Category Archives: Book Announcements

Book Announcement: Religion in Cultures of Citizenship

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Religion in Diaspora: Cultures of Citizenship
Edited by Jane Garnett, Sondra L. Hausner
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/religion-in-diaspora-jane-garnett/?K=9781137400291

This edited collection addresses the relationship between diaspora,
religion and politics in the modern world. It illuminates religious
understandings of citizenship, association and civil society, and
situates them historically within diverse cultures of memory and state
traditions. The contributors include some of the foremost scholars
working in the fields of religion and identity, whose analyses are
grounded in a variety of disciplines and cultural perspectives. Through
wide geographical, historical and religious comparisons, this volume
raises new and timely questions about the conceptual categories and
assumptions used in diaspora studies and in the analysis of
transnational religion. In so doing it engages with religious and
political theory and the intersections between them, illuminating their
articulation in a variety of historical and contemporary practices.

Contents

Introduction; Jane Garnett; Sondra L. Hausner

PART I: MEMORIES AND LEGACIES

  1. Reconsidering “Diaspora”; Jonathan Boyarin
  2. Biblical Case Studies of Diaspora Jews and Constructions of Religious
    Identity; Jill Middlemas
  3. Historicising diaspora spaces: performing faith, race and place in
    London’s East End; Nazneen Ahmed with Jane Garnett, Ben Gidley, Alana
    Harris and Michael Keith
  4. Remembering the umma in the confines of the nation state; Faiz
    Sheikh; Samantha May

PART II: ASSOCIATION

  1. Negotiating Settlement: Senegalese Muslim Immigrants and the Politics
    of Multiple Belongings in New York City; Ousmane Kane
  2. Reconfiguring the Societal Place of Religion in Finland: Islamic
    Communities Move from the Margins to Partner in Civil Society; Tuomas
    Martikainen
  3. The Voice(s) of British Sikhs; Jasjit Singh
  4. State level representation versus community cohesion: competing
    influences on Nepali religious associations in the UK; Florence Gurung

PART III: SYMBOLS

  1. The Veiling of Religious Markers in the Sahrawi Diaspora; Elena
    Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
  2. ‘Islam is not a Culture’: Reshaping a Muslim Public for a Secular
    World; Katherine Pratt Ewing
  3. Hope, Margin, Example: The Kimbanguist Diaspora in Lisbon; Ramon Sarró
  4. Green Books, Blue Books, and Buddhism as Symbols of Belonging in the
    Tibetan Diaspora: Towards an Anthropology of Fictive Citizenship;
    Abraham Zablocki
    Afterword; Jane Garnett; Sondra L. Hausner

About the authors

Jane Garnett is a Fellow of Wadham College and Associate Professor in
the History Faculty, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She works on
intellectual, cultural and religious history, predominantly since the
nineteenth century, including the study of gender and visual culture
over wider periods. She is a member of the Oxford Diasporas Programme
(2011-15), a major collaborative and interdisciplinary project funded by
the Leverhulme Trust.

Sondra L. Hausner is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion, and
Fellow and Tutor at St. Peter’s College, University of Oxford, United
Kingdom. She specializes in the religions of South Asia, and has
published widely on the dynamics of migrant identity, as well as on
classical themes in religion – ascetic discipline, ritual practice,
gender, and Durkheimian sociology – that consider movement in space.

The post Book Announcement: Religion in Cultures of Citizenship appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Book Announcement: “Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa”, by Marian Burchardt, Palgrave Macmillan

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Faith in the Time of AIDS

Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa

by Marian Burchardt

For a long time, Christians have remained at the margins of social projects around development, humanitarianism and HIV/AIDS in Africa. Drawing on ethnographic explorations in South Africa, this book tells the story of how Christian practices and narratives have become central for civil society responses to the epidemic. Marian Burchardt shows how Christians have employed globally circulating templates around ‘behavioural change’ in fields such as sexuality and biomedicine, but also how these templates are subverted when they are adapted to people’s needs. Through activism and spiritual notions of life, Christians have not only affected the way people think about relationships and health; by envisioning and promoting activist notions of personhood, unwittingly Christians have also pushed the frontiers of modernity. Taking his inspirations from Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, the author argues that Christian responses to AIDS reveal the dialectics of discipline and liberation inherent in the modern Christian project.

Reviews:
This wonderful book uses rich, emotionally-resonant ethnography to explore fundamental aspects of African modernity. It offers a brilliant, paradoxical picture of Christian – especially Pentecostal – and NGO responses to AIDS, as South Africans learn new techniques for transforming the self, and as life, sex, and death are given new meanings.’ -Ann Swidler, University of California-Berkely, USA

‘If there is one book to read about how social science can help us understand the global impact of the HIV epidemic, it is Faith in the Time of Aids. Burchardt masterfully weaves together ethnography from his work with affected communities and churches in South Africa, empirical evidence from around the world, and social theory. He overturns received wisdom about Africa, about the epidemic and about religion in the modern world. Strongly recommended to students of globalization, health and social theory.’ -Vinh-Kim Nguyen, École de Santé publique de l’Université de Montréal and Collège d’études mondiales, Canada and France

‘A critical, eloquent account of an insuperably complex situation, the unfair distribution of privilege/risk, and the imperative for bold political action. With theoretical and methodological dexterity, Burchardt infuses his analysis with respect for the persons whose lives this book narrates, explicates, and represents.’ -Robin Root, City University of New York, USA

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Book Announcement: New book on Muslim-Christian relations

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Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt: Politics, Society and Interfaith Encounters

The subject of Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East and indeed in the West attracts much academic and media attention. Henrik Lindberg Hansen analyzes this relationship in Egypt, offering an examination of the nature and role of religious dialogue in Egyptian society and politics. Analysing the three main religious organizations and institutions in Egypt (namely the Azhar University, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Orthodox Church) as well as a range of smaller dialogue initiatives (such as those of CEOSS, the Anglican and Catholic Churches and youth organisations), Hansen argues that religious dialogue involves a close examination of societal relations, and how these are understood and approached.

Recommendations

Prof. Mark Sedgwick, Arab and Islamic Studies, Aarhus University:

Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt is essential reading for all those interested in today’s Egypt. The book is an important contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of Egyptian society and politics, as well as being a major addition to our knowledge of Christian-Muslim relations. Henrik Lindberg Hansen adds penetrating analysis to the authority of long experience. The book ends with an especially valuable chapter on the controversial events of 2011 and 2013, on their impact at the time, and on their possible future implications.

Dr. Kate Zebiri, Senior Lecturer in Arabic, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London:

This study is a timely contribution to a hitherto neglected area, and highlights the vital importance of religion in Egyptian society and politics. Based on many years of experience on the ground, it greatly enhances our understanding of the dynamics of interfaith relations in Egypt. It sheds light on the different types of religious discrimination which occur, while also providing an innovative typology of the various dialogue initiatives in contemporary Egypt. Using the tools of sociology and social psychology, this book will be of interest to scholars, students and those working in the field of interfaith dialogue.

Prof. David Thomas, School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham:

The networks that operate in Egyptian society are involved and hard to discern, yet they are essential to maintaining relations between both individuals and groups. In this study, Henrik Lindberg Hansen, who has spent many years living in Egypt, shows how dialogue between Christians and Muslims operates through these networks and profits from the links they provide. His study gives a rare insight into unseen aspects of dialogue in Egypt, and makes an unusual and distinctive contribution to research in the field of Christian-Muslim dialogue. This book will give both newcomers and established researchers in the field fresh understandings of the practicalities of dialogue and the intricate relations between Egyptian society and religion.

Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt closely examines the context of the society in which the dialogue between representatives of these two religions takes place, and how these social groups position themselves and the individuals within them. Focusing on what it means to have interfaith discourse in the Middle East, and how this feeds into the navigation and negotiation of social identities, the book offers analysis of the different types of inter-religious dialogue that have occurred. Arguing that these dialogues form an essential part of Egypt’s social structure, Hansen also examines how the construction of identity and emotional patterns fits into this. He therefore looks at instances of successful dialogue, as well as occasions where resentment or discrimination threaten attempts to create closer ties between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims.

The book includes analysis of the occasions of violence against and dialogue initiatives involving Christian communities in 2011 and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013, and thus provides a wide-ranging exploration of the importance of religion in Egyptian society and everyday encounters with a religious other. The book is consequently vital for practitioners as well as researchers dealing with religious minorities in the Middle East and interfaith dialogue in a wider context.

Find the book here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christian-Muslim-Relations-Library-Religion/dp/1784532037/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443459851&sr=8-1&keywords=henrik+lindberg+hansen

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New Book: Advaita Vedanta and Akan: Inquiry into an Indian and African Ethos

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Advaita Vedanta and Akan: Inquiry into an Indian and African Ethos
by Veena Sharma
(Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 2015)

This book places the yet unexamined consonances and dissonances between two disparate world views – one Indian and the other African – under a comparative lens. It seeks to set up a cross-cultural dialogue even as it aims to understand the two on their own terms through their own epistemological constructs. Through an exploration of the concepts of God and the Human Person, it unravels the aspirational goals framed by each, the degrees of ultimate perfection sought by it and the contributions the two traditions make to human civilization.

The book foregrounds the fact that there are many ways of approaching fundamental questions regarding the human condition, each valid in its own historical and geographical context. It provides an insight into how each world view points to a different approach to the universe; to relations between the Divine and the world, and between humans and humans, leading to different types of social formations and related issues and having far reaching influence on their understanding of morality, ethics, justice, group cohesion and how they deal with defaulters. An understanding of those approaches can enable sharper insights and deeper reflections into the strong and weak points of one’s own particular tradition.

The field work shows that despite sustained and pervasive exposure to other belief systems – especially the colonial intervention – the two indigenous systems continue to deeply impact the mindsets of their followers.

In a global environment of increased social interactions the book seeks to showcase freshly negotiated relations that transcend traditional prejudices and biases.

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Book Announcement: Claire Chambers, Britain Through Muslim Eyes

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The Muslim as a cultural category has come under increasing, most often hostile, scrutiny in Euro−America over the last four decades or so. As a result, the field of Muslim literary studies has emerged to shine a spotlight on the exciting body of literature by authors of Muslim heritage writing back to Islamophobic stereotypes. However, this academic oeuvre too often assumes that this literature is a contemporary, broadly post-9/11 phenomenon. In this important book, Claire Chambers takes a long view of depictions of Britain by writers from Muslim backgrounds. The book’s first half focuses on travel and life writing from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries by authors such as Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin, Najaf Koolee Meerza, and Atiya Fyzee. In the second half, she trains her critical gaze on the long tradition of fictional representations, from Ahmad Fāris al-Shidyāq’s Leg Over Leg (1855) to Ahdaf Soueif’s Aisha (1983) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Pilgrims Way (1988). Chambers argues that the Rushdie affair has been more of a turning point on perceptions of and by Muslims in Britain than 9/11. Her next book in this two-part series, Muslim Representations of Britain, 1988−Present, will therefore start with discussion of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988) and move to examination of the long shadow this text has cast on subsequent Muslim literary representations.
 
Out now!

Britain Through Muslim Eyes: Literary Representations, 1780−1988. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan  (2015)

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Book Announcement: Everyday Life Practices of Muslims in Europe

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Erkan Toğuşlu (KU Leuven), 2015


Muslims in Europe and the preservation of their religious-ethnic particularities
Everyday Life Practices of Muslims in Europe explores how Muslims give meaning to Islam on a day-to-day basis. The contributions look at concrete practices, identities, memories, and normalities in daily Muslim life and provide insights to the complexities of identities. They examine Muslims’ use of and construction of spaces, daily practices, forms of interaction, and modes of thinking in different areas, resulting in a thorough analysis and framework of Muslims’ day-to-day life through topical chapters on food, space, entertainment, marriage, and mosque, covering both extent of hybridity and preservation of religious-ethnic particularities.

Order here: http://upers.kuleuven.be/en/book/9789462700321
Contributors
Rachel Brown (Wilfrid Laurier University), Mohammed El-Bachouti (UPF), Valentina Fedele (Università della Calabria), Diletta Guidi (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Ossame Hegazy (Bauhaus, University, Weimar), Ajmal Hussain (Aston University), Jana Jevtic (Central European University), Elsa Mescoli (University of Liège), Wim Peumans (KU Leuven), Sumeyye Ulu Sametoğlu (EHESS), Leen Sterck (The Netherlands Institute for Social Research),Thijl Sunier (VU University Amsterdam), Erkan Toğuşlu (KU Leuven)

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Book Announcement: Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India

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Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India
Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen
Routledge 2015
India is the second largest country in the world with regard to population, the world’s largest democracy and by far the largest country in South Asia, and one of the most diverse and pluralistic nations in the world in terms of official languages, cultures, religions and social identities. Indians have for centuries exchanged ideas with other cultures globally and some traditions have been transformed in those transnational and transcultural encounters and become successful innovations with an extraordinary global popularity. India is an emerging global power in terms of economy, but in spite of India’s impressive economic growth over the last decades, some of the most serious problems of Indian society such as poverty, repression of women, inequality both in terms of living conditions and of opportunities such as access to education, employment, and the economic resources of the state persist and do not seem to go away.

This Handbook contains chapters by the field’s foremost scholars dealing with fundamental issues in India’s current cultural and social transformation and concentrates on India as it emerged after the economic reforms and the new economic policy of the 1980s and 1990s and as it develops in the twenty-first century.

Following an introduction by the editor, the book is divided into five parts:

Part I: Foundation

Part II: India and the world

Part III: Society, class, caste and gender

Part IV: Religion and diversity

Part V: Cultural change and innovations

Exploring the cultural changes and innovations relating a number of contexts in contemporary India, this Handbook is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Indian and South Asian culture, politics and society.

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Book Announcement

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Please note: this new publication is available in German only.

Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer: Identität als Netzwerk. Habitus, Sozialstruktur und religiöse Mobilisierung.

http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-658-10343-9

Schäfer presents an innovative concept of identity as a network of cognitive, emotional, and bodily dispositions. Based upon praxeological sociology Schäfer develops from an empirical study of religious movements in Guatemala and Nicaragua a concept of identity that encompasses even the strategies of collective and individual actors as well as religious mobilization. The development of this theoretical approach from the ‘empirical scratch’ facilitates to operationalize it as a research method that provides a better understanding of religious and other kinds of collective or individual praxis. The theory of identity and strategy as a network of dispositions of perception, judgment, and action combines perfectly with the project of HabitusAnalysis the first volume of which also has been published recently (http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-531-94037-3).

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