ECPR General Conference, Hamburg 24-26 August 2018

Section: Revisiting Religion and Politics Research: Achievements, Critique, Future Questions

Panel Chair: Zubair Ahmad, BGSMCS, Freie Universität Berlin (zubair@zedat.fu– berlin.de)

Discussant: N.N.
Deadline: 4th February, 2018 Panel Description

Postcolonial and Decolonial analyses have developed an extensive and valuable body of scholarship. In doing so, they have problematized and critiqued the Eurocentric formation of colonial modernity, along with its forms of epistemic and sociopolitical violence, its contradictions, and contingencies. Furthermore, they have altered analytical avenues in order to critically reevaluate the persistence of Eurocentric hegemonies (normative assumptions, epistemological structures, and power effects) accompanying and underpinning our present. Whereas these scholars have significantly shaped disciplines such as history, comparative literature, anthropology, or the study of religion, it is remarkable how their contributions remain marginal, if not absent, within the study of politics.

Against this backdrop, this panel seeks to provide a forum for critically engaging with postcolonial and decolonial scholarship. It does this by specifically turning toward the, by now, famous dyad of religion and politics. Departing from the premises that European colonization has been a “major, extended and ruptural world-historical event” (Stuart Hall), postcolonial and decolonial interrogations have long suggested convoluted histories of religion and politics. The epistemic, conceptual, and effective formation and history of religion and politics, as a dyad, these scholars suggest, has taken place in close proximity with Europe’s colonial endeavors – their reverberation and duress haunting our very present. From knowing and governing the colonized and (post-)colonial Other to ordering the colony, religion and politics have a longer history and much more complex presence than the liberal paradigm of investigation usually suggests, or forces upon our very inquiries. Engaging with the relationship of religion and politics since the 1970s and 1980s, subfields such as comparative politics or political theory have neglected these and other postcolonial/decolonial insights while keeping colonial epistemologies, divisions, questions, and orders in tact.

In order to address this troubling state-of-affairs within the study of politics, the panel invites contributions from decisively postcolonial or/and decolonial perspectives. The overall aim is twofold: Firstly, to evaluate and problematize the hegemonic, and therefore persistent, analytical avenues taken within a more mainstream engagement with religion and politics and, secondly, to broaden the scope of engagement, depth, and analysis by introducing postcolonial/decolonial questions, epistemologies, modes of investigation, and problematizations to an important and still ongoing debate.

Please submit your abstract (350-500 words) to Zubair Ahmad (zubair@zedat.fu-berlin.de) no later than 4th February.

Zubair Ahmad

Doctoral Fellow

Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies

Freie Universität Berlin

Altensteinstraße 48 | 14195 Berlin

(Submitted by Joseph Satish, from the University of Hyderabad, India.)

I write to invite paper abstracts from members of the ISA Sociology of Religion Network, to our open panel, “ Being religious, being scientific: the dynamics of science and religion in the laboratory ” (Panel #30), at this year’s Annual Meeting of the  Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) in Sydney, 29 August – 1 September 2018.

In keeping with the theme of the conference “TRANSnational STS”, we invite contributions from scholars all over the world, who have explored questions related to the panel, from the perspectives of Science, Technology & Society Studies (STS), Religious Studies, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, History of Science and related disciplines, across local, national and transnational units of analysis.

Abstract submissions (upto 250 words) to our panel can be made at the conference website via:  https://4s2018sydney.org/call-for-papers-open-panels/ . The abstract should contain the paper’s main arguments, methods, and contributions to STS and related disciplines. The deadline is February 1, 2018.

Call for papers: Conference of the International Research Training Group “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe”

Religion and Transnational Religious Discourses: Globality Construction and Resistance

Rome, June 21-22, 2018

Venue: German Historical Institute Rome, Via Aurelia Antica, 391

The International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe” is based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno. Cooperation partners are the Collegium Carolinum in Munich and the German Historical Institute in Rome.

The IRTG aims to contribute in a fundamental, both theoretically and methodologically innovative way to the analysis of the relationship between religion and modernity in Europe. Its research projects are interdisciplinary and international. Through joint methodology seminars and summer schools, it offers a study program that is carried out in Czech-German-Polish cooperation.

The conference deals with the ambivalent relationship between religion and globalization. The geographical distribution of religious communities has been used time and again to define supposedly immovable boundaries of civilization. Particular identities, such as local or national affiliations, are often backed by religious arguments and practices. At the same time, religion is one of the most important driving forces of transnational integration. Religion often claims universal validity and cross-border relationships are rather the rule than the exemption for religious communities. A religion contained within the boundaries of a single national state is an exception.

The conference poses the question of how religions and religious thinkers have responded to phenomena of globalization since the 19th century and how they have themselves been involved in the construction of transnational and global self-understanding. It focuses equally on the analysis of deliberate defense against cross-border influences, justified by a territorialized claim to validity of a particular “native” religious community, on the analysis of the area of tension between particularity and universality and the analysis of globalization strategies of religion, in confessional as well as in ecumenical contexts.

Organizers:

Martin Baumeister, Director of the German Historical Institute in Rome

Martin Schulze Wessel, Speaker of the IRTG “Religious cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe”

Martina Niedhammer, Historical Seminar of LMU Munich

Call for papers: Conference of the International Research Training Group “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe”

Religion and Transnational Religious Discourses: Globality Construction and Resistance

Rome, June 21-22, 2018

Venue: German Historical Institute Rome, Via Aurelia Antica, 391

The International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe” is based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno. Cooperation partners are the Collegium Carolinum in Munich and the German Historical Institute in Rome.

The IRTG aims to contribute in a fundamental, both theoretically and methodologically innovative way to the analysis of the relationship between religion and modernity in Europe. Its research projects are interdisciplinary and international. Through joint methodology seminars and summer schools, it offers a study program that is carried out in Czech-German-Polish cooperation.

The conference deals with the ambivalent relationship between religion and globalization. The geographical distribution of religious communities has been used time and again to define supposedly immovable boundaries of civilization. Particular identities, such as local or national affiliations, are often backed by religious arguments and practices. At the same time, religion is one of the most important driving forces of transnational integration. Religion often claims universal validity and cross-border relationships are rather the rule than the exemption for religious communities. A religion contained within the boundaries of a single national state is an exception.

The conference poses the question of how religions and religious thinkers have responded to phenomena of globalization since the 19th century and how they have themselves been involved in the construction of transnational and global self-understanding. It focuses equally on the analysis of deliberate defense against cross-border influences, justified by a territorialized claim to validity of a particular “native” religious community, on the analysis of the area of tension between particularity and universality and the analysis of globalization strategies of religion, in confessional as well as in ecumenical contexts.

Organizers:

Martin Baumeister, Director of the German Historical Institute in Rome

Martin Schulze Wessel, Speaker of the IRTG “Religious cultures in 19th and 20th-Century Europe”

Martina Niedhammer, Historical Seminar of LMU Munich

Call for Papers

Joint Conference between the British Association for the Study of Religions and the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions

3–5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast

Held in Association with the Religious Studies Research Forum at the Institute of Theology and the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics.

 Keynote Speakers:
Gladys Ganiel (Queen’s University, Belfast)
Naomi Goldenberg (University of Ottawa)

 Borders and boundaries define limits and margins, centres and peripheries. They demarcate territories, and separate entities and bodies and, as such, they function to guard space, limit action and exclude. They are, however, also contact zones and places of exchange, the ‘limen’ or threshold, the in-between, and the places of temptation and transgression. In the current political context when Ireland and the UK are faced with the dilemmas, paradoxes and implications of Brexit, this special joint conference of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR) and the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) invites paper, research slam, panel and roundtable proposals on the theme of Borders and Boundaries. Scholars based outside the Republic of Ireland or the UK are invited to submit proposals related to this theme regardless of whether their work relates to these islands. Scholars who are based in the UK or the Republic of Ireland and are working on religion and related categories are welcome to submit proposals on any topic whether or not it relates to the conference theme.

Borders and boundaries of states, religions and identities have played a defining role in relations between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Great Britain, perhaps most significantly the boundaries between religious communities. The negotiation between different religious lifeworlds, worldviews, constructs and dogmas takes place across perceived borders, whether real or imagined. Of concern amongst these for scholars of religions are the distinctions drawn between ‘religion’ and related categories, and between the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, which require the scholar to engage with the complexity of symbolic divides associated with identity, belief and belonging. In anthropological studies of religions, the crossing of borders or the ‘limen’ constitutes a transformational experience. Participation in ritual, pilgrimage and ecstatic practices often requires the crossing of thresholds between different states, between human and divine, human and animal, between different realms, of the living and the dead, material and spirit or otherworlds. Things that are normally kept separate, physically, conceptually and symbolically, meet at crossing points in the landscape, in ritual and in spiritual journeys.

These topics and more will provide the substantive content for this first-ever joint conference between these two member associations of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR).

Please note that papers should contribute to the aims of both societies, ISASR and BASR, specifically to advance research and education through the academic study of religions by providing a forum for the critical, analytical and cross-cultural study of religions, past and present. The conference will not be a forum for confessional, apologetical, interfaith or other similar concerns.

Proposals to be submitted to isasrbasr2018@gmail.com by 27 April 2018 (please include name, title, affiliation, and email address).

Paper Proposals: please submit title and abstract of 200 words.

Research Slam: A research “slam” is a quick succession of presentations of max. 7 minutes per presenter that gives a lively impression of a project, a programme, a network, or a collaboration the presenter is participating in. Please submit research slam proposals in the form of a title and brief (max. 150 words) abstract. It is possible to submit a research slam proposal as well as a paper proposal.

Panel proposals: please submit abstracts of 200 words for panel proposals. All panel proposals should include the name, title, affiliation, and email address of each presenter plus the chair and discussant (if applicable) plus abstracts for each of the papers on the panel.

Confirmation of acceptance on the conference programme will be sent by 15 June 2018. A small number of bursaries for postgraduate students and ECRs will be available.

See https://basr.ac.uk/ and/or https://isasr.wordpress.com/ for more information and updates.

Religion and Politics – Conflict and Peace
13th International Conference of the SIEF Ethnology of Religion Working Group
Siena, September 20th-23rd, 2018

Politics and religion have never existed in isolation but always stood in continuous interaction throughout times. The “growing salience of religion on the world stage” (Hackett 2005:145) is to a great part due to the politization of religion in different contexts and dimensions: already in the early 2000s Grace Davie pointed to the European exceptionalism to the former persistent secularization thesis (cf. Berger 1967): “New arrivals”, especially Muslim Immigrants, challenged the image of the secular state. Right wing oriented, anti-Muslim political parties arose all over Europe as a reaction to the supposedly Muslimization of certain sectors of society. At the same time, orthodoxy was re-established in Putin´s Russia and conservative or contestative Roman Catholic movements address political developments all over the world. Nationalist Hinduism rose in India up to the election of a respective prime-minister. These various developments in political discourse also drew attention to the scientific study of religion. For the ethnography of religion it is a chance to broaden its objects of study and increase its public visibility.

While the aforementioned interactions between religion and politics gave way to conflicts on various levels, attention must also be paid to the “ambivalence of the sacred” (Appleby 2000): Reconciliation processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland for example have been informed by Christian ideas of peace. Other examples of political peacebuilding work can be found in Muslim or Buddhist discourse or the role of religions in the African-American emancipation movements.

Grasping the relationship of religion and politics in conflict and peace can also be framed in historical context. The conference invites papers that take up the context of fascism and racism with relation to religion in the year of the 80th anniversary of the Italian race-laws.

The 13th conference of the SIEF Ethnology of Religion Working Group aims to explore from ethnological / anthropological perspective the general theme of politics and religion in various national and political contexts, either in historical or contemporary times. Theoretical proposals and papers illustrating the productivity of ethnographic methods in research into the connection between religion and politics are especially welcome.

Possible subthemes of the conference are:

• The role of religion in ongoing conflicts and peacebuilding initiatives
• The politization of religion in discursive and historical dimensions
• Grassroots movements and religious creativity under different political regimes
• Sacred spaces, religious art, performances: objects, rituals, languages and practices in terms of religious and political tension.

Proposals can be sent to ethnorelsiena(at)unisi.it; the deadline for sending the proposals is January, 31st 2018.

Notification about acceptance will be sent before March, 31st 2018.

Conference fee: 90 EUR (also covers drinks and food at the welcome reception and snacks/brunch during coffee or lunch breaks).

The organizers are not able to support the participants financially. Participants are responsible for covering their own travel and accommodation expenses.

For more information: ethnorelsiena(at)unisi.it

Call for Papers

The Joint PhD Program on «Human Rights, Society, and Multi-Level Governance» offered by the University of Padova, University of Zagreb-Faculty of Law, University of Western Sydney, Panteion University of Athens, and the University of Nicosia

invites submissions for an international Conference on

Universality v Particularity: Human Rights and Religions

Nicosia, Cyprus

8-9th of June, 2018

The two-day conference will examine the aspects of the relationship between human rights and religions, universality and particularity, considering both the internal aspects of regulating human rights within a religious group, as well as the external aspects of regulating the interaction between religion and human rights on behalf of the state.

Religion is a salient aspect of a global public order. Extensive migration flows and the growth of religious plurality alongside with different levels of secularization have led to diverse models of relationship between human rights and religion. The particularity of ethnic and cultural diversities highlights the need for a re-evaluation of the traditional legal and socio-political thinking on religious freedom within the universality of human rights.

All these aspects will be considered through a multi- and interdisciplinary approach which encompasses law, sociology, philosophy, and political science. Participants are invited to address these issues and propose papers in line with the conference rationale, in relation to the following topics:

1. 1. Universal human rights, domestic regimes, and dominant religions/ religious minorities
2. 2. The religious effect on the states’ commitment to human rights
3. 3. Religious freedom and ECtHR rulings
4. 4. Religious freedom governance in domestic and international perspectives
5. 5. Generational evolution of rights and the impact of religions
6. 6. Political and legal secularisms and religious freedom
7. 7. Regional negotiations of religious freedom practices
8. 8. Religion and LGBT rights
9. 9. Women inside and outside religions: human rights approaches
10. 10. Grassroots society initiatives and religious freedom engagement
11. 11. Global ethics and moral and cultural particularities
12. 12. Religion, migration, and human rights
13. 13. Human rights rhetorics within a religious tradition
14. 14. Interreligious dialogue and human rights
15. 15. Religion, human rights, and economic crisis

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Prof. Marco Ventura, University of Siena

Dr. Effie Fokas, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Study (ELIAMEP)

Key Dates

January 15th, 2018 – Abstracts (400 words) should be sent to christodoulidou.e@unic.ac.cy

February 10th, 2018 – Notification of acceptance

There are no fees for attendance. Participants are, however, responsible for securing their own funding for travel and lodging.

Questions

Please direct inquiries in connection with this Conference to:

Prof. Achilles Emilianides: emilianides.a@unic.ac.cy

I am writing to inform you of a Conference on ‘Religious Marriages in the Mediterranean‘ to be hosted by the University of Malta on the 20th and 21st March 2018. The deadline for submission of abstracts is the 31st January 2018.Further details are in the accompanying blurb. I hope to see some of you there.

Best regards,

David E. Zammit LL.D. Ph.D. (Dunelm)
Head of Department of Civil Law
Faculty of Laws Room 116
University of Malta
Tal – Qroqq
Msida MSD 2080
Malta

ECPR General Conference, Hamburg 24-26 August 2018

Section: Revisiting Religion and Politics Research: Achievements, Critique, Future Questions

Panel Chair: Anja Hennig, European University Viadrina (ahennig@europa-uni.de)

This panel specifies some of the major questions, addressed in the section “Revisiting Religion and Politics Research: Achievements, Critique, Future Questions”. It departs from the observation that over the last three to four decades a research field analysing the mutual impact of religion and politics has been consolidating. The existence of various research networks on national and transnational level, dictionaries, handbooks, an ever growing number of edited volumes with empirical studies on various aspects of religion and politics such as Church-state arrangements, governance of religious diversity, religious voting, religion and public policy etc. and respective journals is a proof of it.

However, a reflection on the approaches, theories, or assumptions constitutive of this field is rare. This panel opens the floor for dispute and reflection on the subject by taking the Western origin of the religion and politics research agenda as point of departure.

To what extent does contemporary religion and politics research reflect a predominantly Western- or Eurocentric agenda? What justifies such perspective? Which decentralizing perspectives (empirically or theoretically) do exist or are desirable?

West- or Eurocentrism here implies primarily a reference to the liberal-democratic separation principle, and, thus, to the normative assumption that religion and politics/Churches and state ought to be separated or constitute separate spheres; a still dominant perspective despite the fact that politico-religious cooperation or overlaps of both spheres is a matter of fact also in the global West. Such a perspective reflects not only the normative impact of the secularization (or nowadays rather differentiation) paradigm. The separation principle grounded in Western liberal thinking structures also empirical research on religion and politics. An example would be the widely used analytical distinction between religious and political actors or factors.

Paper givers may also propose a different understanding of “West-or Eurocentrism” as focal point for critically revisiting the state of the art of religion and politics research. Counter arguments are welcomed as well!

Scholars are invited to submit a proposal of max. 350 words that outlines the major arguments in relation to the central questions. Such arguments may be based on (comparative) case studies or reflect theoretical or conceptual thoughts.

Please submit your proposals (350 words) to ahennig@europa-uni.de latest by 1 February 2018!

Please consider also our Call for Panels for the Section “Revisiting Religion and Politics Research” at the ECPR General Conference 2018: https://ecpr.eu/Events/SectionDetails.aspx?SectionID=725&EventID=115

Dr. Anja Hennig
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin / Lecturer and Researcher
Lehrstuhl für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft / Chair of Comparative Politics
Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences
Europa-Universität Viadrina / European University Viadrina
in / at Frankfurt/Oder