Miguel Barbarà Anglès, Doble mirada. Sobre el fet religiòs i l’Església, Editorial Claret, Barcelona 2012, pp. 110.

Aquest llibre és una senzilla introducciò al coneixement del fet religiòs des de la perspectiva de la sociologia i de la creença.Aquesta “doble mirada” suposa un diàleg interior entre creença i ciència, entre fe i raò. Un diàleg molt ùtil i que l’autor ofereix als lectors amb la disposiciò mi el desig que també els ajudi a fer aquest diàleg en la seva vida.
Fe i ciència no estan renyides. Al contrari, poden ser ben complementàires i poden donar un bon resultat, tant en l’ordre persnal com en el social.
El fet religiòs i l’Església han fet i estan fent un molt bon servei al bé comù de la societat, de Catalunya. Si es porta bé, en el futur, encara el poden fer millor.

Dawson, A. 2012.
Santo Daime: A New World Religion.
London: Bloomsbury.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-0299-7; 978-1-4411-5424-8.

‘One of the best case studies of a new religion ever published.’ Lorne L. Dawson (University of Waterloo, Canada).

‘Provocative and instructive, this is a book to be recommended to anyone interested in the ever-increasing varieties of religious experience.’ Eileen Barker (London School of Economics, UK).

Santo Daime: A New World Religion deals with a young, exotic and controversial religious movement. Emerging in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1930s, Santo Daime has since spread to many of the world’s major cities. Santo Daime is a mixture of indigenous, popular Catholic, Afro-Brazilian, esoteric, Spiritist, and new age beliefs and activities. Ritual practice is centred on the consumption of a psychotropic beverage called ‘Daime’ which members believe enhances their interaction with the supernatural world. Because Daime is treated as an illegal narcotic in many parts of the world, outside of its Brazilian homeland most Santo Daime rituals are practised clandestinely. This book unites extensive fieldwork experience with an established theoretical background and makes a significant contribution to understanding the contemporary interface of religion and late-modern society. Individualization and religious subjectivism, pluralization and religious hybridism, transformation and detraditionalization, globalization and religious identity, and commoditization and religious consumption are among the many issues engaged by this book.

Santo Daime: A New World Religion is an accessible and multi-disciplinary book suitable for undergraduate students and researchers working in Religious Studies, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies. Andrew Dawson is Senior Lecturer in Religion at Lancaster University, UK.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/search?q=santo+daime&Gid=4

Arabs and Muslims in the Media
Race and Representation after 9/11

Evelyn Alsultany

http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=4103#.UQ_FVduBXMg

“A major, skillfully constructed, must-read book. It should be required reading for all Americans who care about and seek to eradicate injurious stereotypes of the evil Cultural Other.”
―Jack G. Shaheen, author of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

“This important book makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on the post-9/11 cultural and political history of the United States. Drawing on a rich understanding of the representations of Arabs and Muslims in the last century, Alsultany helps us to understand what has changed, and what has not, in the last ten years.”
―Melani McAlister, George Washington University

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as West Wing, The Practice, 24, Threat Matrix, The Agency, Navy NCIS and Sleeper Cell have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.
New York University Press
October 2012 239pp 9780814707326 PB £14.99

Libro RELIGION, POLITICA Y CULTURA EN AMERICA LATINA. NUEVAS MIRADAS
Cristián Parker G. (editor).

Paul Freston, Orivaldo Pimentel Lopes  Júnior, Dannyel Br unno Herculano Rezende, Eugenia Fediakova, Bibiana Astrid Ortega Gómez, Fortunato Mallimaci, Gizele Zanotto, Raymundo Heraldo Maués,  Eloisa Martin, Irene Dias  de  Oliveira, Ricardo Salas, Oscar Osorio Pérez, L. Nicolás Guigou, Cristián  Parker.

Editores
UNIVERSIDAD DE SANTIAGO DE CHILE INSTITUTO DE ESTUDIOS  AVANZADOS
ACSRM

http://www.acsrm.org/
Bajar libro en base Scribd: http://es.scribd.com/doc/120740823/LIBRO-religion-politica-y-cultura-1
Bajar libro en Academia.edu: http://www.academia.edu/2417732/RELIGION_POLITICA_Y_CULTURA_EN_AMERICA_LATINA._NUEVAS_MIRADAS

Religion, Rights And Secular SocietyEuropean Perspectives
Edited by Peter Cumper, University of Leicester, UK and Tom Lewis, Nottingham Trent University, UK
December 2012
http://www.e-elgar.com/bookentry_main.lasso?id=14080

Description
‘Religion, Rights and Secular Society by Peter Cumper and Tom Lewis is a both timely and important publication. In a series of highly interesting and well-written essays – some of which are case studies covering many different European nations whereas others are more theoretical – the book looks at a key paradox in contemporary Europe: the relatively high levels of secularity in most European countries on the one hand, and the marked resurgence of religion in public debates on the other. While never pretending that there are ready answers to the problems of reconciling secular and religious values in Europe, the contributors make it quite clear that Europeans need to return to questions about religion that they had previously regarded as being settled. This is food for thought at a very high level!’ – Helle Porsdam, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Contents
Contributors include: S. Bacquet, P. Cumper, E. Daly, G. Davie, P.W. Edge, A.C. Emilianides, T. Lewis, T. Loenen, V.A. Lykes, J. Mertus, M. Moravcíková, J.S. Nielsen, E. Relaño Pastor, J.T. Richardson, G. Robbers, R. Uitz, M. van den Brink, M. Ventura

Further information
‘Religion, Rights and Secular Society by Peter Cumper and Tom Lewis is a both timely and important publication. In a series of highly interesting and well-written essays – some of which are case studies covering many different European nations whereas others are more theoretical – the book looks at a key paradox in contemporary Europe: the relatively high levels of secularity in most European countries on the one hand, and the marked resurgence of religion in public debates on the other. While never pretending that there are ready answers to the problems of reconciling secular and religious values in Europe, the contributors make it quite clear that Europeans need to return to questions about religion that they had previously regarded as being settled. This is food for thought at a very high level!’
– Helle Porsdam, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

This topical collection of chapters examines secular society and the legal protection of religion and belief across Europe, both in general and more nation-specific terms.

The expectations of many that religion in modern Europe would be swept away by the powerful current of secularization have not been realised, and today few topics generate more controversy than the complex relationship between religious and secular values. The ‘religious/secular’ relationship is examined in this book, which brings together scholars from different parts of Europe and beyond to provide insights into the methods by which religion and equivalent beliefs have been, and continue to be, protected in the legal systems and constitutions of European nations. The contributors’ chapters reveal that the oft-tumultuous legacy of Europe’s relationship with religion still resonates across a continent where legal, political and social contours have been powerfully shaped by faith and religious difference.

Covering recent controversies such as the Islamic headscarf, and the presence of the crucifix in school class-rooms, this book will appeal to academics and students in law, human rights and the social sciences, as well as law and policy makers and NGOs in the field of human rights.

Full table of contents
Contents:
1. Introduction Peter Cumper and Tom Lewis
2. The Netherlands: Neutral But Not Indifferent Marjolein van den Brink and Titia Loenen
3. Secularism and Establishment in the United Kingdom Peter W. Edge
4. Law, Religion and Belief in GermanyGerhard Robbers
5. Religion in the Constitutional Order of the Republic of Ireland Eoin Daly
6. Religion and Secular Values in Spain: A Long Path to a Real Religious Pluralism Eugenia Relaño Pastor
7. The Rise and Contradictions of Italy as a Secular State Marco Ventura
8. Religious Freedom in a Secular Society: An Analysis of the French Approach to manifestation of Beliefs in the Public Sphere Sylvie Bacquet
9. Secularism, Law and Religion within the Cypriot Legal Order Achilles C. Emilianides
10. The Pendulum of Church-State Relations in Hungary Renata Uitz
11. Law, Religion and Belief in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland Michaela Moravcíková
12. Human Rights and Religion in the Balkans Julie Mertus
13. Understanding Religion in Europe: A Continually Evolving Mosaic Grace Davie
14. Islam and Secular Values in Europe: From Canon to Chaos?Jørgen S. Nielsen
15. Legal Considerations Concerning New Religious Movements in the ‘New Europe’ James T. Richardson and Valerie A. Lykes

VOL 5, NO 1 (2012) of Religion and Society In Central and Eastern Europe is now available at http://www.rascee.net/index.php/rascee/issue/view/5/showToc

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIAL
Editorial

ARTICLES

Studying Religion and Power: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges
Pål Repstad

Religion in Central European Societies: Its Social Role and People’s Expectations
Branko Ančić, Siniša Zrinščak

What about Our Rights? The State and Minority Religious Communities in Croatia: A Case Study
Ankica Marinović, Dinka Marinović Jerolimov

Extremist Manipulations of Apocalyptic Fears: A Case Study of de-Christianisation and Islamisation Discourses on the Romanian New Right Blog
Adela Fofiu

REVIEWS

András Máté-Tóth and Cosima Rughiniş (eds.) Spaces and Borders: Current Research on Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter,
James T. Richardson

Gert Pickel and Kornelia Sammet (eds.) Transformations of Religiosity. Religion and Religiosity in Eastern Europe 1989 – 2010 Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2012. 216 pages. ISBN: 978-3-531-17540-9. € 34.95 (paperback)
Peter Török

Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 287 pages. ISBN: 978-0-19-533710-5. US$ 65 (hardback)
Monica Grigore

Milda Ališauskienė and Ingo W. Schröder (eds.) Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society. Ethnographies of Catholic Hegemony and the New Pluralism in Lithuania Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. 226 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4094-0912-0. £45.00 (hardback)
Smoczynski Rafal

Giuseppe Giordan and Enzo Pace (eds), Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World, Brill, 2012.

Individualization of believing and the logic of pluralism today inevitably bring a redefinition of the role of religion in the lives of individuals as well as societies themselves. New concepts and new theories are necessary to try to describe and understand how such processes work: this is without doubt the most problematic and intriguing aspect of the processes of change that characterize our era. This is a difficulty that makes us use only partially, and often with much caution, words, concepts and theories that until not long ago had a convincing heuristic and explanatory power and were, at least apparently, indisputable. Once it is established that under the sacred vaults of religion nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, but everything is preserved and transformed, what are the connections that are now being established with the sacred in society? The concepts “spirituality” and “post-secular” give important insights into the new religious landscape.

This volume will be of interest both to those interested in the responses of traditional religions to conditions of postmodernity and to those seeking to interpret the postmodern “experience” in religious terms.

Giuseppe Giordan is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Padua. From 2007 he has served as Secretary of the Sociology of Religion Section of the Italian Sociological Association, and from 2009 as General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR/SISR). With Enzo Pace and Luigi Berzano he edits the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, also published by Brill.

Enzo Pace, Professor of Sociology and Sociology of Religion at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Padua, is the Director of the Department of Sociology and of the Interdepartmental Center on Intercultural Studies of the University of Padua. He is also Past-President of the International Society for the Sociology (ISSR/SISR) and a Directeur d’Études at ÉHÉSS in Paris.

Contributors include: Anhony J. Blasi, Yong Chen, Monica Chilese, Emanuela Contiero, Elisabetta di Giovanni, Anat Feldman, Isabella Jonveaux, Ruth Illman, Liselotte Frisk, Fatma Sundal, and Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud

Religion in the Neoliberal Age Political Economy and Modes of Governance
Edited by François Gauthier, University of Fribourg, Switzerland and Tuomas Martikainen, University of Helsinki, Finland Ashgate 2013
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409449782

This book, together with the complementary volume Religion in Consumer Society, focuses on religion, neoliberalism and consumer society; offering an overview of an emerging field of research in the study of contemporary religion. Outlining changes in both the political-institutional and cultural spheres, the contributors offer an international overview of developments in different countries and state of the art representation of religion in the new global political economy.

‘Tuomas Martikainen and François Gauthier seek to break new ground and work toward a synthesis and clarification of the diverse and often contradictory approaches to understanding the transformation of religion in today’s globalized world. The contributors to the volume analyze these changes as integral to the recent economic shaping of culture in the form of consumerism and neoliberalism. They explore the changing landscape of relations between religions and states in the context of the rise of market-oriented, neoliberal modes of governance and management, including as concerns religious organizations.’- Peter Beyer, University of Ottawa, Canada

Contents
Introduction: Religion in Market Society François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen and Linda Woodhead
PART I Religions in the New Political Economy
1 Entrepreneurial Spirituality and Ecumenical Alterglobalism: Two Religious Responses to Global Neoliberalism Joanildo A. Burity
2 Making Religion Irrelevant: The ‘Resurgent Religion’ Narrative and the Critique of Neoliberalism James V. Spickard
3 The Decline of the Parishes and the Rise of City Churches: The German Evangelical Church in the Age of Neoliberalism Jens Schlamelcher
4 Catholic Church Civil Society Activism and the Neoliberal Governmental Project of Migrant Integration in Ireland Breda Gray
5 Faith, Welfare and the Formation of the Modern American Right Jason Hackworth
PART II Political Governance of Religion
6 Neoliberalism and the Privatization of Welfare and Religious Organizations in the United States of America David Ashley and Ryan Sandefer
7 Multilevel and Pluricentric Network Governance of Religion Tuomas Martikainen
8 Regulating Religion in a Neoliberal Context:The Transformation of Estonia Ringo Ringvee
9 Neoliberalism and Counterterrorism Laws: Impact on Australian Muslim Community Organizations Agnes Chong
10 From Implicitly Christian to Neoliberal: The Moral Foundations of Canadian Law Exposed by the Case of Prostitution Rachel Chagnon and François Gauthier
11 Religious Freedom and Neoliberalism: From Harm to Cost-benefit Lori G. Beaman

Whatever Happened to the Islamists?: Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims, and the Lure of Consumerist Islam Eds. Amel Boubekeur & Olivier Roy Columbia/Hurst, 2012
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15426-0/whatever-happened-to-the-islamists

Widespread confusion over the use of the terms Islamism or Political Islam often obscures the fact that these are not new phenomena and can be traced back more than a century. But like all utopian beliefs, such as Communism, Islamism cannot entirely resist the broader currents of political and social change that confront it today, especially globalisation. Through meticulous on the ground and theoretical research in to the trajectories of current and former Islamists, the contributors to this book seek to understand what has become of political Islam. While many scholars have focused on the drift to violence of historical Islamism, they look at the other side of the coin to describe the continuities and not the ruptures of Islamism with its own ideology. Political Islam remains relevant to a new generation of militants but the channels through which it is expressed have changed. Jihad is often conducted electronically, via membership of Islamist e-mail list-servers; Islamist activism has been personalised, domesticated even, through the consumption of Islamic soft drinks and other lifestyle choices; and, the street protests that characterised the Islamist struggle in its heyday face competition from Islamic rap stars’ concerts. These are among the issues addressed in this innovative volume.

Reviews

Although recent events in the Middle East seem to answer the question posed by this volume’s title, news headlines obscure a tectonic shift in Islamism that has occurred over the last couple of decades. Whatever Happened to the Islamists? represents one of the most exciting and innovative analyses of contemporary dislocations in the ideological project of political Islam to be published in recent years. It points the way forward for an entire field of study. (Peter Mandaville, George Mason University and author of Global Political Islam )

Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy present a refreshing and provocative collection of essays, including several by younger scholars and others whose writings are rarely available in English. They display the iconoclasm, unanticipated fusions, and the modernity of contemporary Islamic activism, much of which does not see conquest of state power as a central objective. Islamic activism today is manifested in all-women heavy metal bands, consumerism, corporate big business, and individualised consumer and cultural choices. This book deserves to be widely read and debated, especially by journalists, pundits, and public policy makers who may have thought they already knew what Islamism is. (Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University )

Whatever Happened to the Islamists? will be welcomed by all who seek to understand the impact of the Arab uprising and the role of Islamists during this historic period of political transformation in the Arab world. (John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of The Future of Islam ) About the Authors Amel Boubekeur is a research fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. She has been an Associate Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Centre for European Policy Studies. Working on Islam in Europe and Arab politics, she is the author of European Islam : Challenges for Public Policy and Society and Le voile de la mariée.

Olivier Roy is a professor at l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. A world authority on Islam and politics, Roy’s books are Secularism Confronts Islam, The Failure of Political Islam, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, and, with Mariam Abou Zahab, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection.

1.- Alfonso PÉREZ-AGOTE, Cambio religioso en España : los avatares de la secularización, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Madrid, 2012 (Religious Change in Spain: the vicissitudes of secularization.)
Content:
1. Theoretical limits and analytical dimensions of the concept of secularization.
2. Secularization in Spain: the three contemporary logics of religion
3. The difficult separation of church and state.
4. The waves of subjective secularization (a first look).
5. A typology of ways of making sense of life in contemporary Spanish society.
6. The places of religion in the current Spanish population: an overview. http://www.cis.es/cis/opencm/ES/3_publicaciones/colecciones/ver.jsp?id=9788474765960

2.- Alfonso PÉREZ-AGOTE (dir.), Portraits du catholicisme. Une comparaison européenne, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes, 2012 (Portraits of Catholicism. A European comparison)
L’Europe occidentale, nous dit-on, est le théâtre privilégié de la sécularisation et du désenchantement du monde. Mais qu’en est-il vraiment du rapport entre la modernité et l’effacement du religieux à l’horizon des sociétés contemporaines ? La perte d’emprise des institutions ecclésiales signifie-t-elle la fin des croyances religieuses ? Quelle place le catholicisme occupe-t-il encore au sein de cultures qu’il a contribué à façonner ? Qu’advient-il de ses structures, de sa présence à l’actualité, de sa capacité à peser dans le débat public ou dans les pratiques privées de nos contemporains ? En un mot, quel rôle nos sociétés assignent-elles à un « religieux » dont on n’en finit pas d’annoncer à la fois la disparition et le retour ? De 2006 à 2012, ces questions ont été au centre des travaux du Groupe Européen de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur le Changement Religieux (GERICR). Sociologues, politistes et historiens, issus de cinq pays européens de tradition catholique, les chercheurs du GERICR se sont rencontrés à plusieurs reprises, comparant leurs démarches, confrontant leurs résultats, construisant à l’épreuve de leurs débats un questionnaire dont ce livre est issu. Le lecteur y trouvera les analyses de la situation du catholicisme en Belgique, en Espagne, en France, en Italie et au Portugal, élaborées selon un plan commun et autour de thématiques parallèles. Un dernier chapitre, rédigé collectivement, propose une synthèse comparative. Unique en son genre, ce livre est à la fois l’analyse inédite de l’évolution du catholicisme en Europe occidentale au cours des dernières décennies, et le résultat d’une aventure intellectuelle partagée.
http://www.pur-editions.fr/detail.php?idOuv=3067