A New Book: The Sociology of Islam: Collected Essays of Bryan S. Turner

The Sociology of Islam: Collected Essays of Bryan S. Turner

Edited by Bryan S. Turner, The City University of New York, USA and Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Ashgate, 2013
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409462118

Taking a thematic approach, Bryan Turner draws together his writings which explore the relationship between Islam and the ideas of Western social thinkers. Turner engages with the broad categories of capitalism, orientalism, modernity, gender, and citizenship among others, as he examines how Muslims adapt to changing times and how Islam has come to be managed by those in power.

Contents: Preface, Daniel Martin Varisco; Bryan Turner: building the sociology of Islam, Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir; Part I Classical Approaches: Understanding Islam: Introduction, Bryan S. Turner; Islam, capitalism and the Weber theses; Origins and tradition in Islam and Christianity; State, science and economy in traditional societies; Conscience in the construction of religion: a critique of Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam. Part II The Orientalist Debate: Positioning Islam: Introduction, Bryan S. Turner; Orientalism, Islam and capitalism; On the concept of axial space : Orientalism and the originary; Orientalism, or the politics of the text; Leibniz, Islam and cosmopolitan virtue. Part III Islam Today: Sociological Perspectives: Introduction, Bryan S. Turner; ; Sovereignty and emergency: political theology, Islam and American conservatism; Class, generation and Islamism: towards a global sociology of political Islam; religious authority and the new media; Women, piety and space: a study of women and religious practice in Malaysia; The body and piety: the hijab and marriage; Islam, diaspora and multiculturalism; Shari’a and legal pluralism in the West; Appendix; Index.

About the Editor:

Bryan S. Turner is the Presidential Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York where he serves as the Director of the Committee on Religion, and he is concurrently the Director of the Religion and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters by Cambridge University in 2009 and his latest monograph called Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State (Cambridge University Press) appeared in 2011. He is the founding editor of a number of journals (Citizenship Studies, Body & Society and Journal of Classical Sociology) and book series (Muslims in Global Societies for Springer and Religion in Contemporary Asia for Routledge).

Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir received his PhD from the University of Western Sydney in 2011. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the co-author of two books called Muslims as Minorities: History and Social Realities of Muslims in Singapore (National University of Malaysia Press) and Muslims in Singapore: Piety, Politics and Policies (Routledge). His recent articles include “Rethinking the ‘Malay Problem’ in Singapore: Image, Rhetoric and Social Realities” and “Poetic Jihadis: Muslim Youth, Hip-Hop and the Homological Imagination”.