Appel è contribution pour un numéro thématique: « Religiosités, sexualités et identités LGBTQI »

La revue RELIGIOLOGIQUES –  APPEL À CONTRIBUTION pour un NUMÉRO THÉMATIQUE :

« Religiosités, sexualités et identités LGBTQI »

http://www.religiologiques.uqam.ca/Appel-2018-07.pdf

Depuis le début des années 2000, la recherche en sciences des religions se penche sur les rapports de pouvoir en société liés aux identités LGBTQI, tant sexuelles que de genre, cherchant à mettre en relief les écarts, en termes de pouvoir, de subjectivation et de marginalisation, entre les effets des religiosités et spiritualités contemporaines sur les individus et leurs communautés et l’impact de ces dernières sur les normes sociales et leurs modes de transmission. McGuire démontre que certaines alternatives spirituelles, qu’elles soient à l’extérieur ou à l’intérieur des traditions judéo-chrétiennes, sont souvent perçues comme faisant la promotion de la diversité sexuelle et de l’égalité homme-femme. Étant le produit d’une recherche identitaire attentive au corps, à la sexualité et au genre, leurs pratiques offrent une perspective nouvelle qui permet de « négocier de nouvelles identités et de forger de nouvelles sociabilités qui ont le potentiel de surpasser les balises conceptuelles dictées par d’anciennes normes sociales sexistes, racistes et classistes » (McGuire, 2008).

Une forte adhésion d’individus LGBTQI – lesbiennes, gais, bisexuels/bisexuelles, transgenres, queer et intersexués/intersexuées – à ces nouvelles religiosités et spiritualités pousse la recherche à s’intéresser aux identités sexuelles et de genre non-binaires, car celles-ci reflètent ou reconduisent souvent des rapports de domination et de hiérarchie tels qu’ils ont cours en société (Fedele et Knibbe, 2013). Si ces pratiques religieuses et spirituelles contemporaines répondent à un besoin de réconciliation avec la tradition pour plusieurs, pour d’autres, en réaction à des expériences personnelles de souffrance ou de discrimination liées au sexisme et à l’hétéronormativité, elles mènent à une reconstruction de leur religiosité personnelle et au remodelage de leur sociabilité en attribuant une place primordiale, dans leurs pratiques religieuses, aux notions d’identités LGBTQI sexuelles et de genre.

Ce numéro thématique de Religiologiques palliera à une carence au sein des études queer et LGBTQI qui s’attardent trop peu à la dimension religieuse et au caractère spirituel de l’agentivité du sujet. À partir d’approches interdisciplinaires, les auteurs peuvent mettre en lumière les diverses manières dont ces nouvelles religiosités, certaines plus individuelles, d’autres plus holistiques (Heelas et Woodhead 1996; York 1995), s’inscrivent en continuité ou en rupture avec les traditions religieuses dominantes. Ce sera également l’occasion d’observer ces phénomènes au sein et/ou en marge de traditions qui imposent plus souvent une norme hétéronormative et de genre binaire. Plus spécifiquement, les autrices peuvent mettre en rapport les théories et pratiques d’intériorisation de la sexualité et du genre comme catégories identitaires LGBTQI et les théories des religiosités contemporaines et/ou alternatives comme lieu de performance de ces identités où s’opère l’agentivité du sujet sur sa propre position dans, et voire sur, un système symbolique social donné. Parmi les pistes possibles, mais non exhaustives, d’exploration du religieux, des religiosités et des identités LGBTQI sexuelles et de genre, notons les suivantes :

· La construction des rapports entre religion (traditions religieuses occidentales et orientales ; nouveaux mouvements religieux, etc.) et identités sexuelles et de genre ;

· Le rapport entre la pratique rituelle et la performance identitaire ;

· Le rapport entre les multiples dimensions du religieux et les expériences queer ;

· Le rapport entre pratiques religieuses et identité LGBTQI ;

· L’apport des sciences des religions à l’étude de l’agentivité et des rapports de pouvoir en société et leur contribution à la théorie queer.

Longueur des articles

Les articles doivent être de 6,000 à 8,000 mots, en format WORD (.doc) et conforme aux « Consignes de présentation » disponibles sous l’onglet « Soumission d’articles » du site Web de Religiologiques (http://www.religiologiques.uqam.ca).

Soumission des articles

Les textes sont soumis à l’adresse courriel suivante religiologiques@uqam.ca.

Échéances

Les manuscrits sont à soumettre avant la fin du mois de février 2019. Avant de soumettre un texte pour évaluation, il est possible de d’acheminer une proposition d’article (de 300 à 400 mots).

Pour de plus amples informations, veuillez contacter 

Martin Lepage (PhD), la direction du numéro thématique

Département de sciences des religions

Université du Québec à Montréal

Courriel : martinlepage26@me.com

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

INFORMATION sur la revue RELIGIOLOGIQUES

RELIGIOLOGIQUES___est une revue de sciences humaines qui s’intéresse aux multiples manifestations du sacré dans la culture ainsi qu’au phénomène religieux sous toutes ses formes.  Elle s’intéresse également au domaine de l’éthique. Les articles qu’elle publie font l’objet d’une évaluation des comités de lecture spécialisés (à double insu ; minimum deux évaluatrices, évaluateurs) et indépendants de son comité de rédaction.

RELIGIOLOGIQUES___est la revue phare de la recherche francophone en sciences des religions en Amérique du Nord publiée de 1990 à 2005 (31 numéros, dont la majorité des articles est disponible dans leur intégralité en ligne sur le site de la revue : http://www.religiologiques.uqam.ca) et qui a repris, depuis 2015, sa tradition de publication de numéros thématiques, d’articles hors thèmes – acceptés en tout temps – et de numéros varia. 

RELIGIOLOGIQUES
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Département de sciences des religions
Courriel: religiologiques@uqam.ca

CALL FOR Papers: Religious Practices and the Internet

RESET:

  • recherches en sciences sociales sur internet
  • social scienceresearch 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 7th, 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 19th 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/submissions  (please write the editors for details)

  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 7th, 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 12th, 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 7th, 2018.

Responses to authors: September 20th, 2018.

Deadline for full papers (6 000 to 10 000 words, plus references): November 12th, 2018.

Contact:

Editorial board reset@openedition.org

Coordinators:

fabienne.duteil-ogata@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr

isabellejonveaux@yahoo.fr

Call for papers for a special edition of the Journal of Beliefs and Values

Special Issue:  Critical Issues and Research in Religious Literacy

Guest Editor: Prof. Adam Dinham, Goldsmiths University, London.

Religious Education in schools evokes mixed memories – and feelings – for  most in those countries where it exists. Where it does not, it can be mystifying that schools might have anything to do with religion or belief. Yet migration and globalisation mean daily encounter with increasing diversity, whatever our own religion, belief or none. How we teach, and learn, about religion is a critical part of how we respond religion, often framing our capability to do so.

This special issue focuses upon how we teach and learn about religion and belief across sectors of society – in schools, universities, professional training, workplace learning, and informal, community and citizen settings, as well as a range of international perspectives – through the lens of religious literacy. Papers are particularly invited which engage with any of the following domains and themes:

  • school RE
  • religion and belief in Higher Education
  • engaging with religion and belief identity in the public professions: social work, nursing, counselling, medicine, policing, prison service, armed forces, civil service and others
  • citizenship and lifelong learning about religion and belief
  • communities of learning about religion and belief
  • comparative – especially international – approaches
  • methodological issues and historical perspectives in religious literacy
  • pedagogies of religious literacy
  • definitions and measures of religious literacy

The deadline for papers is 28 February 2019. Publication will be in early 2020. Papers should be submitted according to the journal style guide and will be peer-reviewed according to the journal’s policy.  Further instructions for submitting can be found here

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cjbv20&page=instructions

Please submit via the Editorial Manager online submission system, indicating that you wish your submission to be considered for this special issue.

http://www.edmgr.com/cjbv/default.aspx

very best wishes

Adam 

Professor Adam Dinham | Director, Faiths & Civil Society Unit |

Goldsmiths, University of London | New Cross, London, SE14 6NW | UK

www.gold.ac.uk/faithsunit | www.religiousliteracy.org | @RelLitProg

Call for Papers: Following ‘The Way’: Historicizing the Interspace among Indic Religions

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1khH0NJ2Qi9vgHmRnnoSb11mRtswcd03Q


Panth, matam, dharm, rah, and ṣirāṭ, meaning ‘The Way’, are some of the terms used by faith communities in South Asia to define their tradition’s path. This conference will explore how these ways were expressed in ritual, belief, and praxis to create distinction. For example, among the 19th century Khōjā of Sindh and Gujarat, the term satpanth ‘The True Way’, referred to numerous vernacular religious practices that incorporated Vaiṣṇav, Svāminārāyaṇ, Jain, Shia, and Sunni practices within a caste faith. Their liturgical materials originally were written in a caste script in a mélange of dialects from Sindhi, Gujarati, Kacchi, Rajasthani, and Urdu. This liminality was not exclusive to the north, in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka araputamiḻ, the Muslim dialect of Tamil in the Arabic script, records the cosmologies and worldview of Muslim merchant communities that intersperses Vaishnava imagery with Arabic vocabulary.
This conference is intended to bring together scholars of the Adivasi, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism to explore how aesthetics, authority, narratives, rituals, and script have been historically shared and divided by faith communities in South Asia. How do we make sense of such heterogeneity that was distant from ‘orthodox’ literature being produced in urbane Sanskrit and Persian? How did rural religion differ and connect to larger faith communities across linguistic and script divides? Where were ethno-religious boundaries drawn between pragmatic mobile merchant communities and how fluid were they until early colonization? South Asian vernacular religion in local languages is a large untapped historical archive from which scholars can produce incisive microhistories. This is an open call for scholars across disciplines who wish to engage with the themes of endangered/extinct languages and scripts, merchant religion, modern religious identity formation, and the transmission of sacred narratives across the Persianate, Turkic, and Indic worlds.
The conference will be held at the University of Mumbai, Mumbai, January 30-31, 2019. The deadline for the submission of paper proposal is July 31, 2018. Successful applicants will be notified by August 30, 2018. The travel allowances ($500) as well as accommodation and board will be covered through the ‘Khoja Studies Conference’. Send your abstracts to: khojastudies@world-federation.org.

http://www.khojastudies.org

Publishing Opportunity: Handbook of Religion and Migration

Religion and Migration has become an important area of study, yet remains diverse.  Research in this area has expanded as audiences become more interested in the topic.  Transnational migration calls into question the relationship of religion in the diaspora.  Religious identities are changing in the face of pluralism and multiculturalism. This volume will examine universalist ideas of religion, as well as constructed ideas of religion, in the global world.

We are currently seeking papers for a peer-reviewed edited volume, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Migration, to be published by Bloomsbury Press in their Handbooks in Religion Series and edited by Rubina Ramji (ruby_ramji@cbu.ca) and Alison Marshall (marshalla@brandonu.ca).

The volume will provide a broad geographic representation with a focus on the present-day immigration issues. The aim of this interdisciplinary collection is to provide a scholarly introduction to a variety of audiences. We are looking for in-depth introductory essays chronicling migration in regional and transnational contexts, as well as dominant and emerging theories and approaches to the study of religious identities in a global context.  Overall, the volume is aimed at scholars and students who seek entry points in the range of critical issues and themes related to religion and migration.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • A survey of religious groups that have migrated
  • The negotiation of religion in the diaspora
  • The “religionization” of political, cultural, ethnic and gender identity in the diaspora
  • The rise of anti-immigration stances in the face of religious extremism and terrorism
  • The rise of religious intolerance towards religious minorities
  • The suppression of religious freedoms in secular societies
  • Religious integration versus religious assimilation of religious minorities
  • The transformation of religious identities across social/geographic boundaries

Full submissions may range from 5,000–10,000 words depending on topic.

Proposals

Please send a proposal (300-500 words), an abstract (100 words), anticipated word count, and CV to Rubina Ramji and Alison Marshall at  RelMigration@gmail.com. Feel free to direct any questions to the editors before submission.

Extended Proposal Deadline:  July 15, 2018

Full Draft Submissions of Complete Papers Due: January 1, 2019

Call for Collaborators: The Online Atlas of Religious Minorities Rights in the Council of Europe Countries

Dear Colleagues,

Italian scholar Silvio Ferrari has launched a massive project that will be of interest to NRM scholars and others researching religion. The description is below.  He is interested in possible collaborators with the project, particularly if anyone can assist in obtaining funding to expand the project. His email is: silvio.ferrari@unimi.it if you want to contact him. I would appreciate your sending me a copy if you do so, as I hope also to be involved: jtr@unr.edu .

James T. Richardson, J.D., Ph.D.
Foundation Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies
Mail Stop 311
University of Nevada, Reno
Reno, NV 89557

The Online Atlas of Religious Minorities Rights in the Council of Europe Countries

The project aims at producing an online Atlas of the religious minorities rights in the Council of Europe member States. The Atlas will provide a general overview of the religious minorities social and legal status in the CoE countries and, through its interactive format, the reader will also have access to data and information concerning a particular country, religious group, and area of rights. Each map will be complemented by a short text that places the map in its socio-historical context and, if necessary, provides further information. Maps and chapters will be updated every three years.

The Atlas is designed to offer an easy-to-read comparative description of the status of religious minorities in the CoE countries. It will consent to identify and compare the different levels of minorities rights protection granted by each State, the legal status enjoyed by each minority group both across the CoE countries and in each of them, and the specific areas of rights that are at stake (again both transversally across the CoE countries and in each of them). Particular attention will be devoted to the rights implementation so that the gap between formal entitlement and real enjoyment of rights is reduced.

The reader will be able to select a single religious minority, country, and area of rights (for example, education) and obtain the relevant information concerning the legal and social status enjoyed by the religious minority in that country and rights area. Alternatively, the reader can get a comparative view of the rights enjoyed by all religious minorities in a country (or a group of countries) or a comparative view of the rights enjoyed by a specific religious minority in all the CoE countries. These research tools can be further combined to obtain the data and information required by the reader.

We would also like to develop a reliable system for “measuring” the implementation of religious minorities rights. Based on the answers to two questionnaires, one for legal experts and the other for the religious minorities representatives, a set of indicators concerning the respect of religious minorities rights will be developed and used to assess each country.

A collection of maps on religious minorities rights has at least two added values in comparison to a book devoted to the same issue. First, it shows at a glance what words take much more time to explain. Second, maps can be combined and merged to show the intertwinement and overlapping of the different components of the minorities rights issue, reflecting its complexity much better than a book. Therefore it is to be expected that, through the Atlas, teachers, scholars, politicians, diplomats, NGOs activists, leaders of religious organizations, etc. will gain a better knowledge of the social and legal status of religious minorities and will be able to identify the subjects, countries and areas where minorities rights protection requires to be increased and strengthened.

While there are Atlases of linguistic or national minorities, religious minorities have been overlooked and this project will fill the gap.

Call for papers: Worldviews in creating meaning and purpose for learning

Special Issue: Journal of Beliefs & Values

We are happy to invite scholars to contribute in our special issue in the Journal of Beliefs & Values. JBV has been among the most respected journals in our field for a long time. We believe that our peer-reviewed special issue can contribute in the high-level scholarly discussion of the journal with a viewpoint represented especially by the EARLI SIG19 Conference 2018 (http://www.uef.fi/web/sig19conference2018/).

The Special Issue will be based on both the best papers of the EARLI SIG 19 conference 2018 and possible supplementing papers derived from this open call. We particularly welcome submissions that recognise the conference theme “Worldviews in creating meaning and purpose for learning”, and that address, for example, the following questions: How worldviews impact people’s motivation to learn, how worldviews guide people’s life choices and future orientation, and how worldviews and religions help people to find meaning and purpose in life.The articles can be empirical or philosophical. We anticipate not only methodological diversity but also wish the articles to reflect diverse interpretations and representations of worldviews, values and beliefs in education, cultural and national contexts.

We expect the authors to study the JBV homepage and familiarise oneself with the scope and format of the journal.https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjbv20/current

The deadline for the full papers with the length and format of the JBV guidelines by 1st of October 2018. After the blind review process, the revised final versions of the manuscripts are expected to be submitted by 15th of December 2018. The estimated publication of the special issue will be in 2019.

Please contact guest editors with queries concerning the topic and send your contribution to Laura Hirsto (laura.hirsto@uef.fi).

Thank you!

CALL FOR PAPERS: Religion and Poverty

Thematic Collection in Palgrave Communications

Editors: Dr Gottfried Schweiger and Dr Helmut P Gaisbauer (University of Salzburg); Prof Clemens Sedmak (University of Notre Dame).

Website: https://www.nature.com/palcomms/for-authors/call-for-papers#religion-poverty

Submissions welcome on a rolling basis throughout 2018!

Poverty and religion are interrelated in different ways. On the one hand, for various religious traditions poverty is both an aspect of a particular faithful life (e.g. monastic communities) and giving to the poor is seen as a religious duty. Such traditions have evolved over time and expanded the role of faith-based organisations nowadays play in welfare provision and international development. Faith-based organizations play an important role in poverty alleviation both in rich and poor countries. These actions and practices, as well as their religious and theological underpinnings, deserve scrutiny. On the other hand, religion plays an important role in the life of people living in poverty: how they experience and shape their living, and how they find their place in society and the communities in which they. The role of religion in justifying certain inequalities and processes of exclusion (e.g. in India) and thus contributing to the sustainability of poverty is another important theme worth reflection.

We invite papers, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, that consider the following overarching question: how can religion be used as a vehicle to overcome structures of poverty, and how does it sometimes hinder such processes?

Contributions from sociology, development studies, religious studies, economics, theology, and other social sciences and humanities are welcomed; as are insights from different geographical settings, forms of poverty, and religious traditions.

This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions/proposals will be welcome throughout 2018.

This special issue is run in collaboration with the 2017 Salzburg Conference on Interdisciplinary Poverty Research, organised by the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research of the University of Salzburg: www.poverty-conference.org

Session Proposals for “Revisiting Religion and Politics Research”

The ECPR Standing group on Religion and Politics invites you to submit panel proposals for the section

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

Section will be organized within the ECPR General Conference in Hamburg, 22-25th August 2018.

Section Chairs: Anja Hennig (ahennig@europa-uni.de) and Luca Ozzano (luca.ozzano@unito.it)

  • You may send your CfP via the Religion-Politics mailing-list, contact the section chairs
  • Deadline for submitting panel proposals to the section chairs: FEBRUARY 5th 2018
  • Panels include 3-5 papers
  • Panel proposals with max. 500 words and up to 5 keywords
  • Please note: For participating at the ECPR conference you must be registered at MyECPR: https://ecpr.eu/Login.aspx (please consider conference fees for non-members)

Section Description:


Despite an established research tradition on religion and politics that cuts across several sub-disciplines of political science as well as neighboring disciplines (or even constitutes a genuine sub-discipline), there is very little reflection today about the state of the art of this research.

As religion regained prominence in the public and political spheres since the 1970s and 1980s, a major concern among scholars was to question the prevailing secularization paradigm. The empirical study of religious actors, and their interaction with political forces, brought evidence to the fact that neither religion and politics are totally separated nor is religiosity fading away as modernization and secularization theories had assumed.

A vibrant academic debate joining comparative politics and political theory emerged. In recent years, the debate in Europe and the US gained in relevance through the salience of public debates brought by the rise in immigration from religious diverse backgrounds, and by new developments in relation to family patterns, reproduction techniques, genetic engineering and euthanasia.

Editorial projects abound. Several new handbooks on religion and politics (e.g. Jeff Haynes (2009/2016) or the Oxford Dictionary of Religion and Politics in the United States (2009), books and edited volumes have been published and new journals (e.g. APSA “Religion and Politics”) have been created. The disciplinary fragmentation and, thus, the sometimes isolated analysis of similar phenomena, however, leads to some conceptual confusion, and debate on the challenging questions in empirical and theoretical terms could be of use.

Against this background the Section invites scholars revisiting religion and politics research by reflecting perspectives, methods, pre-assumptions, general achievements and debating future questions. It is envisioned to publish a collection of papers selected from this section as a handbook.

For details:

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

Session Proposals for “Revisiting Religion and Politics Research”

The ECPR Standing group on Religion and Politics invites you to submit panel proposals for the section

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

Section will be organized within the ECPR General Conference in Hamburg, 22-25th August 2018.

Section Chairs: Anja Hennig (ahennig@europa-uni.de) and Luca Ozzano (luca.ozzano@unito.it)

  • You may send your CfP via the Religion-Politics mailing-list, contact the section chairs
  • Deadline for submitting panel proposals to the section chairs: FEBRUARY 5th 2018
  • Panels include 3-5 papers
  • Panel proposals with max. 500 words and up to 5 keywords
  • Please note: For participating at the ECPR conference you must be registered at MyECPR: https://ecpr.eu/Login.aspx (please consider conference fees for non-members)

Section Description:


Despite an established research tradition on religion and politics that cuts across several sub-disciplines of political science as well as neighboring disciplines (or even constitutes a genuine sub-discipline), there is very little reflection today about the state of the art of this research.

As religion regained prominence in the public and political spheres since the 1970s and 1980s, a major concern among scholars was to question the prevailing secularization paradigm. The empirical study of religious actors, and their interaction with political forces, brought evidence to the fact that neither religion and politics are totally separated nor is religiosity fading away as modernization and secularization theories had assumed.

A vibrant academic debate joining comparative politics and political theory emerged. In recent years, the debate in Europe and the US gained in relevance through the salience of public debates brought by the rise in immigration from religious diverse backgrounds, and by new developments in relation to family patterns, reproduction techniques, genetic engineering and euthanasia.

Editorial projects abound. Several new handbooks on religion and politics (e.g. Jeff Haynes (2009/2016) or the Oxford Dictionary of Religion and Politics in the United States (2009), books and edited volumes have been published and new journals (e.g. APSA “Religion and Politics”) have been created. The disciplinary fragmentation and, thus, the sometimes isolated analysis of similar phenomena, however, leads to some conceptual confusion, and debate on the challenging questions in empirical and theoretical terms could be of use.

Against this background the Section invites scholars revisiting religion and politics research by reflecting perspectives, methods, pre-assumptions, general achievements and debating future questions. It is envisioned to publish a collection of papers selected from this section as a handbook.

For details:

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