including the emergence of such laws; the political discussions; the standpoints defended in the media by professionals, ethicists, and politicians; the votes in the parliaments; the political interventions of the Episcopal Conferences; and the attitude of professionals. As a result the reader understands what was at stake and the differences in actions of the various Episcopal Conferences. The authors also analyse the pro and con evaluations among the civil population of such actions by the Church. Finally, in a comparative synthesis, they discuss the public positions taken by Pope Francis to evaluate if a change in Church policy might be possible in the near future.

  • Introduction. Karel Dobbelaere & Alfonso Pérez-Agote
  • Euthanasia and the Belgian Catholic World, Liliane Voyé & Karel Dobbelaere
  • “Mariage pour tous”: The Same-Sex Marriage Controversy in France, Céline Béraud & Philippe Portier
  • The Italian Catholic Church and the Artificial-Insemination Referendum, Annalisa Frisina, Franco Garelli, Enzo Pace & Roberto Scalon
  • Ethical Challenges of the Catholic Church in Portugal : The Case of Same-Sex-Marriage, Helena Vilaça & Maria João Oliveira
  • The Catholic Church Faces Ethical Challenges in Spain : The Regulation of Abortion, Alfonso Pérez-Agote, Jose Santiago & Antonio Montañés
  • Comparative Synthesis, Karel Dobbelaere, Alfonso Pérez-Agote & Céline Béraud

The post New Book: The Intimate: Polity and the Catholic Church. appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.