Journal: RESET: recherches en sciences sociales sur internet / social science research on the internet

reset@openedition.org
http://reset.revues.org
ISSN 4939–0247

CALL FOR Papers: Religious Practices and the Internet

Deadline for abstract submissions: SEPTEMBER 7^th, 2018

Special issue edited by Fabienne Duteil-Ogata (Clare EA4596, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne / IIAC [EHESS/CNRS]) and Isabelle Jonveaux (CéSor, EHESS)

In the past few years, when tragic events have been associated with religious radicalization, the Internet has been often pointed out. For instance, for fundamentalist groups such as Daesh or Al Qaida, digital social networks may be an opportunity to recruit people beyond geographical borders (Udrescu 2013, Torok 2010, 2011). Nevertheless, behind such specific and highly mediatized cases, it must not be forgotten that the Internet’s uses have grown in almost any religious group, to become today something as common as unavoidable (Dawson & Cowan, 2004, Knoblauch, 2009, Campbell, 2010, Cheong et al., 2012, Jonveaux, 2013).

This special issue precisely aims at exploring how the Internet affects religion or conversely, how religion can transform digital media. These questions may be discussed at least from two standpoints. On the one hand, one can consider that religions have always used media and that there is in fact no religion without media (Krotz, 2007). This theory relies on the conceptualization of religions as communication systems. The use of digital media by religious institutions is consequently unsurprising, because throughout history and often very fast, they have invested the major communication developments, such as the printing press in the Middle Age (Eisenstein, 2005 [1983]) or telephone and then television since the end of the 19^th century (Sastre Santos, 1997). In this perspective, digital media has brought nothing really new to religions and what is observed online is nothing but an extension or the reflection of the current trends related to religious matters and its modernity (Jonveaux, 2013). On the other hand, the opposite position considers that new media transform both religions’ contents and practices (Hjarvard, 2013). They lead precisely to the creation of new religious forms or “cyberreligions” (Hojsgaard, 2005) in which religious institutions as well as religious practices exist only online, like in the case The Church of the Blind Chihuahua or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for example, even though some of these religions have clearly a parodic dimension (Obadia, 2015). In this perspective, the Internet can be seen as a tool that has carried something original and exclusive to the practice of religions, far from only reproducing online offline practices.

To go beyond these seemingly antithetical approaches, a solution may be to go back to the classic categories of the sociology of religion and ask how much the Internet has (or not) transformed them. Simultaneously, this implies to lead empirical studies dedicated to the description of religions as lived by online users or to the religious institutions which observe and integrate digital uses to a certain extent. For this special issue, we have therefore identified at least four research directions (detailed below) in which potential contributors could inscribe their article proposals.

Areas of research

1. Rituals, Worship, Prayers and Celebrations

2. Identities, Belongings, Avatars and Communities

3. Asceticism, Fasting and Prohibitions

4. Conversion, Education and Transmission

Calendar and practical information

The abstracts (500 words maximum) are due by September 7^th, 2018. They should be sent to the following address: reset@openedition.org.

Proposals may be written either in English or in French, and should state the research question, the methodology, and the theoretical framework. They will focus on the scientific relevance of the proposed article in light of the existing literature and the call for papers, and may be accompanied by a short bibliography. We also would like to draw the authors’ attention to a special section in the journal called “Revisiting the Classics”, devoted to new readings of classical authors and theories in the context of digital media: for this special issue, papers centered on the re-exploration of classical authors and categories from the social sciences of religion will be particularly appreciated.

The abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the issue editors and the members of the journal editorial board. Authors of submissions selected at this stage will be asked to e-mail their full papers by November 12^th, 2018 for another double-blind peer review evaluation.

The journal RESET also accepts submissions for its “Varia” section, open to scholarly works in the Humanities and Social Sciences dealing with Internet-related objects or methods of research.

Calendar :

Deadline for abstract submission (500 words maximum, plus references): September 7^th, 2018.
Responses to authors: September 20^th, 2018.
Deadline for full papers (6 000 to 10 000 words, plus references): November 12^th, 2018.

Contact:

Editorial board reset@openedition.org

Coordinators:

• fabienne.duteil-ogata@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr
• isabellejonveaux@yahoo.fr

A proposed volume edited by Abby Day, Lois Lee, and Jim Spickard
working with Policy Press

Concerns are growing about the dominance of a narrow set of perspectives and interests across all areas of society. For universities, debates have centred on the ways in which people from specific identity-categories dominate the production and dissemination of academic knowledge in teaching, writing, and research. The dominance of such elites – crudely equated to ‘white men of the Global North’ – poses challenges to how all supposedly democratic institutions function. It hits at the heart of the academy. There, it distorts the knowledge universities produce, it disserves students from non-dominant groups, and it threatens the humanistic values on which the modern university is founded.

Elite domination affects the academy on many levels – ethical, epistemic, and economic among others. It includes the dominance of perspectives from particular gender, ethnicity, sexuality and class positions, as well as issues such as of Eurocentrism, androcentrism, Westernization, indigenization, and colonialism . These affect everyone working in the academy, elites included.

Building on the remarkable achievements of the recent wave of critique and the emergence of new initiatives responding to it, this new volume aims to gather, consolidate, and share practical actions that institutions and individuals within the academy – staff and students alike – can take to address issues of elitism. It seeks to encourage positive and decisive steps beyond critique and towards the growth of ‘pluriversity’ – processes of knowledge production that are, in Achille Mbembe’s words:

‘open to epistemic diversity … [pluriversity] does not necessarily abandon the notion of universal knowledge for humanity, but … embraces it via a horizontal strategy of openness to dialogue among different epistemic traditions.[*]

Our proposed volume focuses on what we can all actually do, both practically and theoretically, to bring about the change that is needed. What visions do we need? How can we each contribute to attaining them?

Doing Diversity provides case studies detailing the initiatives that both individuals and institutions have been including in their everyday teaching, writing, and research practices. It also includes chapters locating these initiatives in wider theoretical contexts and chapters reflecting on these initiatives’ achievements, their problems, and the work that they leave undone.

We are seeking proposals for chapters that share practices and/or address these themes. Chapters might, for example, engage with the following questions:

• – What new methods can we bring to our teaching, writing, and research to challenge any form of elitism?
• – How are the challenges different for teaching, writing, and research? What factors encourage or impede working for diversity in each of these areas?
• – What are the successes, problems and limitations of current initiatives, such as e.g. gender quotas for conference speakers, publication contributors, and/or citations?
• – What issues arise from field-specific variation? What, if anything, should we do in those fields or topic areas where non-elite groups dominate the discourse? Do we need to consider bringing elite perspectives into those locations?
• – What challenges do institutions and individuals face in taking up successful methods of ‘doing diversity’? What support can institutions and colleagues offer to others doing this work? How do we manage the workload in our already busy, often over-stretched lives?
• – How are students involved in these processes – or how could they be? How is diversity negotiated in the classroom? What works? What doesn’t?
• – Do new institutional and individual innovations cluster in particular areas? What does this tell us about our current ways of thinking about elitism and diversity? What might we be missing?
• – How adequately do concepts like ‘diversity’, ‘anti-elitism’, ‘liberating’ and ‘decolonising’ the academy frame these activities? What work are these concepts doing? Are there better or best ways to frame this work?

Final chapters are expected to be between 5,000-8,000 words (including all notes and references), though shorter submissions will be considered for the case study section.

Authors are invited to submit a 500-word chapter proposal to the editors at abby.day@gold.ac.uk, l.a.lee@kent.ac.uk, & jim_spickard@redlands.edu.

Deadlines:

• – Submission deadline for abstract: 31 October 2018
• – Decision of acceptance: 30 November 2018
• – Deadline for chapter submission: 31 July 2019

[*] “Decolonizing the University: New Directions,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 15/1: 37, 2016.