New Book in the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion Series

Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse, eds. 2017. Pentecostals and the Body. Leiden, Brill.

The intersection of religion, ritual, emotion, globalization, migration, sexuality, gender, race, and class, is especially insightful for researching Pentecostal notions of the body. Pentecostalism is well known for overt bodily expressions that includes kinesthetic worship with emotive music and sustained acts of prayer. Among Pentecostals there is considerable debate about bodies, the role of the Holy Spirit, possession of evil spirits, deliverance, exorcism, revival, and healing of bodies and emotions. Pentecostalism is identified as a religion on the move and so bodies are transformed in the context of globalization. Pentecostalism is also associated with notions of sexuality, gender, race and class where bodies are often liberated and limited. This volume evaluates these themes associated with contemporary research on the body.

The Social Thought of Max Weber (Sage Social Thinkers Series, 2016)

Stephen Kalberg contends in this volume that a broader reading of this major Founder of modern social science is long overdue.   Max Weber’s numerous conceptual contributions are all examined, as well as his “Protestant ethic  thesis.”  However, Kalberg maintains that Weber’s greatest contribution is to be found in his often-neglected investigations of entire civilizations.   His big picture themes move here to the forefront: his charting of the uniqueness of China, India, and the West, his discussion of the multiple causes behind their particular trajectories, and his distinct comparative-historical approach anchored in “interpretive understanding”  procedures.   By reconstructing Weber’s analysis of the origin and expansion of the American civic sphere, this volume also illustrates how his research strategies can be applied.

The Social Thought of Max Weber (Social Thinkers Series)

The Social Thought of Max Weber (Sage Social Thinkers Series, 2016)

Stephen Kalberg contends in this volume that a broader reading of this major Founder of modern social science is long overdue.   Max Weber’s numerous conceptual contributions are all examined, as well as his “Protestant ethic  thesis.”  However, Kalberg maintains that Weber’s greatest contribution is to be found in his often-neglected investigations of entire civilizations.   His big picture themes move here to the forefront: his charting of the uniqueness of China, India, and the West, his discussion of the multiple causes behind their particular trajectories, and his distinct comparative-historical approach anchored in “interpretive understanding”  procedures.   By reconstructing Weber’s analysis of the origin and expansion of the American civic sphere, this volume also illustrates how his research strategies can be applied.

The Social Thought of Max Weber (Social Thinkers Series)

New book: The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility

Wiley-Blackwell Armando Salvatore http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118662644.html

The Sociology of Islam provides an accessible introduction to this emerging field of inquiry, teaching and debate. The study is located at the crucial intersection between a variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. It discusses the long-term dynamics of Islam as both a religion and as a social, political and cultural force. The volume focuses on ideas of knowledge, power and civility to provide students and readers with analytic and critical thinking frameworks for understanding the complex social facets of Islamic traditions and institutions. The study of the sociology of Islam improves the understanding of Islam as a diverse force that drives a variety of social and political arrangements.

Delving into both conceptual questions and historical interpretations, The Sociology of Islam is a transdisciplinary, comparative resource for students, scholars, and policy makers seeking to understand Islam’s complex changes throughout history and its impact on the modern world.

Sociologists of religion have long been awaiting a successor volume to Brian Turner ‘s pathbreaking but now dated Weber and Islam (1974). Armando Salvatore’s new book provides just this update and much more. Ranging across a host of critical case studies and theoretical issues, Salvatore provides a masterful account of religious ethics, rationalization, and civility across the breadth of the Muslim world, from early times to today. The result is a book of deep intellectual insight, important, not just for the sociology of Islam, but for scholars and students interested in religion, ethics, and modernity in all civilizational traditions. Robert Hefner, Boston University The sociology of Islam has been a late and controversial addition to the sociology of religion. This field of research has been the principal target of the critique of Orientalism and after 9/11 the study of Islam became heavily politicized. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut have only compounded the long-standing difficulties of objective interpretation and understanding. In the first volume of what promises to be a major three volume masterpiece, Armando Salvatore steers a careful and judicious course through the various pitfalls that attend the field. The result

is an academic triumph combining a sweeping historical vision of Islam with an analytical framework that is structured by the theme of knowledge-power. One waits with huge excitement for the delivery of the remaining volumes. Bryan Turner, City University of New York A brilliant, pioneering effort to explain the cosmopolitan ethos within Islamicate civilization, The Sociology of Islam encompasses all the terminological boldness of Marshal Hodgson, making the Persianate and Islamicate elements of civic cosmopolitanism, across the vast Afro-Eurasian ecumene, accessible to the widest possible readership in both the humanities and the social sciences. Bruce B. Lawrence, author of Who is Allah? (2015)

Armando Salvatore is Professor of Global Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal, and Professor at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies of the Australian National University, Canberra. His work as a social scientist emphasizes transregional comparison and explores the Islamic ecumene’s socio-political trajectories as well as transcultural interconnections. As a complement to The Sociology of Islam he is editing The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam. Among his previous works are Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity (1997), Public Islam and the Common Good (edited with Dale F. Eickelman, 2004), The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism and Islam (2007), and Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (edited with Muhammad Khalid Masud and Martin van Bruinessen, 2009).

New book: The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility

Wiley-Blackwell Armando Salvatore http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118662644.html

The Sociology of Islam provides an accessible introduction to this emerging field of inquiry, teaching and debate. The study is located at the crucial intersection between a variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. It discusses the long-term dynamics of Islam as both a religion and as a social, political and cultural force. The volume focuses on ideas of knowledge, power and civility to provide students and readers with analytic and critical thinking frameworks for understanding the complex social facets of Islamic traditions and institutions. The study of the sociology of Islam improves the understanding of Islam as a diverse force that drives a variety of social and political arrangements.

Delving into both conceptual questions and historical interpretations, The Sociology of Islam is a transdisciplinary, comparative resource for students, scholars, and policy makers seeking to understand Islam’s complex changes throughout history and its impact on the modern world.

Sociologists of religion have long been awaiting a successor volume to Brian Turner ‘s pathbreaking but now dated Weber and Islam (1974). Armando Salvatore’s new book provides just this update and much more. Ranging across a host of critical case studies and theoretical issues, Salvatore provides a masterful account of religious ethics, rationalization, and civility across the breadth of the Muslim world, from early times to today. The result is a book of deep intellectual insight, important, not just for the sociology of Islam, but for scholars and students interested in religion, ethics, and modernity in all civilizational traditions. Robert Hefner, Boston University The sociology of Islam has been a late and controversial addition to the sociology of religion. This field of research has been the principal target of the critique of Orientalism and after 9/11 the study of Islam became heavily politicized. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut have only compounded the long-standing difficulties of objective interpretation and understanding. In the first volume of what promises to be a major three volume masterpiece, Armando Salvatore steers a careful and judicious course through the various pitfalls that attend the field. The result

is an academic triumph combining a sweeping historical vision of Islam with an analytical framework that is structured by the theme of knowledge-power. One waits with huge excitement for the delivery of the remaining volumes. Bryan Turner, City University of New York A brilliant, pioneering effort to explain the cosmopolitan ethos within Islamicate civilization, The Sociology of Islam encompasses all the terminological boldness of Marshal Hodgson, making the Persianate and Islamicate elements of civic cosmopolitanism, across the vast Afro-Eurasian ecumene, accessible to the widest possible readership in both the humanities and the social sciences. Bruce B. Lawrence, author of Who is Allah? (2015)

Armando Salvatore is Professor of Global Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal, and Professor at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies of the Australian National University, Canberra. His work as a social scientist emphasizes transregional comparison and explores the Islamic ecumene’s socio-political trajectories as well as transcultural interconnections. As a complement to The Sociology of Islam he is editing The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam. Among his previous works are Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity (1997), Public Islam and the Common Good (edited with Dale F. Eickelman, 2004), The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism and Islam (2007), and Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (edited with Muhammad Khalid Masud and Martin van Bruinessen, 2009).

New Book: Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion

Adam Powell, Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion (Routledge, 2017) serves as an introduction to Mol’s theory of religious identity for a new generation of social scientists. Powell situates Mol’s ideas amongst competing social theorists of the mid-20th century and argues against a simple functionalist understanding of identity theory. The second half of the volume then offers four previously-unpublished essays by Mol to demonstrate the scope and ambition of this 20th-century sociologist’s theorising.

‘This book offers the possibility of a detailed knowledge about an eminent scholar like Hans Mol, a great specialist on the topic of “identity and religion” which is a key problem in the contemporary socio-religious global situation.’

Roberto Cipriani, Senior and Emeritus Professor at Roma Tre University, Italy & Former President of the ISA Research Committee ‘Sociology of Religion’.

‘Identity demands ever increased attention in today’s interdisciplinary world and here Adam Powell doubly illuminates this dynamic human process. He not only returns Hans Mol’s creative formulation of identity-sacralization to focused attention within theories of religion, but also provides an astutely crisp sociological account of identity theories at large. Sociologists, anthropologists, theologians and religious studies colleagues will enjoy this book a great deal.’

Douglas J. Davies, Professor in the Study of Religion at Durham University, UK & Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

‘In this admirably thoughtful study, A. J. Powell has provided a timely reminder of the achievement recorded by Hans Mol, whose Identity and the Sacred (1976) left a notable imprint on debate among specialists in both the sociology and theory of religion during the later decades of the last century. Dr. Powell contends, rightly, that Mol has been an underappreciated figure, too readily depicted as “yet another functionalist” at a time when his dialectical conception of religion as the “sacralization of identity” offered elements of originality more evident and discernible today―in newer light cast by current shifts in theory and criticism.

Daniel L. Pals, Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of Miami, USA

New Book: Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion

Adam Powell, Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion (Routledge, 2017) serves as an introduction to Mol’s theory of religious identity for a new generation of social scientists. Powell situates Mol’s ideas amongst competing social theorists of the mid-20th century and argues against a simple functionalist understanding of identity theory. The second half of the volume then offers four previously-unpublished essays by Mol to demonstrate the scope and ambition of this 20th-century sociologist’s theorising.

‘This book offers the possibility of a detailed knowledge about an eminent scholar like Hans Mol, a great specialist on the topic of “identity and religion” which is a key problem in the contemporary socio-religious global situation.’

Roberto Cipriani, Senior and Emeritus Professor at Roma Tre University, Italy & Former President of the ISA Research Committee ‘Sociology of Religion’.

‘Identity demands ever increased attention in today’s interdisciplinary world and here Adam Powell doubly illuminates this dynamic human process. He not only returns Hans Mol’s creative formulation of identity-sacralization to focused attention within theories of religion, but also provides an astutely crisp sociological account of identity theories at large. Sociologists, anthropologists, theologians and religious studies colleagues will enjoy this book a great deal.’

Douglas J. Davies, Professor in the Study of Religion at Durham University, UK & Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

‘In this admirably thoughtful study, A. J. Powell has provided a timely reminder of the achievement recorded by Hans Mol, whose Identity and the Sacred (1976) left a notable imprint on debate among specialists in both the sociology and theory of religion during the later decades of the last century. Dr. Powell contends, rightly, that Mol has been an underappreciated figure, too readily depicted as “yet another functionalist” at a time when his dialectical conception of religion as the “sacralization of identity” offered elements of originality more evident and discernible today―in newer light cast by current shifts in theory and criticism.

Daniel L. Pals, Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of Miami, USA