Author: katieaston

Posted on by katieaston Calls for Papers, News and Events

Event: ESA Research Network 34 – Sociology of Religion

An interesting conference for the network, regarding forms of secularism and trends of believing without belonging.

ESA Research Network 34 – Sociology of Religion

Transformations of the Sacred in Europe and Beyond
First bi-annual conference, 3-5 September 2012 at the University of Potsdam, Campus Griebnitzsee

The thesis of secularization, once sheer uncontested in the social sciences, is increasingly under fire. Secularization is nowadays often deconstructed as an ideology or mere wish dream that is intimately connected to the rationalist ambitions of modern Enlightenment. Such alleged blurring of morality and science, of what ‘is’ and what ‘ought’, informing sociological analysis obviously obscures clear sight on recent developments in the Western world.

Countless empirical and theoretical studies convincingly demonstrate that religion is alive and well in Europe and beyond. Particularly after the attacks of 9/11 in 2001, religious identities have become salient in a situation of cultural polarization and religious pluralization. Moreover, we are witnessing a trend towards ‘believing without belonging’ (Davie, 1994) and – particularly in those European countries that are most secular – a shift from organized religion to ‘spiritualities of life’ (e.g., Heelas and Woodhead, 2005), paganism and ‘popular religion’ (Knoblauch, 2009). And although the thesis of secularization has always been highly problematic from a non-European or global perspective, the rapid globalization of Islam and the Evangelical upsurge – especially in Africa, Latin America and East Asia – fly in the face of the long-held expectation that religion is doomed to be a marginal or socially insignificant phenomenon.

Evidently, then, the focus of sociological analysis has shifted over the last decades from religious decline to religious change. More than that: it is theorized that we are living in a “post-secular society” (Habermas, 2005) where religion is re-vitalized, de-privatized and increasingly influences politics, voting behavior, matters of the state and ethical debates in the public domain (e.g., Casanova, 1994). Motivated by such observations, the mid-term conference calls for papers addressing changes in the field of religion and, more in particular, transformations of the sacred in Europe and beyond. Particularly we welcome studies covering the following topics:

  • Studies on how and why conceptions of the sacred, religious beliefs, doctrines, rituals and organizations of long-standing religious traditions – such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism – transform under the influence of processes of globalization, individualization, mediatization as well as changing gender relations.
  • Studies dealing with trends of believing without belonging, i.e. non-institutionalized beliefs, personal ‘bricolage’ and privatized conceptions of the sacred outside the Churches, Chapels and Mosques. Encouraged are also studies addressing new, more informal ways of ‘belonging’, religious communication and collective effervescence, i.e. in loose social networks, discussion groups or virtual communities on the internet.
  • Studies covering popular religion and post-traditional spirituality, i.e., New Age, esotericism, paganism, occultism, discussing for instance an epistemological turn from belief to experience and emotion; a shifting emphasis from transcendence to immanence; from seriousness to playfulness; or a transition from dualism to monism.
  • Studies dealing with implicit religion, i.e. addressing a re-location of the sacred to seemingly secular domains in society such as self-identity, sports, modern science and technology. This avenue of research may also include the place and meaning of the sacred (i.e., religious narratives, symbols and images) in popular media texts – in novels, films, series on television or computer games.

These topics are rough guidelines; papers dealing with religious change and the transformation of the sacred in Europe and beyond other than these outlined above are also very welcome. Furthermore we invite PhD and post-doc candidates to contribute to a poster session, including work in progress; the best poster will get a – small, but nice – prize.

Contact details

University of Potsdam

PD Dr. Heidemarie Winkel

esa-2012@uni-potsdam.de

Postal Address:

August-Bebel-Straße 89

D-14482 Potsdam

Posted on by katieaston Calls for Papers, News and Events

CFP: Alternative Salvations conference 18 September 2012

Alternative Salvations

University of Chester, 18 September 2012, 10:30-4:30

CFP DEADLINE 18 May 2012

The Conference
To speak of salvation is, broadly, to speak about transformation from one present reality into a new, transformed and better reality. While the language of salvation itself is not necessarily found in every religious tradition, the hope of, or incentive to work towards, such transformation is a widespread characteristic of many religious traditions. In Christianity, there are a number of dominant perspectives on salvation associated with particular traditions, usually expressed in grand future eschatological narratives. But what of alternative approaches to salvation that have developed outside of established religious orthodoxies? The conference will explore how ‘unorthodox’ readings of sacred texts inform salvation experience; how life transformations outside of religious contexts might be considered spiritual; how  ideas of this-worldly salvation are politicised; how ideas of salvation are simultaneously secularised and infused with new power; what alternative salvations can be discovered within Christianity and how might they be practised. In particular, we are seeking to explore the ways that alternative religious, spiritual and secular understandings of the notion of salvation already shape, and have the potential to shape, how people live and act in Christian and post-Christian contexts.

Call for Papers
This exciting conference breaks new ground in exploring alternative approaches to salvation. Proposals for short papers are invited on any aspect of the theme of ‘alternative salvations’ as outlined here. Papers will normally be 20 minutes in length with an additional 10 minutes for discussion. Applications to submit a short paper should include:
·         Proposer’s name and affiliation
·         a title for the paper
·         a 200 word abstract
·         Details of any audio-visual equipment you will need to deliver your paper

Short paper proposals should be submitted to alternativesalvations@chester.ac.uk by no later than 4:00pm on 8th May 2012. Applicants should know the outcome of
their proposal by 18th May 2012.

Conference costs: £28 (£18 for unwaged and students) inclusive of lunch and refreshments.

More details about the conference and a booking form can be found at:http://www.chester.ac.uk/sites/files/chester/salvation%20conference.pdf

Posted on by katieaston Calls for Papers, News and Events

CFP: Religion, Value, and a Secular Culture 5 & 6 November 2012

Religion, Value, and a Secular Culture

Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (CRVP)

University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban (South Africa)
5 & 6 November 2012

By the term “secular culture” is meant one which problematizes the foundations for the various religious beliefs that make up the traditions of that society, though the public order may not be
founded on any particular expression in those traditions, of the ethical framing of life together. The shift from a premodern culture is characterized by two central changes: (i) the greater degree of individual freedom. This is recognized as a key value in changing societies and is given expression in the democratic institution of universal suffrage; and (ii) the emergence and prestige of the sciences and of scientific method as the default paradigm of human knowledge.

As the major religious traditions acquired their canonical expression in premodern culture, they do not to any great extent deal with a thought-out response to the major factors or key values which characterize contemporary culture. Thus the first factor challenges the traditions to re-think attitudes to women, to moral rules and values, and to hierarchy; the second factor calls upon religious thinkers and leaders to be involved in dialogue with the sciences and knowledge acquired thereby.

One response to these changed conditions of society has been to remove religion and religious beliefs altogether from public debate. This is then framed solely in terms of individual human rights and the values of equality and tolerance. However, in the absence of any foundation for these rights and values, this framework might itself seem arbitrary and imposed, in particular in a global situation of the interaction of more developed with still developing cultures and economies. A purely procedural democracy and ethical framework might disallow real dialogue on substantive values or with persons.

Not amenable to scientific inquiry strictly speaking. Religious fundamentalism, for its part, sees no possibility of such dialogue, and can be seen, as does Karen Armstrong, rather as a reaction
thereto.

Papers are invited from any discipline whether philosophical, theological-religious, sociological, psychological, legal, political, and on any issue arising out of these intellectual challenges:

– Developments within religious traditions in response to secularity

– Conflicts and divisions within religious traditions in meeting the new conditions for religious beliefs

– Differing political frameworks for regulating interaction between state and religion

– Legal matters arising from separation of church and state

– Religious traditions as challenging dominant models of secular ethics, in particular a possible bias towards individualism

– The problems of building human community and countering fragmentation in conditions of a secular culture

– Fundamentalism as response and resistance to secularity; recourse to violence

– Secularisation in relation to neo-colonialism

– Responses of particular countries in the face of secularism – South Africa, Turkey, United States, and others

– Secularism depicted and problematized in fiction – Pamuk’s Snow, Dastgir’s A Small Fortune, for example

– Secularism and particular religious traditions – Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, for example

– Romantic love as a theme in religious responses to secular changes – Pamuk, Dastgir, Shutte’s Conversion, for example

– Transcendence in a framework of immanence in the religious traditions

– African traditional thought and response to secularism

– Debates between science and religion – open and closed versions of neo-Darwinism

– Studies of a contemporary writer on these theological themes: Karen Armstrong; Keith Ward; Mustafa Akyol; Mark Johnston; for example; or on the ethical themes: Alisdair MacIntyre, Herbert
McCabe, Marilynn Robinson, for example

– Philosophical frameworks for fruitful dialogue between secular culture and religious traditions: B. Lonergan; Charles Taylor; and others

For more details please contact:

Professor John Patrick Giddy
University of Kwazulu-Natal
Durban
South Africa
Email: Giddyj [at] ukzn.ac.za
Web: http://www.crvp.org/conf/2012/durban.htm

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Call for Papers – New Forms of Public Religion 5-7 September 2012


Please see below, details of CFP for a conference on New Forms of Public Religion organised as part of the  AHRC/ESRC funded Religion and Society Programme. The conference will take place at the Divinity School, St John’s College, Cambridge, CB2 1TW

Call for Papers

The fact that religion has not privatised, but remains an important aspect of public life, is now well recognised.  But talk of ‘public religion’ can be vague and unfocused. The aim of this conference is to explore – with new findings – the forms which public religion is taking today, not only in the West, but elsewhere in an increasingly connected world.

The conference streams indicate the main arenas in relation to which public religion will be discussed, and on which papers are invited. Additional suggestions are also welcome:

  • The Market and Religion
  • Politics and Religion
  • Law and Religion
  • Religion, Media and Civil Society
  • Violence (State and Non-state) and Religion
  • Religion in Public Places and Spaces
  • Religion, Health and Welfare
  • Religion and Education
  • Religion and Migration

Speakers include:

Lori Beaman

José Casanova

The Rt Hon Charles Clarke

Grace Davie

Pamela Dickey-Young

Stewart Hoover

The Rt Revd Graham James

Meredith McGuire

Nancy Nason-Clark

Jim Spickard

Linda Woodhead

The conference will showcase thirty or so projects funded by the Religion and Society Programme which have new findings in this area. These will be supplemented by the papers received through this open call.

Individual paper proposals (max. 200 words) should be submitted to:  Peta Ainsworth:  p.ainsworth@lancaster.ac.uk by 30th April 2012.

The conference is subsidised by the sponsors and costs £100 per delegate, £50 for postgraduates/unwaged (for the entire conference) or £50 per day, £25 for postgraduates/unwaged.  The conference fee excludes accommodation and evening meals.  For further details and registration go to:http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/new_forms_of_public_religion

A limited number of bursaries are available for postgraduates in the UK who need to travel some distance to Cambridge.  Please send an email with your registration form to Peta Ainsworth stating in one paragraph why you require assistance and how much your travel costs will be.

Posted on by katieaston News and Events

Stathis Gourgouris, Lessons in Secular Criticism, Thinking Out Loud 2012

“Thinking Out Loud: The Sydney Lectures in Philosophy and Society” aims to bring a leading international thinker to UWS annually to present a series of public lectures. The lectures presented by each speaker will have a common theme and they will subsequently be published by Fordham University Press.

  • Lecture 1: Monday, 21 May, “Secular Criticism as Poetics and Politics”
  • Lecture 2: Wednesday, 23 May, “Why I Am Not A Post-Secularist”
  • Lecture 3: Friday, 25 May, “The Prohibitive Politics of Political Theology”

Times: 5.30 pm (for 6 pm) to 8 pm
Place: State Library of New South Wales, Metcalfe Auditorium

Registering is essential for each lecture. You can register on the State Library’s website.
Click to register for Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3.

Download the Seminar Flyer

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Deadline reminder 27 April 2012 and Updated CFP for the NSRN Annual Conference

NONRELIGION AND SECULARITY RESEARCH NETWORK 

CONFERENCE 2012

Call for Papers| 4-6 July 2012, Goldsmiths, University of London

 Nonreligion and the Secular: New Horizons for Multidisciplinary Research

Registration now open!

Conveners: Lois Lee (ll317@cam.ac.uk), Stacey Gutkowski (stacey.gutkowski@kcl.ac.uk), and Stephen Bullivant (stephen.bullivant@smuc.ac.uk)

Conference Coordinator: Katie Aston (k.aston@gold.ac.uk)

There is an urgent need to bring discussions of micro-level nonreligion, atheism and secularity into contact with treatments of political and institutional secularism – a pressing and vibrant area of academic discussion which has so far focused on the protection and constraining of religion, and not sufficiently considered nonreligious and atheist actors.

This conference welcomes which engage with this core problem, or with nonreligion, atheism and/or secularism in isolation. Topics include:

  • The relationship between nonreligion, atheism, and/or humanism and secular polities and secularist ideologies.
  • The nature of secularity, secularism and postsecularism
  • The nature of nonreligion, atheism and/or humanism in contemporary society and in global context
  • The representation of secularism, nonreligion etc in law and policy / treatment of nonreligion and atheism in theories of multiculturalism, religious pluralism and postsecularism
  • The role of New Atheism is society, culture and politics – and its relationship to ‘lay atheisms’ or other nonreligious and secularist discourses
  • The psychology of secularism or nonreligion, atheism, etc.
  • Secularism, nonreligion and atheism in material culture
  • Conceptual and empirical relationships between religionand nonreligion and/or secularism
  • Research development, methodological issues and teaching in these subject areas

Following decades of neglect, the academic study of nonreligion has grown rapidly in the past five years. The primary aim of this conference is to bring together scholars across a range of academic disciplines (sociology, anthropology, theology, political science, psychology, history, international relations, area studies) to begin to untangle the confused and individually contested concepts of nonreligion and the secular. Is nonreligion a subcategory of the secular or vice versa? How do the two terms structure one another? What are the practical and theoretical implications of the concepts, such as they are and/or in alternative formulations? The aim of this international conference is to contribute to addressing this lacuna. While discussions of nonreligion and the secular have been running largely in parallel, they are potentially mutually enriching topics with significant bearing outside of the academy. This conference will consolidate the achievements already made over the past five years by nonreligion scholars and forge new, multidisciplinary dialogue between these researchers and those primarily working with the concept of the secular. This conference will bring together a range of internationally renowned scholars, including keynote speakers Gracie Davie (Exeter), Callum Brown (Dundee), Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig), and Humeira Iqtidar (King’s College London).

This conference will interrogate three dimensions and welcomes both empirically- and theoretically-based paper contributions which address the following:

1) Nonreligion as a concept in its own right

2) The nonreligious in relation to notions of the secular

3) The implications of nonreligion research for pressing social and political issues associated with discussions of the secular

Publication Outcome: We are planning to publish a selection of the papers presented at the conference in an edited volume.

 The deadline for abstract submission (250 words max) is 27 April 2012. Please send your abstract together with a short biographical note to Katie Aston at k.aston@gold.ac.uk

In collaboration with:

_____________________________________________________________________________

Registration is now open!

Full conference (exc. accommodation and evening meals): £145 (£110 unwaged); day rate: £65 (£45 unwaged).

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First events listed for the new programme of the Study of Religion and Non-Religion at the London School of Economics.

The Forum on Religion is pleased to announce the establishment of a new Programme for the Study of Religion and Non-Religion at the London School of Economics.

The Programme for the Study of Religion and Non-Religion, based in the Department of Anthropology, aims to bring together staff and research students from across LSE, and within the wider academic and policy communities, working on issues to do with religion, secularism, and “non-religious” practices, beliefs, and traditions. The main aims of the Programme are to:

• Foster and provide a framework for primary research

• Facilitate academic and public discussions on issues relevant to religion, atheism, secularism, humanism and post-humanism

• Provide a platform for researchers and stakeholders to showcase and communicate their findings to broader academic, public, and public policy audiences

The Forum on Religion is becoming part of the new Programme for the Study of Religion and Non-Religion and will continue to host public lectures and an interdisciplinary seminar series. For more information on the Programme, visit the website or contact Dr Matthew Engelke at m.engelke@lse.ac.uk

We will continue to advertise Forum on Religion events through their mailing list.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Seminar

Religion and Non-Religion: A Roundtable Discussion
With Dr Amanda van Eck (INFORM), Dr Matthew Engelke (LSE Anthropology), Dr Simon Glendinning (LSE, European Institute), Dr John Madeley (LSE Government), Rev James Walters (LSE Chaplaincy)
9 May 2012, 16.30-18.00
Seligman Library, Department of Anthropology, Old Building, LSE

Public lectures

At the Origins of Modern Atheism
Speaker: Rev Dr Giles Fraser
Discussant: Prof John Gray (London School of Economics)
Chair: Dr Matthew Engelke (London School of Economics)
6 June 2012, 18.30-20.00
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE
This event will be followed by a reception and marks the public launch of the Programme for the Study of Religion and Non-Religion

Ethics as Piety
Speaker: Prof Webb Keane (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Dr Faisal Devji (Oxford University)
27 June 2012, 18.00-19.30
New Academic Building LG.09, LSE

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

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Registration Now Open for the NSRN Annual Conference

Registration for the NSRN annual conference is now open.

The conference will take 4-6 July 2012, at Goldsmiths, University of London further details and a programme will be published in late May 2012

Full conference (waged) £145
Full conference (unwaged) £110
Day registration, (waged) £65
Day registration, (unwaged) £45

Please download, complete and return the Registration Form, NSRN conference 2012.doc to k.aston@gold.ac.uk

Please note, a late registration fee – of £30 for full conference registration and £10 for day rates – will be added after 17 May.

For details of accommodation in the local area, please see the following link

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Publication: First issue of the Journal of Religion in Japan (JRJ)

 

A new journal dedicated to Japanese religions, the Journal of Religion in Japan (JRJ) published from Brill.

Of particular interest to the network is the first issue, which focuses on Religion and the Secular in Japan and is now available. Brill is offering free online access to JRJ 1/1

Contents:

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN JAPAN 1/1 (March 2012)

Publisher’s note
Editorial
Articles

  •  Ian Reader. Secularisation, R.I.P.? Nonsense! The ‘Rush Hour Away from the Gods’ and the Decline of Religion in Contemporary Japan.
  • John Nelson. Japanese Secularities and the Decline of Temple Buddhism.
  •  Mark Mullins. Secularization, Deprivatization, and the Reappearance of ‘Public Religion’ in Japanese Society.
  •  Elisabetta Porcu. Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and the Secular in a Japanese Urban Setting.

Book reviews

  • Paula Arai. Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011 (Helen J. Baroni).
  • Ugo Dessì (ed.). The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010 (Paul Watt).
  • Lori Meeks. Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010 (Matthew Mitchell).