Sacred Journeys 5th Global Conference: Pilgrimage & Beyond; July 5-6, 2018

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Jim

Indiana University (IU) Europe Gateway, Berlin, Germany
(https://global.iu.edu/global-gateways/europe/index.html)
Located in the Kreuzberg neighborhood in Berlin, the IU Europe Gateway is housed within the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) Global Institute.

Call for Papers
The latest research indicates that more than 400 million people embark annually on traditional pilgrimages in Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, and elsewhere, with the numbers steadily increasing. Pilgrimage is one of the most ancient practices of humankind and is associated with a great variety of religious and spiritual traditions, beliefs and sacred geographies. As a global phenomenon, pilgrimage facilitates interaction between and among diverse peoples from countless cultures, occupations, and walks of life. In the 5th Global Conference, we will continue to explore the many personal, interpersonal, intercultural, and international dimensions of these often profound events. This includes similarities and differences in the practice in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, and other traditions, as well as secular pilgrimage. The impact of the internet and globalization, pilgrimage as protest, and pilgrimage and peace building, among others, are all topics of interest, as are the concepts of the internal pilgrimage and the journey of self-discovery.
Among the key issues that emerged from earlier Sacred Journeys conferences were:

Definition of Pilgrimage: ‘Travel for transformation’ embraces the sacred journey as a potential turning point in one’s life. Questions arise as to how and when a journey becomes ‘sacred’. Does tourism merely observe the authentic in others, whereas pilgrimage seeks it for oneself? When is a tourist a pilgrim and vice versa?
Reinforcing a Vision of the Unity of Humanity: While many pilgrimages have a political dimension and political leaders often manipulate pilgrims in ways detrimental to peace, how can the concept of pilgrimage lend itself to envisioning a world united in difference?
Pilgrimage and Globalization: Technology is impacting pilgrims in innumerable ways. Infrastructural and support services are also improving, and journeys once thought to be too difficult are now within reach of vast numbers of pilgrims. Will modern conveniences alter the traditional experience of pilgrimage or create entirely new experiences?
The Challenge of Modernity: What does pilgrimage offer that is not found in the routines of modern daily life? In the search for meaning, belonging or identity, some pilgrims will cling to the familiar and reaffirm what is believed ‘true’ at local levels. What kinds of trends along these lines might we forecast for the future?
Secular Pilgrimage: Each year, large numbers of pilgrims visit secular pilgrimage sites, like those of pop culture heroes. What are the similarities and differences between sacred and secular pilgrimages? What does it mean to be an ‘authentic’ pilgrim?

Many other related themes can be considered for presentation. Among these are (1) pilgrimage and the marketplace; (2) the metaphor of the journey as explored by writers, artists, performers, and singers, including humanists, agnostics, atheists, and musicians; (3) pilgrimage and ‘miracles’ and the related topic of thanksgiving; and (4) ‘dark’ pilgrimages to sites of remembrance and commemoration.
Submitting Your Proposal
Proposals should be submitted no later than Wednesday, 28 February 2018 to:
Ian McIntosh, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI): imcintos@iupui.edu
Chadwick Co Sy Su, University of the Philippines Manila: ccsysu@up.edu.ph
E-Mail Subject Line: Sacred Journeys 5 Proposal Submission
File Format: Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX)

Workshop: Forced migration

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Hannah

Forced migration is not a new phenomenon. Today we are witness to a situation where forced migration puts many people in terrible and life-threatening conditions, with severe consequences for several generations. Proportionally a big number of refugees from the Middle East have an ethno-religious minority background, such as Assyrians (including the different branches), Armenians, Mandaeans, and Yazidis.

This workshop aims to bring researchers, practitioners, community stakeholders and policymakers together in order to

develop an interdisciplinary discussion and knowledge exchange about the ‘untold’, mainly ignored experiences of minority refugee populations with departure from the case of Assyrian, Armenian, Yazidi and Mandaean refugees;
form a highly needed international network among researchers working on these and similar topics;
establish dialogue channels between the scientific community, practitioners, community organizations and policy makers.

The organizers invite researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to present their latest studies and partake in discussions on these or similar themes, delaminated to vulnerable refugee populations:

Traumatic experiences, memory, and uprootedness
Dealing with displacement, pre- and post-migration
Fear of extinction
Resilience and coping mechanisms
Processes of reconciliation and liberation from past experiences and trauma
The idea of “return to home”

Those interested are asked to send their abstract of about 500 words to Dr. Önver Cetrez at onver.cetrez@teol.uu.se no later than August 1, 2017. Attached is the longer cfp description.

Confrence: Religion(s) and Power(s)

Posted on May 13, 2017 by Hannah

Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
October 5-6, 2017

The Lithuanian Society for the Study of Religions in cooperation with Latvian Society for the Study of Religions and Estonian Society for the Study of Religions invites proposals for its upcoming international conference “Religion(s) and Power(s)”. To encourage new directions in the critical research of interrelations of religion(s) and power(s) from a broad range of approaches, we are seeking proposals on a wide range of topics including:

• Private and public religions

• Religions and politics

• Non-religion and power

• Religious inequalities and discrimination

• Religions, human rights and justice

• Powers of/within religions

• Religion and nationalism

• Mythology, divine kinship and power

• Religion and colonialism

,• Religions and education.

Other topics related to the conference theme are also encouraged.

Conference paper and session proposals must be sent by June 15, 2017. Please send your 250-300 word abstract and a 200-word personal bio to email: religiousstudieslt@gmail.com

Important conference dates:
June 15, 2017 – submission of conference paper and session proposals;
July 1, 2017 – notification of paper/session proposal acceptance;
July 1, 2017 – opening of registration for the conference;
August 15, 2017 – closing of registration for the conference;
September 1, 2017 – announcement of the conference program.

Conference Registration Fees:
–    Members of national associations of Baltic States associations for the study of religions – 50 EUR
–    Permanent/full-time faculty and non-affiliated participants – 80 EUR;
–    Graduate students and emeritus faculty – 50 EUR;
–    Late bird conference fee – 100 EUR.

Publishing announcement: Migration and Society

Posted on May 13, 2017 by Hannah

Journal published by Berghahn

Migration is at the heart of the transformation of societies and communities and touches the lives of people across the globe. Migration and Society is a new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal advancing debate about emergent trends in all types of migration. We invite work that situates migration in a wider historical and societal context, including attention to experiences and representations of migration, critical theoretical perspectives on migration, and the social, cultural, and legal embeddedness of migration. Global in its scope, we particularly encourage scholarship from and about the global South as well as the North.

Migration and Society addresses both dynamics and drivers of migration; processes of settlement and integration; and transnational practices and diaspora formation. We publish theoretically informed and empirically based articles of the highest quality, especially encouraging work that interrogates and transcends the boundaries between the social sciences and the arts and humanities.

We also welcome articles that reflect on the complexities of both studying and teaching migration, as well as pieces that focus on the relationship between scholarship and the policies and politics of migration.

Submissions are welcome for consideration in one of the five journal sections:

o Research Articles: Each issue will include articles (max. 8,000 words) addressing a key theme, in addition to a range of other migration-and-society related articles

o The People & Places section consists of shorter pieces (2,000-4,000 words), including notes from the field, ‘migrant voices’, and interviews with scholars, practitioners, and policymakers

o The Reflections section invites critical reflections (max. 5,000 words) on migration research and teaching

o The Creative Encounters section invites poetry, shorter prose pieces, photo essays, and other engagements with migration

o Each issue concludes with a Book Reviews section (800 words for single book reviews, 13-1400 words for reviews of two books, 15-1600 words for three books).

Migration and Society is edited by Mette Louise Berg (UCL) and Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (UCL).

Inaugural issue (publication August 2018)

Hospitality and hostility towards migrants: global perspectives

Recent years have seen an unprecedented scale of global forced migration. Millions of people have fled conflicts and mass human rights violations as well as poverty and persecution. Across sites of transit and settlement migrants have been met by a combination of hospitality and hostility.

For the inaugural issue of Migration and Society, we welcome theoretically and empirically informed contributions that help us develop a more nuanced understanding of the complex responses and experiences of hospitality and hostility around the world and in different historical contexts. We invite contributions that offer critical analyses of the following questions:

1. How, and why, have different actors responded to the actual, prospective, and imagined arrival of migrants across time and space?

2. How have migrants and refugees experienced and responded to different, and at times overlapping, processes of hospitality and hostility in sites of transit and settlement?

3. What are the politics and the poetics of hospitality and hostility towards migrants in different spaces?

4. As ‘new’ migrants join established diasporas and transnational communities, how have ‘locals’ and ‘established’ migrants and refugees responded to ‘newly’ displaced people?

5. How, why, and with what effects have diverse media represented processes of migration? Who has been rendered (hyper)visible and audible, and/or invisible, inaudible, and silenced in different representations of migration?

6. What are the historic resonances, continuities, and discontinuities of contemporary dynamics of hospitality and hostility towards migrants?

We especially welcome articles that examine – and interrogate – the applicability of the concepts of hospitality and hostility in different settings; and that explore the relationship between these and other concepts, including cosmopolitanism, welcome, conviviality, neighbourliness, and solidarity, from the perspective of the global South as well as the North.

Deadline for submitting articles for inclusion in issue 1: 30 September 2017.

For further information:http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/migration-and-society/

Call for Papers: ISA Research Committee on the Sociology of Religion (RC22)

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Hannah

XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology

Power, Violence, and Justice: Reflections, Responses, and Responsibilities

Toronto, Canada, July 15-21, 2018

RESEARCH COMMITTEE 22: SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Religion, Power, and Resistance: New Ideas for a Divided World

Program Coordinators:

Anna Halafoff, Deakin University, Australia

Sam Han, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Caroline Starkey, University of Leeds, UK

Current environmental, economic, social, and political challenges indicate that people are losing faith in existing power structures and mechanisms for coping with crises. This creates increasingly divided societies, riven by ideological battles for the future of the human and the more than human world. Religion has a place in this picture. Not only is it often a source of divisions; it can also be a source for alternative means of addressing them.

These divisions take new and as yet unclear shapes, which sociologists are only now beginning to comprehend. It is not enough to refer to the struggle between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, terms that dominated sociology through the 1970s. Nor do the tropes ‘colonialism vs. anti-colonialism’ and the ‘clash of civilizations’ adequately explain what is going on. Nor, arguably, does ‘populism vs neo-liberalism’ fully capture such things as the recent clashes between cosmopolitan and anticosmopolitan actors in the major Western democracies. Each of these has a piece of the picture; none of them captures it all.

What is religion’s role in this situation: as a creator of divisions, as a locus of power, and as a ground of resistance? How does religion influence our divided societies? How is religion influenced in turn?

We invite paper abstract submissions for the following RC22 sessions:

Religion and National Identity

Religion and Secularity

Religion and Non-Violent Social Movements

Religion, Gender and Family Violence

Religion in the East Asian Public Sphere

Religion in the Public Square

Social Theory and Religion

Religion and Migration: Contrasting First and Second Generations

Dynamics of Gender, Religion, and Intersectionality

Prejudice, Exclusion, and Violence in a Transnational World

Media and Religious Radicalization: Gatekeeping and the Construction of Extremism

Gender, Feminism, and Islam and the West

Candlelight Revolution and Religion in South Korea

Religious Texts of Diversity Vs Exclusion

We will also be including the following invited sessions in our RC22 program:

Presidential Address: Whither the Sociology of Religion? (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: James SPICKARD, University of Redlands, USA

Religion and Diversity: An International Study (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: Lori BEAMAN, University of Ottawa, Canada

Diffused Religion. Beyond Secularization – Author Meets Critic Session (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: Roberto CIPRIANI, University Roma Tre, Italy

The Case for an Indeterminate Sociological Theory of Religion (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: Tak-ling WOO, York University, Canada

The ISA CONFEX website site is now accepting paper abstracts between 25 April and 30 September 2017 24:00 GMT.

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Symposium459.html

Please address any questions to the Program Coordinators:

Anna Halafoff: anna.halafoff@deakin.edu.au

Sam Han: HanSam@ntu.edu.sg

Caroline Starkey: C.Starkey@leeds.ac.uk