La 33e conférence de la SISR aura lieu à Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgique), du 2 au 5 Juillet 2015.

Nous invitons maintenant la soumission de propositions de communication. Pour qu’une proposition puisse être acceptée, il faut être membre en règle de la SISR pour la période 2014-2015.

Le formulaire de soumission en ligne pour les propositions de communication pour la Conférence de 2015 est maintenant disponible. La date limite des soumissions est le 15 décembre 2014. Les propositions de communication devront être soumises en ligne. Pour ce faire, veuillez aller à http://sisr-issr.org/program et suivre les consignes. De plus, veuillez prendre note de l’Appel à proposition atelier SISR sur le site web. La SISR vous invite à soumettre des propositions pour les ateliers internationaux sur des sujets de recherches novateurs dans le domaine, et qui se dérouleraient en 2015.

Pour des plus amples renseignements, veuillez contacter le president du programme pour la conference, M. Jasjit Singh (2015pres_programme@sisr-issr.org).

Le thème de la conférence sera Éprouver le religieux

Penser le religieux implique plus que la croyance, la pratique et l’organisation sociale. C’est aussi plus largement l’intrication du sensible, de l’expression et de la représentation, dans ce sens « éprouver le religieux ». L’expérience peut être sensorielle telle que les images, les sons et les odeurs des rites religieux. Elle peut aussi être communautaire et émotionnelle, des dimensions que plusieurs chercheurs ont théorisées sous des titres comme “effervescence collective”, “communitas” et les “régimes collectifs d’émotion”. Le sensible et les sens dans le religieux sont des thèmes récurrents en sociologie et en anthropologie depuis le début de ces disciplines. Ils se déploient dans de multiples directions et posent toute une série des questions reliées :

• Quels sont les lieux pour éprouver le religieux et comment s’articulent le corps-temple, le temple privé et le temple communautaire ? Comment les déités et les multiples figures d’esprits peuvent-elles être représentées ? En quoi et comment leur représentation intervient dans les pratiques religieuses corporelle et communautaire ? Comment l’expérience religieuse est-elle impliquée et comment cela se manifeste et s’articule à la perception et à la représentation sensorielle ?
• Comment les groupes religieux contemporains utilisent-ils des expériences sensorielles et d’autres expériences pour recueillir et pour servir leurs adhérents – de la production audiovisuelle à l’art, à la musique et à la danse? Quel est le rôle des images, de la musique et de la danse dans la production du religieux et non pas simplement en tant que productions religieuses ?
• La dimension audiovisuelle et les médias s’impliquent des manières différentes, y compris à travers la télévision, la radio, l’art religieux, l’Internet et le monde du jeu. Comment les gens religieux comprennent-ils les expériences qui selon eux et elles sont au cœur de leurs vies religieuses ?  Comment ces questions varient-elles selon les différentes traditions religieuses du monde, et que peut-on apprendre de cette variété ?
• Comment les expériences – sensorielles, émotionnelles ou de l’intérieur – s’expriment-elles dans les divers discours religieux ? Quel est le rôle du langage religieux dans ce contexte sensoriel et émotionnel ? Quelles sont les caractéristiques émotionnelles de la langue religieuse ? Comment peut-on comprendre dans ce contexte le succès de divers mouvements charismatiques ?
• Comment les gens perçoivent-ils la religion dans la vie quotidienne ? Dans quelle mesure et comment les gens éprouvent le religieux, par exemple, en tant que source du sens, de l’identité, de la culpabilité, de la santé ou de l’obligation dans le contexte de leurs vies quotidiennes ?
• Et dans une perspective réflexive, qu’éprouvons-nous en tant que sociologues et anthropologues comme le religieux ? Pourquoi et comment ? Est-ce que l’importance dans notre discipline des questions posées ici signale des transformations dans cette observation du religieux ?

Ces questions et d’autres semblables feront l’objet de notre conférence de 2015. Nous invitons des  communications sur ces questions et d’autres sujets d’intérêt pour les sciences sociales de la religion.

The post Appel à communications: Société Internationale de Sociologie des Religions – Conférence bisannuelle appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

The 33rd ISSR conference will be held in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), from 2-5 July 2015.

We now invite submissions for paper proposals. Acceptance of proposals is conditional on being a member in good standing (for 2014-2015) of the ISSR.

The online facility for submitting paper proposals for the 2015 Conference is now open. The deadline is 15 December 2014. To submit paper proposals, please go to http://sisr-issr.org/program and follow the instructions. Also, please note the Call for ISSR workshop proposals on the web site, by which the ISSR invites proposals for international workshops on innovative research topics in the field to be held in 2015.

For more information, please contact the Program Chair for the 2015 conference is Dr. Jasjit Singh (2015program_chair@sisr-issr.org).

The theme of the conference will be Sensing Religion

Religions are not just a matter of belief, of practice, and of social organization. They more broadly also involve experience, perception, and the expression and representation of such ‘sensing of the religious’. Experiences may be sensory, as with the sights, sounds, and smells of religious rituals; and they may be communal and emotional, as various scholars have theorized through concepts such as ‘collective effervescence’, ‘communitas’, and ‘collective emotional regimes’. The sensible and the senses in religion has been a recurring theme in sociology and anthropology since the beginning of these disciplines. It unfolds in multiple directions and poses a whole host of interconnected questions.

• What are the locations for sensing religion and how do the individual body and the communal temple interrelate as such locations? How are deities and spiritual entities represented and how does that representation articulate with bodily and communal religious practice? How is religious experience involved and how does that manifest and articulate with sensory perception and representation?
• How do contemporary religious groups use sensory and other experiences to gather and serve their adherents – from mega-church audio-visuals to congregational art, music, and dance?  What is the role of images, music, and dance as producers of the religious and not just religious productions?
• The audio-visual dimension is involved in various ways with media, including through television, radio, religious art, the Internet and the world of gaming – how do religious people understand the experiences that they increasingly claim are central to their religious lives?  How do such matters vary across the world’s different religious traditions, and what can we learn from this variety?
• How are experiences – sensory, emotional, or inward – expressed in varying religious discourses? What is the role of religious language in this sensory and emotional context? What are the emotional characteristics of religious language? How do we understand, in this context, the success of various charismatic movements?
• How do people sense religion in daily life? To what extent and how do people feel religion as, for instance, a source of meaning, identity, guilt, health or obligation in their day to day existence?
• And from a reflexive perspective, what do we as sociologists and anthropologists ‘sense’ as the religious? Why and how? Does the importance in our discipline of the questions just outlined signal transformations in this observation of the religious?

These questions, and others like them, will be the focus of our 2015 conference.  We welcome papers on these and other topics of interest to the social sciences of religion.

The post Call for Papers: International Society for the Sociology of Religion – Biannual Conference appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Call for Papers:      Sociology of Islam – Reflection, Revision & Reconceptualization

Conference of the Section on Sociology of Religion, German Sociological Association (DGS) in cooperation with the Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr-University Bochum

25 – 27 June 2015

Conference Venue: Ruhr-University Bochum

From the 1980s onwards, sociological research has paid increased attention to Islam. While focussing on selected countries from the Middle East in an earlier stage, the interest has gradually shifted to Europe where Muslims have become a rapidly growing minority in many countries due to labour migration. Since then, research on Islam is steadily increasing and generates substantial empirical research results. Parallel, a political and normative discourse about Islam and Muslim immigrants can be observed in many host countries that has been intensified by the events of 9/11 and that extends into the academic realm.

We consider this situation as the starting point for a reflection on the theoretical framework. Initially, a sociology of Islam has to question the traditional foundations of Western humanities and the social sciences, e.g. its inherent orientalism. We want to face this challenge in the planned conference. Beyond the daily political problematisation of Islam, we want to deal with its social foundations and its various forms of social appearance, not only in Europe but also worldwide. The reflection of sociological concepts and theories will take centre stage. Outdated theories that have already been criticized many times, shall be reviewed – whether they are Eurocentric, based on modernisation theory or on a homogenizing cultural understanding, as all of them lead to an asymmetric consideration.

A reflected sociology of Islam also needs to reconstruct everyday life of Muslims from an empirical perspective, while examining social practices, institutions, and knowledge systems. Following Weber’s concept of sociology, a particular approach could be to explore the conduct of life and the social forms of Muslim sociality.

Finally, a global, transnational and historical perspective is analytically indispensable, simply due to migration processes. However, this leads to a series of challenges: On the one hand, it is important to look at mutual and inner entanglements of knowledge, culture and power instead of following the idea of self-contained and homogenous Western or Islamic civilisations. On the other hand, a change of perspectives is intended: scientific observation should not any longer prioritise the focus on the effects of Islam for European societies. It should rather deepen the analysis of Muslim’s particular lifeworlds as well as the social arrangements of negotiation processes in their societies of origin and the host societies (e.g. from a legal standpoint or with regards to normative orders, the public-private relation, gender relations etc.). This includes questions of how the cultural contact changes Muslim life and everyday practices and how this takes place in other world regions, e.g., in Asia. In other words, a global perspective that includes intertwined histories and various paths of transformation is essential.

Against this background, the Section for the Sociology of Religion of the German Sociological Association cordially invites to submit abstracts on the reflection about the sociology of Islam. We equally welcome theoretically and empirically based contributions, which allow further theoretical and methodological reflection.

Contributions on the following topics are particularly welcome:

• Papers on Muslim everyday reality as well as on the social appearance of Islam in European and non-European contexts (concerning religious identity and institutions as well as faith, everyday practices, and conduct of life)
• Papers which examine how knowledge systems, cultural codes, and institutions of power are shaped by Muslim actors and how they affect them
• Papers about the patterns of sociality, solidarity, and civility in the countries of origin and their alteration as a result of migration
• Papers concerning the sphere of political action, especially questions of political integration, religious education and citizenship
• Papers on Muslim practice in the public and in legislation; especially about the effects of Islam’s public perception from a perspective of visibility and “public observation”. What does this mean for Muslims, for their everyday life, identity processes, practice of religion, right to privacy, and religious freedom, anti-discrimination, and gender equality?
• Papers examining Islamic based gender orders, their linkage with power and institutions and their renegotiation in the process of migration as well as the impact of Western gender specific stereotypes and ethnic discrimination

Confirmed keynote speakers: Bryan Turner and Georg Stauth.

Deadline: Please submit abstracts by 30 January 2015 to all organizers. The abstracts should not exceed one page.

ORGANIZERS:

Christel Gärtner: cgaertner@uni-muenster.de

Levent Tezcan: levent.tezcan@rub.de

Heidemarie Winkel: heidemarie.winkel@mailbox.tu-dresden.de

The post Call for Papers: Sociology of Islam – Reflection, Revision & Reconceptualization appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

BRITISH SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2015 SOCIETIES IN TRANSITION: PROGRESSION OR REGRESSION?
Glasgow Caledonian University, April 15-17 2015

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 17 OCTOBER 2014  http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/bsa-annual-conference.aspx

 

SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION STREAM PLENARY: PROFESSOR STEVE BRUCE
Steve Bruce has been Professor of Sociology at Aberdeen since 1991. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has published widely on the relationship between religion and politics in Britain and is a leading theorist and historian of secularization. His recent books include Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh University Press 2014), Politics and Religion in the United Kingdom (Routledge 2012) and Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory (Oxford University Press 2011).

SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION STREAM CALL FOR PAPERS
This year’s BSA Annual Conference calls on sociologists “to ask ourselves how our research and knowledge base might allow us to address a broad range of multi-dimensional social ills and to consider how our work might inform the construction of a ‘Good Society’ for the 21st century.” This stream will explore the contribution that the sociology of religion can make to this discussion, by analysing the changing role and voice of religion in society.

Possible topics could include (but are not limited to) the following:
*       The role of religion in times of social transition
*       The changing place of religion in society
*       Faith communities and social action
*       Religion and politics
*       Religion and education
*       Religion, media and the press
*       Theoretical perspectives on religion and social change

All paper abstracts and proposals for other events can be submitted online at: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/bsa-annual-conference/submissions.aspx

If you would like your abstract to be considered within the Sociology of Religion stream, please type SOCREL in capital letters at the top of your abstract. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 17 OCTOBER 2014.

For further information contact the Sociology of Religion stream coordinator, Tim Hutchings, at t.r.b.hutchings@dur.ac.uk . Alternatively, contact the BSA Events Team: events@britsoc.org.uk 

The post Call for Papers: BSA Annual Conference: “Societies in Transition”, April 15-17 2015 (abstracts due October 17, 2014) appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

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