IPSA 23-26 July 2016 Istanbul Call for Papers Panel: Politics of International Migration

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We now know that large-scale mobility of people across international
borders is not only a one-time movement from country A to country B. It is
a phenomenon that creates different levels of transnational spaces, where
not only the people, but also the sending and receiving societies and
governments are largely involved and affected. Thus, the panel is looking
for those papers that are integrating different perspectives of the wide
variety of fields that are interested in the study of migration, such as
political science, sociology, economics, and anthropology. We welcome
studies on human migration with different indications, and mainly research
that focus on comparative findings with significance beyond a single case
study; novel methodological techniques; and innovative theoretical
contributions on the various dimensions and effects of international
migration. We argue that migration molds not only societies, but also has
important policy consequences, all of which largely fit the special focus
of the 2016 conference Politics in a World of Inequality. Accordingly, we
are interested in papers exploring –but not limited to- the following main
themes:

• Policy responses to international migration on different levels, i.e.,
international, national, local
• Debates on diversity and citizenship
• Migration and mobility nexus

Language: English
Chairs: Dr. Deniz Sert & Derya Ozkul
Discussant: Dr. Dogus Simsek

Deadline for paper submission: 7 OCT 2015
You will find all the details about the congress and guidelines for
submissions on the conference website:
https://istanbul2016.ipsa.org/events/congress/istanbul2016/home

CFP: The Muhammad Cartoons – Ten Years After

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Ten years after – The Muhammad Cartoons: Perspectives, Reflections, and Challenges

Aalborg, September 28-29, 2015

Ten years have gone since the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten decided to
publish 12 Muhammad cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as cartoonists ‘imagined him’. The
cartoons and the stories about them cost the lives of 150 people. Denmark’s reputation abroad
and export to Arab speaking countries were severely impacted. In addition, it has affected the
opportunities of immigrants, who experience they are being stigmatized and not fully allowed
to be Danes. Many Danes have had their ideas of womanhood among Muslims re-enforced,
ideas of incompatible values have been strengthened, and the debate about freedom of speech
reified. For many non-Western Muslims, the cartoon story has become an icon of Western
arrogance and hatred towards Islam. Their anger came from a deep sense that they are not
respected, that they and their most cherished feelings are “fair game.”
New research suggests that increased racial discrimination and enforcement of racial-cultural
logics of belonging facilitates mobilization of minority youth groups to crime, violence, political
activism, carelessness and terrorism. This development exposes a “schismogenetic” process
that merits academic attention analysis and solutions.
Some of the questions for the conference:
– How is the gap between “the academics” and “the politicals” being played out?
– Is there a gap between the understanding of the crisis in Denmark and abroad?
– What are the differences in the debates about Islam in contemporary Denmark and
other non-Muslim countries?
– Ten years after – did the insult, the ridicule, and the mocking lead to a better society?
– How does the cartoon story relate to the moralization of Danish society and the
emergence of online social media?
– How are democratic values and free speech affected ten years after by the spread of
Islamophobia, policies, and confrontational news media coverage and debate?
Key note speakers are Lene Hansen, Mark Allen Peterson, Deepa Kumar, Peter Hervik and
Arun Kundnani. Chairs of workshops are Carsten Stage, Signe Kjær Jørgensen, Anja Kublitz,
and Mikkel Rytter. Read more at the conference website:
http://www.ten-years-after.aau.dk
Please send your title, abstract, affiliation and contact information before 28 August via
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mc2015
Please send correspondence to:
Peter Hervik hervik@cgs.aau.dk

The post CFP: The Muhammad Cartoons – Ten Years After appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

CFP: Psychotherapy and Religious Values

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CALL FOR PAPERS
for the topical issue of Open Theology journal
PSYCHOTHERAPY AND RELIGIOUS VALUES


Open Theology  (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth) invites submissions for the topical issue “Psychotherapy and Religious Values”, under the general editorship of Prof. P. Scott Richards (Brigham Young University).

 

In 1980, Allen E. Bergin, published a landmark article “Psychotherapy and religious values” in the Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology. The article, which became a citation classic, produced intense interest, enthusiasm, and controversy in the psychology profession. Ultimately, it helped energize an international movement to bring religious perspectives into mainstream psychology and psychotherapy. Great progress has been made during the past 35 years in this effort, but more work remains to be done. The focus of this special issue of Open Theology is to commemorate the publication of Bergin’s 1980 article by affirming the progress that has been made and exploring directions for the future in the movement to bring religious values and spiritual perspectives into mainstream psychotherapy. Manuscripts with a theoretical, historical, theological, empirical, and/or clinical focus will all be considered for the special issue. For empirical studies, a variety of research methodologies are encouraged, including experimental, practice-based evidence, process, case reports, single-N, and qualitative designs.


 
HOW TO SUBMIT

 

Submissions are due by December 31, 2015. To submit an article for the special issue of Open Theology, please use the on-line submission system http://www.editorialmanager.com/openth/  choosing as article type:  ‘Special Issue Article: Psychotherapy and Religious Values’.

All contributions will undergo a critical review before being accepted for publication.
Further questions about the thematic issue can be sent to P. Scott Richards at scott_richards@byu.edu. In case of technical questions or problems please contact Managing Editor of the journal Dr. Katarzyna Tempczyk at katarzyna.tempczyk@degruyteropen.com.

 

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Book Announcement: Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India

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Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India
Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen
Routledge 2015
India is the second largest country in the world with regard to population, the world’s largest democracy and by far the largest country in South Asia, and one of the most diverse and pluralistic nations in the world in terms of official languages, cultures, religions and social identities. Indians have for centuries exchanged ideas with other cultures globally and some traditions have been transformed in those transnational and transcultural encounters and become successful innovations with an extraordinary global popularity. India is an emerging global power in terms of economy, but in spite of India’s impressive economic growth over the last decades, some of the most serious problems of Indian society such as poverty, repression of women, inequality both in terms of living conditions and of opportunities such as access to education, employment, and the economic resources of the state persist and do not seem to go away.

This Handbook contains chapters by the field’s foremost scholars dealing with fundamental issues in India’s current cultural and social transformation and concentrates on India as it emerged after the economic reforms and the new economic policy of the 1980s and 1990s and as it develops in the twenty-first century.

Following an introduction by the editor, the book is divided into five parts:

Part I: Foundation

Part II: India and the world

Part III: Society, class, caste and gender

Part IV: Religion and diversity

Part V: Cultural change and innovations

Exploring the cultural changes and innovations relating a number of contexts in contemporary India, this Handbook is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Indian and South Asian culture, politics and society.

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Workshop: Religious diversity in Asia

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Workshop: 7.-8. December 2015. Organised by the Centre for Contemporary Religion, Aarhus University, funded by the Danish Research Council.

 

Applications are invited for a limited number of people to participate in the two days’ workshop in Aarhus, Denmark. Expenses for travel, food, and accommodation will be covered.

The study of religious diversity has in recent years been rising on the agenda. Focus has almost exclusively been on North America, Europe and Australia and issues concerned with maintaining cohesion in these societies. It is however obvious that religious diversity is not a phenomenon confined to the west. Especially in Asia religious diversity at both individual and institutional level has a long history with many examples of both syncretic traditions and religious divisions of labour. Yet the concepts associated with research on religious diversity are clearly drafted in a Western context. This means that they are constructed upon concepts of membership and adherence, with a strong Christian and Western bias not necessarily fitting Eastern models of multiple and contextual affiliations.

Previously, the Critical Analyses of Religious Diversity (CARD) have met for two workshops in Denmark (http://cardnetwork.au.dk/). This network explores ways in which research could proceed in order to craft concepts and models of understanding religious diversity which will allow fitting representations of religious diversity in Asia, and in a broader sense create new perspectives for understanding religious diversity globally.

A workshop on the topic was held in Delhi in May 2015, and the network will have two more workshops in Kyoto and Nagoya in October before this final one in Aarhus in December, where a limited number of Asian scholars are invited to continue the scholarly discussions and make strategic plans for future cooperation and publication of an anthology on religious diversity.

The network is be led by Jørn Borup, Lene Kühle, and Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, Aarhus University.

Invitees are expected to pesent a paper and be prepared to engage in a critical discussion of their work. In addition, we want our participants to think critically about the assumptions that have been made about religious diversity in their research methods/context.

Some of the topics that we hope to have included in the workshop are:

–       Terminology; do you (your colleagues) use “religious diversity”, “religious pluralism” and/or other concepts?

–       Methods; Are you using quantitative data, qualitative data, census data, or micro, macro?

–       Empirical data; Is your research focused on specific geographical areas, or do you engage in comparative work? Are there specific points about religious diversity in Asia compared to the West?

–       Specific topics; do you investigate religious diversity in relation to demography, ethnicity, nationality, gender, human rights, diaspora, media, law, politics?

If interested in joining the workshop, please send a 250 word abstract by Oct 1st  2015 to Jørn Borup, JB@cas.au.dk

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Job Opening: Assistant Professor specializing in Islam (tenure-track) – Vassar College

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The Department of Religion at Vassar College seeks applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor (to begin Fall 2016) specializing in Islam. Vassar College is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer, and applications from members of historically underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply. Vassar is strongly committed to fostering a community that reflects the values of a liberal arts education and to promoting an environment of equality, inclusion and respect for difference. The area of specialization within Islam is open, and we would especially welcome a candidate whose research or teaching addresses issues of gender and/or sexuality. We also seek a candidate whose theoretical and methodological approaches complement those of other faculty in the department. The candidate will be expected to offer courses in Islamic traditions as well as develop other courses in his or her areas of specialization. The candidate should be prepared to teach at regular intervals an introductory course on Jews, Christians, and Muslims and contribute to a required course on method and theory in the study of religion. In addition, the department encourages partnerships with the variety of multi/interdisciplinary programs on campus. Appropriate scholarly language skills, teaching experience, and a Ph.D. in hand at the time of employment are required. Teaching load in the first year is four courses; after that it is five courses per year. Preliminary interviews of selected applicants will be conducted at the annual American Academy of Religion conference from November 22- 24, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. For full consideration applications should be received by October 9, 2015. Candidates are asked to submit a letter of application, a current C.V., an article-length writing sample, a sample syllabi, graduate school transcript (unofficial copies accepted for initial application), and three letters of recommendation. To apply, please visit https://employment.vassar.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=51888 Please direct any questions about the position to Jonathon Kahn, Chair, Department of Religion, jokahn@vassar.edu.

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CFP: Imagining an Alternative ‘Post-Secular’ State: Historicizing and Comparing National Struggles over Resecularization

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A RC43 Religion and Politics Panel, 24th IPSA World Congress of Political Science, July 23-28, 2016, Istanbul, Turkey.

In this era of public religions, religious revivalists of various traditions have become powerful forces not just socially but politically in many parts of the globe. In the more successful among such cases, they have either captured the whole (as in Iran) or penetrated some crucial parts (as in Turkey and India) of the modern state, thereby garnering institutional (including discursive) leverages through which to enforce their versions of rather totalizing ‘post-secularities’ over their variously-oriented and thus multidirectional societies.

Following the footsteps of the recent scholarships built on the notions of multiple and diverse secularities, this panel proposes to historicize and compare various local efforts at resecularization, or societal (often national) struggles over reformulating and reinstitutionalizing state-religion relationships after experiencing significant periods of religious resurgence or dominance. As in secularization processes, such resecularization processes are analytically better approached as phenomena that are inherently multi-level and dimensional, contentious and mutually constituting, and nationally varying.

This panel aims to focus on cases in which resecularization involves imagining and institutionalizing alternative ‘post-secular’ state-religion relationships in their national contexts, and comparatively examine and discuss various locally-rooted cultural articulations of, and struggles for, such alternative ‘post-secular’ states.

Convenor & Chair: Yasuyuki Matsunaga (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan)
Co-Chair: Umut Azak (Okan University, Turkey)
Discussant: Naser Ghobadzadeh (Australian Catholic University, Australia)

Deadline to submit Paper proposals: October 7, 2015

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RC-22 Reminder: Propose papers for next July’s 3rd Forum of Sociology in Vienna!

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Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing to remind you to propose papers for next July’s 3rd Forum of Sociology in Vienna.  RC-22 will have at least 15 open sessions, which I’ve listed below.  Please go to  http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/rc/rc.php?n=RC22 for detailed descriptions and a link to the CONFEX online submission systems.  

The deadline is September 30th — just 6 weeks away.  All submissions have to go through CONFEX, so I suggest that you get yours in early.  The last minute rush for the Yokohama conference created a major traffic jam.  Don’t get caught in that!  Put your proposal in now!

Vienna is a great place.  I was there for a few days this July and enjoyed it tremendously.  Program coordinator Vineeta Sinha, her co-coordinator Olga Breskaya, and I have some special things planned around the conference theme: “Religion, Secularity and Post-Secularity: Crafting Meaningful Futures”​.  We’d love to have you there.

Here are the session topics, with their organizers:

  1. The Categories of Religion and the Secular in the Post-Secular Discourse (Mitsutoshi Horii)
  2. Negotiating Religion and Citizenship in Global Context (Olga Breskaya)
  3. Religion in the Public Sphere (Enzo Pace and Orivaldo Lopes)
  4. Welfare and Civil Society: The Role of Religion (Per Pettersson)
  5. The Politics of Religious Heritage: Memory, Identity and Place (Mar Griera)
  6. From New Age and Spiritualities to Different World Views: Individualized Religious Beliefs, Autonomy Values and Individualized Morality (Tilo Beckers and Pascal Siegers)
  7. Religion, Gender, and the Internet (Anna Halafoff and Emma Tomalin)
  8. Topics and Forms of Religious Mobilization in Europe (Sinisa Zrinscak)
  9. Religious Trends Among Second Generations in Europe​ (Roberta Ricucci)
  10. Religious Radicalization (Inger Furseth)
  11. Religious Engagement and Spiritual Empowerment in Asian Countries: Quest for Human Security and Self-Fulfilment (Yoshihide Sakurai)
  12. Studying the African Diaspora Significance for Struggles Toward a Better World(Jualynne Dodson)
  13. World Religions and Axial Civilizations (Steven Kalberg & Said Arjomand)
  14. Religion, Plus and Minus: Human Rights; Inter-Religious Understanding; Peace and Violence.  (NOTE: this will be three sessions, but the CONFEX computer system forces us to treat them as one session for now.  Please specify the session in which you wish your paper to appear.)
    • ​Religion and Human Rights (no organizer as yet)
    • How to Build Better Understanding among Religions (Miroljub Jevtik)​
    • Religion, Peace, and Violence (Mohammad Ashphaq)
  15. A session co-sponsored with RC54: The Body in the Social Sciences: Rhythms and Rituals (Bianca Maria Pirani)

Please pass the word to others who would like to join us.

Best,

Jim

——————————————————————

James V. Spickard, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
University of Redlands
Redlands, California 92373
jim_spickard@redlands.edu

— President of Research Committee 22 (Sociology of Religion) of the International Sociological Association

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TASA Conference 2015 Cairns Neoliberalism and Contemporary Challenges for the Asia-Pacific November 23-26, 2015

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Dear Colleagues,
With the Australian annual Sociological Association conference in November, now is the best time to combine work and pleasure in Australia.

This year’s TASA Conference promises to be special. With world-class keynote and plenary speakers and a choice of 13 special interest groups, our theme, Neoliberalism and Contemporary Challenges for the Asia Pacific, will give space for world-class thinkers in sociology and related fields to interrogate the impact of neoliberalism on the lives of people around the world. We seek to understand the global effects of neoliberalism, especially how it is experienced in different local contexts. What challenges and opportunities does neoliberalism present, and how does sociology respond to those challenges?

But the location of this year’s conference gives this conference the edge. We proudly invite you and your family to visit the vibrant and beautiful Cairns. Our venue, the Shangri-La Hotel offers five star care at off-season rates. Containing the conference and delegate accommodation, the Shangri-La facilities are generous, cool and picturesque and break-out rooms have views on the tropical gardens or famous marina and gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. Family friendly room, restaurants and pools in a tropical setting will satisfy delegates’ accompanying families.

The hotel is on the Cairns Marina where you can take a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef, or hire a car and tour the World Heritage Rainforests. Within a couple of hours is the Daintree Forest. For more intrepid adventurers, Cairns is the gateway to the Cape York Peninsula, and the Gulf of Carpentaria, home to unsurpassed cultural and ecological heritage.

There is so much being planned for this year’s conference, with post-conference tours, Women’s Breakfast, a fun conference dinner that (by demand) promises dancing, and networking opportunities with stimulating company. With the Aussie Dollar continuing to fall, this is the time to to plan your next trip to Australia.

Check the conference website for full information, and note the key dates in your diary – postgraduate papers are due by 31 July; all abstracts are due by 28 August; early bird registration closes 2 October; and all presenters must be registered by 23 October. Our timeline won’t allow for any extensions so get your papers and abstracts in!

Warm regards
Theresa Petray and Anne Stephens
TASA2016 Conveners

www.conference.tasa.org.au

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