Research Committee on
Sociology of Religion, RC22
Program Theme: Religion and Social Inequality
Program Coordinators
- James V. SPICKARD, University of Redlands, USA, jim_spickard@redlands.edu
- Esmeralda SANCHEZ, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines, emysanchez2001@yahoo.com
On-line abstracts submission
June 3, 2013, 11:00 GMT - September 30, 2013 24:00 GMT. |
If you have questions about any specific session, please feel free to contact the Session Organizer for more information.
Proposed sessions
in alphabetical order:
Civil Rights and Religious Freedoms in a Secular World
Session OrganizerRoberto BLANCARTE, Colegio de México, Mexico, blancart@colmex.mx
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
Haifa`s Answer
Session OrganizerRoberto CIPRIANI, University of Rome, Italy, roberto.cipriani@tlc.uniroma3.it
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
The session offers a new way of interpreting visual sociology. The new developments refer to the fact that in recent years Visual Sociology has become an approach used also by those who were traditionally considered the “object” of sociological research. They have therefore become the “active subject”, through a process of development of the need for self-portraying that is to be considered a formidable value added and a natural evolution of the accessibility of the technical tools used in Visual Sociology. Moreover, individuals make use of the visual as a natural expansion of their ability to communicate, transforming the technological instruments and the new social media in part of their own personal language.
The authors analyze all this through their own experience of researchers who make use of visual sociology as a form of communication of their research results, making reference to a recent film-documentary they have filmed in Israel: “Haifa’s answer” The complex relation between the researchers, the people who are the “object” of the research and the context is explored under a number of perspectives, from which a multifaceted and fascinating alternation of roles with objects and subjects mutually engaging in intellectual and emotional challenges emerges.
Locating Religion in Civilizational Analysis
Session OrganizersEdward TIRYAKIAN, Duke University, USA, durkhm@soc.duke.edu
Said ARJOMAND, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA, Said.arjomand@stoneybrook.edu
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
Multiculturalism and Religion: Contemporary Challenges and Future Opportunities
Session OrganizerJoshua M. ROOSE, University of Western Sydney, J.Roose@uws.edu.au
Session in English
In a context defined by the globalization of information and ideas, increasing availability of new technologies, vast movements of people across national borders and the increased presence of religion in the public and political sphere, societies with official multicultural policies have hit a critical juncture. In the old world Western nations of Europe, multiculturalism has been increasingly portrayed as undermining national identity and security, a perspective largely based on the notion that religious (primarily Muslim) communities refuse to integrate and hold values incompatible with Western democratic traditions.
New world Western settler societies including Canada and Australia have largely reinforced a commitment to multiculturalism while emphatically rejecting ‘exceptionalism’ for religious minorities. The experiences of non-Western nations with flourishing pragmatic and everyday forms of legal pluralism and multiculturalism have been largely overlooked in contemporary scholarship.
This panel seeks to open a space for vigorous and informed sociological dialogue about current and potential future developments in the relationship between state forms of multiculturalism, legal accommodation and religion. In particular the panel invites contributions related to the following questions:
- How are Western states with official policies of multiculturalism dealing with the increased assertiveness of religion in a previously secular space?
- What social cleavages is this creating and where are fault-lines located?
- What strategies (if any) are multicultural states deploying to accommodate the emergence of different religious practices and to promote mutual respect and recognition?
- Where do multicultural states accommodate different legal systems associated with religious traditions and how are these accommodated within the secular legal system?
- What are the potential socio-political consequences of accommodation of different religious legal practices?
- What can Western multicultural nations learn from the non-Western developing world’s experiences of multiculturalism and accommodation of religious and legal pluralism?
Non-Religion in Question: Ethics, Equality, and Justice
Session OrganizersSuzanne SCHENK, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, susanneschenk@graviteers.de
Cora SCHUH, cora.schuh@gmx.net
Session in English
Recent research shows how in different parts of the world expressive nonreligiosity goes hand in hand with aims for social reform. Competing visions of ontology and normative orders are played out in societal battles over education, sexual rights, gender equality and social justice. For a number of outspokenly nonreli-gious groups in Europe, the United States, but also the Philippines, India and other regions, demonstrating the secular nature of our world is a key strategy in socio-political activism.
Concurrently, the normative and ontological base of secularism has been criticized as a culturally specific yet powerful form of moderating legitimacy. Secularism has thus been discussed in relation to the legal and moral reshaping of colonial states. In a similar take political liberalism has been the subject of considerable debate regarding its potential to grant equal access to the public sphere to both secular and religious citizens.
More research about how (non)religious ways of ‘being in the world’ and social activism are linked is needed. The panel therefore provides space to discuss the multiple entanglements of (non)religion with questions of justice, equality, and ethics. Conceptual contributions, as well as empirical research from different regions are welcome.
RC22 Business Meeting
RC22 Roundtable I. Religious Organizations
Session OrganizersJames V. SPICKARD, University of Redlands, USA, jim_spickard@redlands.edu
Esmeralda SANCHEZ, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines, emysanchez2001@yahoo.com
Session in English
RC22 Roundtable IA. The Impact of Neoliberal Policies, Practices and Ideas on Religious Organizations
Session OrganizerTuomas MARTIKAINEN, University of Helsinki, Finland, tmartika@abo.fi
Session in English
The session focuses on impacts of neoliberal policies, practices and ideas on religious organizations. The session departs from an understanding that the global implementation of neoliberal policies in order to promote free market ideology has also led to (spillover) effects on religious organizations.
Neoliberalism-inspired changes on religious organizations include, among others, new forms of management techniques and faith-based service provision, strategic planning, consumer orientation and novel types of co-operation, such as networks, projects and private-public partnerships. Many of such activities have been adopted from the private sector, and have been mediated via public administration as well as consulting and marketing agencies.
Neoliberalism is also evident in the adoption of business-like forms of organizations among newer forms of religion and spirituality. Ideologically, neoliberalism has also influenced theological thought. On the one hand, the growth of prosperity theology and mega-churches can be seen as expression of lived neoliberalism. On the other hand, neoliberalism has created opposition to its core values, whereby its focus on consumerism and a highly-individualized anthropology have been critiqued on religious grounds. Empirical submissions are preferred, but also theoretical pieces can be suggested.
The session welcomes submissions dealing with any religion and from all geographical areas.
RC22 Roundtable IB. Facing Inequality from the Perspective of Islamic Organizations
Session OrganizersKerstin ROSENOW-WILLIAMS, Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Germany, kerstin.rosenow@rub.de
Mattias KORTMANN, Potsdam University, Germany, matthias.kortmann@uni-potsdam.de
Session in English
The purpose of this session is to comparatively discuss how organized Muslims perceive the changing public discourse on Islam, how they respond in their organizational developments, and which challenges they have been confronted with during the turbulent last decade. Muslims living in countries where Islam is not the majority religion have received increasing public and media attention after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA and subsequent attacks worldwide. Although Muslim communities (their organization, their integration or discrimination against them) were already subject to scholarly studies in previous decades, this research area has gained prominence since the turn of the 21st century.
In contrast to existing studies, which often stress differing institutional systems in a top-down perspective (focusing on integration policies and state-church relations), this session underscores the benefits of a bottom-up perspective focusing on Islamic organizations. Scholars from various schools of sociology applying different theoretical, empirical, and comparative approaches are invited to discuss their research on Islamic organizations in different parts of the world. With regard to the conference topic of facing inequality we seek studies that address Islamic organizations as advocates of societal change and equal recognition as well as studies that analyze Islamic organizations’ adaptation to changing environments and societal inequalities.
We especially welcome paper proposals from sociologists from different countries who analyze Islamic organizations from a bottom-up-perspective. Comparative papers are also especially welcomed.
RC22 Roundtable IC. New Forms of Religious Organization
Session OrganizersThomas KERN, Heidelberg University, Germany, thomas.kern@soziologie.uni-heidelberg.de
Insa PRUISKEN, Heidelberg University, Germany, insa.pruisken@soziologie.uni-heidelberg.de
Session in English
Over the past decades, the issue of religious organizations and organized religion worldwide has been predominantly studied and analyzed in terms of the “religious economy approach”. The market has become a central concept of the sociology of religion. Religious change is modeled as an outcome of (rational) choice and production. Under competitive conditions, the success of a religious "firm" depends on the attractiveness of its offer (Finke/Stark/Iannaconne 1997: 351).
We argue that the "religious economies approach" neglects the social embeddedness of markets (White 1981: 1; Granovetter 1985). It does not take into ac-count, for example, that organizational structures as well as membership in organizations are impacted by changing institutional logics anchored at the societal level (Friedland/Alford 1991, Thornton et al. 2012), cultural frames at the field level (Lounsbury et al. 2003) and identity codes residing within an organization’s audience (Hannan/Hsu 2005). From this point of view, recent changes in the global religious landscape – for instance the rise of mega churches in the US and other world regions, the formation of Islamic organizations in Western Europe, the formal organization of Buddhist or Taoist spirituality in East Asia – are considerably affected by the emergence of new organizational structures and the transformation of organizational environments.
We invite papers which address religion from an organizational science perspective as well as papers which deal with new forms of organized religion.
- How do different degrees and forms of organization affect religious practices?
- How do institutional contexts influence the degree or form of religious organization?
- How are religious organizations affected by managerialism and the market as an institutional logic?
- To what extent do new organizational forms spread worldwide and influence local religious communi-ties?
- How can change processes at the field level as well as on the organizational level be described? What is the role of change agents, framing and legitimation within these processes?
RC22 Roundtable II. Organized Conversations on Religious Research
Session OrganizersJames V. SPICKARD, University of Redlands, USA, jim_spickard@redlands.edu
Session in English
RC22 Roundtable IIA. Lessons for Studying Religion in the African Diaspora: Charles H. Long and Ruth Simms Hamilton
Session OrganizerJualynn DODSON, Michigan State University, USA, dod-sonj2@msu.edu
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
A panel presentation organized by the African Atlantic Research Team of Michigan State University focusing on the research and scholarly work of two seminal authorities for guidance they provide in studying the African Diaspora. The thematic of the panel is religion and each paper will engage a religious tradition in a location of the African Diaspora of the Americas.
RC22 Roundtable IIB. Sociology of Orthodoxy: the Study of the Church Life in the Contemporary Russia
Session OrganizerMaria PODLESNAYA, St.Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Russia, yamap@yandex.ru
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
At the present time in Russia there is a process of institutionalization of Orthodox religiosity which is expressed in quite different ways including folk rituals and the observation of the Church Charter. This process involves quite different social segments of the population and is acquiring various forms. It is evident that from the point of view of sociology it is possible to determine the process of institutionalization:
- by studying the revival of old and formation of new Church institutions
- by analyzing the religious actions and the behavior of subjects
- as well as by analyzing those meanings which they put into it
Religion and Countering Gender Inequality
Session OrganizersAnna HALAFOFF, Deakin University, Australia, anna.halafoff@deakin.edu.au
Emma TOMALIN, University of Leeds, United Kingdom, e.tomalin@leeds.ac.uk
Caroline STARKEY, University of Leeds, United Kingdom, trs6cf@leeds.ac.uk
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
The intersections between religion, culture, gender and inequality are current, potent and highly charged. We need only to reflect on the Delhi gang rape and its aftermath, the rejection of women Bishops in the Church of England and Malala, student and women’s educational campaigner shot by the Taliban in order to spark emotive, and often polarized, debate. Re-sponding to high-profile events such as these, this panel will bring together cutting-edge research into the diverse ways that religion intersects with gender inequality. Our interest is in presenting scholarship from wide-ranging locations, but focusing particularly on contemporary religious traditions and contexts that may not have received adequate academic attention. Our panel will invite papers that are able to dissect the complex meaning of ‘gender inequality’ in relation to religious traditions, and that speak to two primary themes;
- Gender inequality and religious leadership
- The role of transnational religious movements in countering gender inequality
Religion and the Transition to Adulthood
Session OrganizerKati NIEMELA, Church Research Institute, Finland, kati.niemela@evl.fi
Session in English
The period between childhood and adulthood – often called as emerging adulthood, is a period of great changes overall, often also in relation to religion. The young generation stands out as a challenging group for churches and religious organizations. They cast doubt on traditional beliefs and values and do not blindly follow what they have learned in childhood. Numerous studies indicate that young people today are less religious than earlier age cohorts. Young people are at the forefront of religious change and they are the ones showing future direction of religiosity.
This session welcomes research on young people and their relation to religion. We welcome papers on young people‘s beliefs, practices and faith and their engagement with institutional religion. Papers on religious change in the transition adulthood are of special interest.
Religion as a Factor in the Composition and Decomposition of Ethnic Identities
Session OrganizerMiroljub JEVTIK, University of Belgrade, Serbia, jevticmiroljub@yahoo.com
Session in English
Composition of ethnical identities has been influenced by many different factors. One of them is religious belonging. If we take a look into world’s ethnical map we will see that religion has composed many ethnical identities. As an example take India and Pakistan, or Balkan where ethnical identities were made by religious belonging. Situation is similar with other coun-tries. If we take Georgia for example, where majority of population are Orthodox Christians, we will see that ethnical community of Adjaras was made only because they were, in general, Muslims even though they speak Georgian. In this subfield, most important fact is the influence of Islam on ethno – genesis in Africa. Under the influence of Islam, many indigenous African ethnical groups are transformed into Arabs and accepted Arabic as a language of communication with other Muslims, but in their own homes as well. Consequently, today we have Arabs who belongs to totally different races.
Religion in the Era of Climate Entropy
Session OrganizerVer RIVAS, Philippine Association for the Sociology of Religion, Philippines, verrivas@yahoo.com
Session in English
Climate entropy has become an undeniable geological phenomenon that is increasingly pushing humans to admit that the anthropocentric paradigms that they have relied on for more than two millennia in terms of negotiating with Life, World, Planet and Society will no longer work in a continuing entropic transition that the earth undergoes. Seen from an apocalyptic standpoint, this entropic process is making science deeply aware of its limitations as an epistemic paradigm that cannot save the world, or simply put, cannot offer humanity a therapeutic value with which to negotiate the future of human existence. Science, in fact, is increasingly exposing the vulnerability of human life vis-à-vis this ongoing process through its power of discovering how Nature works.
So far, the indication is that science has reached the limit of its descriptive power in terms of discovering what can finally be discovered of the dynamics of natural processes. It does not matter where entropy will lead human life in this planet. What matters is how we are to negotiate the future of human life, world, and society in terms of the evolution of geological time.
Seemingly, this apocalyptic tone is not new in human history. Historians of religion like Thomas Altizer, Jacob Taubes and to a certain degree Carl Schmitt have em-braced the idea of an apocalyptic retreat from history, noting that history itself is an extension of natural pro-cesses whose dynamics are not exempted from entropic duration. The retreat from history thus offers a therapeutic yet tragic awareness that to relieve the tension of entropism humanity must learn to survive in a post-historical, post-secular, post-modern condition of existence. Incidentally, this has been the perennial motif of religious apocalyptic pronouncements of end times ever since the ancients. It would seem then that religious consciousness does not vary much from a strictly scientific awareness of entropic duration.
We welcome papers that tackle this problematic of apocalyptic pronouncements vis-à-vis the ongoing process of climate entropy using any available sociological tools of analysis.
Religion, Nationalism and Transnationalism
Session OrganizersPatrick MICHEL, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, patrick.michel@ens.fr
Adam POSSAMAI, University of Western Sydney, Australia, A.Possamai@uws.edu.au
Brian TURNER, City University of New York, USA, bry-ansturner@yahoo.com.sg
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
With the permeability of borders and the greatly increased speed and volume of international communication and transportation, we are now in a new regime of transnationalism. In this post-Westphalian world, religions are now taking part in a network society that cuts across borders. If world reli-gions have dominated the global sphere for centuries, we are now faced with a plethora of new religious re-compositions that strive across frontiers.
This session will explore the impact of globalisation on the relation-ship between religion and nation, religion and national-ism, and the changes that transnationalism has brought on religious groups (and vice versa).
Religious Diversity and Social Change in Contemporary East Asia
Session OrganizerMichiaki OKUYAMA, Nanzan University, Japan, mokuyama@nanzan-u.ac.jp
Session in English
Following the prolonged economic growth of the past few decades, some East Asian countries have experienced financial crises, stagnating economies, and the worsening of social and economic inequality. With folk and popular religious cultures as their basis, and prior to the Western impact of Christianity in the modern period, the Confucian tradition from China and the Buddhist tradition from India prevailed to varying degrees in different areas of East Asia. Against this backdrop of religious diversity composed of folk religions, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity, a number of new religious movements also appeared in the modern period. Thus the religious diversity of East Asia exhibits a variety of characteristics within countries that have developed their own distinctive political and economic systems.
This session will discuss the kind of relevance this religious diversity in East Asia has had regarding contemporary social changes in the region, and how it has reacted to social changes in general, in particular social inequality.
Sociology of Religion in Africa: Challenges and Prospects
Session OrganizerAfe ADOGAME, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, A.Adogame@ed.ac.uk
Session in English
The social-scientific study of religion in Africa has witnessed remarkable shifts, growing from narrow concerns to a wide variety of paradigms. In what way(s) is the African experience of modernity unique and relevant for wider social theory, and sensitive to the discursive nature of sociological interest of what makes religion socially (ir) relevant? The sociology of religion has been criticised as imposing itself on the study of religion in Africa. The view contends that there is no such thing as sociology of religion in Africa, it is more appropriate to write about the study rather than the sociology of religion in Africa.
How far have scholars engaged sociological concepts, theories and methodologies in responding to the particular circumstances of the African continent, especially its trajectory in the production of knowledge? Are scholars formulating adequate social analysis models to respond to the challenges inspired by the expressive performance of religious forms in African socio-political domains? Religious forms in Africa either reinforce or transcend sociopolitical, ethnic, regional, class, age and gender identities and boundaries. How do we interrogate challenges of disorder, conflict/violence; the social relevance of religion in civil societies; and the negotiation of boundaries and identities under the impact of globalization?
Spiritual and Religious Capital
Session OrganizersChristo LOMBAARD, University of South Africa, South Africa, ChristoLombaard@gmail.com
Maria HAMMERLI, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland, maria.haemmerli@unine.ch
Session in English
Scholars exploring the function of religion and spirituality do not seem to reach agreement regarding the issue of inequality: some researchers identify religion and/or spirituality as factor/s in reproducing existing patterns of inequality, whereas other authors argue the opposite, that religion/spirituality contribute to overcoming social inequality. A third position is pos-sible in this debate, expressed by a minority of authors who argue that religion/spirituality go beyond the issue of inequality because they point to something other than social order. This panel will focus on the understanding of reli-gion/spirituality as forms of “capital” and will therefore investigate religious/spiritual capital in relation to ine-quality. We invite papers which approach these issues both theoretically and empirically.
Furthermore, we would like to draw attention to the fact that an increasing body of literature distinguishes between religion and spirituality as two opposing in-stances. Within journalism a kind of tradition has been developed in which "spirituality" is most often used with positive connotations when "religion" is used with negative implications. This reflects the developing wider societal reflex to regard religion as restrictive, whilst spirituality offers more open engagement with existential questions (e.g. with a popular slogan that one`s orientation could be "spiritual but not religious"). In theology "religion" most often still describes traditional dogmatological and institutional concerns, whereas "spirituality" refers to the wider and deeper, that is more experiential and more intuitive, aspects of religiosity. Recent developments in religious studies have shown that “religion” is in decline, whereas “spirituality” is on the rise.
Surprisingly, this differentiation is not entirely clear when it comes to identifying specific capital-type re-sources religion/spirituality give rise to. Much of the literature about religious/spiritual capital uses these terms interchangeably and fails adequately to explain the content underpinning the concepts. We encourage papers which can contribute to addressing specificities of religious and spiritual capital and relate them to the issue of inequality.
The Best of All Gods: Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe
Session OrganizerJose MAPRIL, New University of Lisbon, Portugal, jmapril@gmail.com
Session in English
After decades of relative obscurity, the research about religion in Europe has re-surfaced and forced new academic debates regarding new religious landscapes, secularism and post-secularism. In truth, the social sciences of religion never ceased to question the place of the religious and the secular in society within the historical framework of modernity and post-modernity. This has been extensively described in sev-eral contexts such as the UK, France, Germany, among several others, but in the Southern European case, despite the existence of compelling research, a systematic, comparative debate seems to be missing.
The objective of this panel is to explore, both empirically and theoretically, the sites and politics of religion and secularism in Southern European countries. We would like to invite authors to address the complex relations between the multiple religiouscapes and the sites and politics of the religious in Southern European countries. By ‘sites’ we are referring to:
- spatial settings such as mosques and other religious edifices and grounds;
- spaces and itineraries of religious mobilities – from pilgrimage paths to networks and circulations of ideas and objects;
- but also arenas - political and apparently secularized – where policies, ideologies and discourses are produced in the context of claims made by religious groups to “good” citizenship (see for instance, Pentecostal and Islamic social services in the current period of economic crises and austerity policies)
The Role of Religion in the Public Sphere
Session OrganizerInger FURSETH, University of Oslo, Norway, inger.furseth@kifo.no
Session in English
A major trend in many countries during the past twenty years is that religion has become more visible, and perhaps more significant, in various public sphere(s). Different factors affect the seemingly new visibility of religion, such as religious diversity due to immigration, minority claims for equal opportunities to practice religion, the mobilization of religious move-ments with political aims, upheavals, and efforts to contest or protect the traditional roles that certain forms of religion have had or have not had in the public.
These factors have implications for the relations between religion and the state, the political debates on religion, the role of religion in the media, and what religious leaders do to position themselves in changing religious landscapes. This session discusses the role of religion in relation to the state, in politics, the media, and civil society. It also deals with more theoretical claims of the return of religion to the public sphere(s). Comparative, cross-national and cross-cultural papers are especially welcome.
Uses of the Past: The Politics of Religion and Collective Memories
Session OrganizersMarian BURCHARDT, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany, Burchardt@mmg.mpg.de
Mattias KOENIG, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany, Koenig@mmg.mpg.de
Session in English
The recent rise of public religion has been closely connected to the reconstruction of collective memories of religious as well as secular pasts. Collective and cultural memories are (re-)activated whenever reference to the past is brought to bear for different purposes such as the definition of collective identities and the drawing of symbolic boundaries; or for addressing past injustices and claiming rights. In some places, collective memories contain hegemonic accounts of history which give a distinctive place to certain religious communities or even grant supremacy to particular religious traditions, thus limiting the scope and legitimacy of religious pluralism.
In other places, increasing religious diversity and secularization have forged a context in which some, often rapidly growing, social groups mobilize secularist memories and posture as proponents of modern rationality or liberal democracy and conceptualize such notions as “culture”. Many such memories respond to experiences of collective trauma while their forms of expression range from ritual to media spectacle and legal discourse. Across the globe, such collective memories have furthermore become subject to international standardization and transnational diffusion processes.
This panel aims to discuss the politics of cultural memo-ries of religion and secularism and its variegated uses. Adopting a decidedly global comparative approach, it welcomes theoretical, macro-sociological case studies as well detailed ethnographies from any part of the world.
Welfare and Civil Society: The Role of Religion
Session OrganizerPer PETTERSSON, Karlstad University, Sweden, Per.petterson@kau.se
Session in English
In addressing issues of social inequality politicians and policy makers across the world are increasingly talking about religion, not least in the sense of calling on faith based organizations to play an active role as welfare providers as part of civil society. At the same time religious groups and organizations struggle with the impact which the increased cooperation with public authorities this requires can have on identity, theology and potential to act as critic of the system.
This session invites papers which address these perti-nent issues. Contributions may address evidence from empirical research and/or theoretical reflection on issues of faith based organizations as welfare providers or challengers of value systems in welfare, individual religiosity in the encounter with welfare services, faith-based organizations as actors in civil society in the wel-fare arena or other related issues.
Joint Sessions
Click on the session title to read its description.Religion, Immigrants, and Health
Joint session of RC15 Sociology of Health , RC22 Sociology of Religion [host committee] and RC31 Sociology of Migration
