Authors: Hoang, Chung Van

• Is the first work in English to comprehensively cover new and indigenous religious groups in post-Renovation Vietnam
• Takes an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to study three distinct new religious groups
• Gives a voice to religious minorities that are often the victim of stereotyping, misunderstanding, and punitive treatment
• Brings together discussions of changing State-religion relations in Vietnam and in East and Southeast Asia in light of the thesis of multiple-modernities

This book approaches newly emerging religious groups through the interplay between religious and non-religious spheres in the specific context of Vietnam. It considers the new religious groups as a part of religious reconfiguration in Vietnam caused by intensified interactions among these spheres. It explores changes of relationship between religions, and changes between the religious sphere and the political, economic and public spheres in contemporary Vietnam. Specifically, it traces trajectories of religious development in relation to politico-economic changes in this rapidly modernising nation. It tests a hypothesis that at least some new yet unrecognized new religious groups have a positive/ active role in modernisation rather than a negative/reactive role.

To this end, the book draws on a number of research approaches and methodologies in an effort to provide readers with a multi-faceted understanding of Vietnam’s new religious groups. The research is interdisciplinary in orientation, drawing on sociology and anthropology. It is also comparative in that it bases its argument on a consideration of three distinct new religious groups in Vietnam. The research is also qualitative and ethnographic in that it drew on some of the techniques associated with participant observation during a sustained period of fieldwork amongst the three religious groups.

The concept of religious reconfiguration developed in this book provides a framework for the study of religion in Vietnam which opens the way to further analysis from a comparative perspective. Meanwhile, an emphasis upon religious reinvention which addresses processes of remaking, transforming, legitimating and accommodating can be useful for research into New Religious Movements elsewhere in Asia. A research in the challenges of new religions could act as a catalyst for interdisciplinary studies based on detailed empirical study of religious diversity and of religious freedom by other scholars. It is hoped that this research might help to give a voice to religious minorities that are often the victim of stereotyping, misunderstanding, and punitive treatment.

The book is suitable for post-graduate students and social researchers who are interested in religious revival, religious diversification, State-religion relationships, and State’s regulation of new religions. 

Springer Publications co-sponsors the RC-22 Ivan Varga Prize for New Generation Scholars

Editors: Cotter, Christopher R., Quadrio, Philip Andrew, Tuckett, Jonathan (Eds.)

• Considers the place and impact of the New Atheism in contemporary social and intellectual life
• Tackles a contemporary, contentious phenomenon by examining the significance of the debate from a variety of perspectives, presenting the best-rounded scholarly account of the New Atheism to date
• Collects the work of international, highly renowned scholars from different disciplines and features interdisciplinary and innovative approaches

Whether understood in a narrow sense as the popular works of a small number of (white male) authors, or as a larger more diffuse movement, twenty-first century scholars, journalists, and activists from all ‘sides’ in the atheism versus theism debate, have noted the emergence of a particular form of atheism frequently dubbed ‘New Atheism’. The present collection has been brought together to provide a scholarly yet accessible consideration of the place and impact of ‘New Atheism’ in the contemporary world.

Combining traditional and innovative approaches, chapters draw on the insights of philosophers, religious studies scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, and literary critics to provide never-before-seen insights into the relationship between ‘New Atheism’, science, gender, sexuality, space, philosophy, fiction and much more. With contributions from Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom, the volume also presents diversity in regard to religious/irreligious commitment, with contributions from atheists, theists and more agnostic orientations.

New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates features an up-to-date overview of current research on ‘New Atheism’, a Foreword from Stephen Bullivant (co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Atheism), and eleven new chapters with extensive bibliographies that will be important to both a general audience and to those conducting research in this area. It provides a much-needed fresh look at a contentious phenomenon, and will hopefully encourage the cooperation and dialogue which has predominantly been lacking in relevant contemporary debates.

Springer Publications co-sponsors the RC-22 Ivan Varga Prize for New Generation Scholars

Giulia Liberatore (2017) Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain. Bloomsbury/ LSE Monographs in Social Anthropology

A paperback version will be available in 2018.

Preview chapters are available here:

http://Bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/Widget_Marketing.aspx?ID=1234567&ISBN=9781350027718&sts=r

About the book:

Somalis are one of the most chastised Muslim communities in Europe. Depicted in the news as victims of female genital mutilation, perpetrators of gang violence, or more recently, as radical Islamists, Somalis have been cast as a threat to social cohesion, national identity, and security in Britain and beyond.  Somali, Muslim, British shifts attention away from these public representations to provide a detailed ethnographic study of Somali Muslim women’s engagements with religion, political discourses, and public culture in the United Kingdom. The book chronicles the aspirations of different generations of Somali women as they respond to publicly charged questions of what it means to be Muslim, Somali, and British. By challenging and reconfiguring the dominant political frameworks in which they are immersed, these women imagine new ways of being in securitized Britain. Giulia Liberatore provides a nuanced account of Islamic piety, arguing that it needs to be understood as one among many forms of striving that individuals pursue throughout their lives. Bringing new perspectives to debates about Islam and multiculturalism in Europe, this book makes an important contribution to the anthropology of religion, subjectivity, and gender

by Martín Jaime (Editor)

http://urpilibros.com/diversidad-sexual-y-sistemas-religiosos-dialogos-trasnacionales-en-el-mundo-contemporaneosexual-diversity-and-religious-systems-transnational-dialo-p-1086.html?zenid=9bcc60fc5607f10142845bb4bf25397e

Programa de Estudios de Género, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos

Flor Tristán Centro de la Mujer Peruana

ISBN: 978-612-4033-24-7

Sexual Diversity and Religious Systems analyzes the relations between numerous expressions of sexual diversity and, some religious systems today. In contemporary societies, the relation between sexual diversity and the religious phenomenon has proven to be impressively rich.

On one hand, we witness the continuous rejection of sexual diversity within many religions through different strategies appealing to concepts like tradition, moral and nature. On the other, many groups has addressed the question and challenge within the LGBTI movement and within its own religious communities of thinking on the production of spirituality from the position of the sexual subject itself. In this scenario, we see how the work of representing spirituality within said communities is a way to go beyond the sexual subject and subvert spiritual expropriation. Currently, we can find several ways; we see the construction of religious communities based on sexual orientation and, in some cases, on gender identity and, at the same time, some religions with a brutal rejection on the same topic. Both ways live and meet at the same time.

This book, written in English and Spanish, consists of ten papers studying this phenomenon within Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Based on different methods and sources, they insist on understanding how religions influence and embody homoerotic and transgender practices and how the latter embrace and transform them. It takes us through the realities of many countries such as Chile, Argentina, Canada, United Kingdom, France and Iran.

Thus, in the face of this scenario, is crucial to take a comparative and systematic look on the relations between religious systems and LGTBI corposubjectivities in the contemporary world. In that way, this compilation seeks to present different perspectives of analysis on said relation from a comparative perspective within specific local and regional frames. These articles show us numerous analysis on the spirituality of people with homoerotic and transgender practices and desires, emphasizing on the study of historical, social and cultural dynamics where religious traditions play a relevant role on the encouragement or rejection of the rights of LGBTI people in contemporary societies. Also, this book aims at reflecting on spiritual productions (practices, rituals, perceptions, among others) carried out by LGBTI people within religious traditions.