BSA Meeting Room, Imperial Wharf, London

15 December 2011, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Religion is not a neutral subject. As with other significant constituents of identity, such as sexuality, gender, ethnicity, or class, the subject of ‘religion’ as a topic for study is not straightforward. And yet, we study it, deconstruct it, analyse, and measure it, recognising as we do that definitions are bound to be contested, fluid, and sometimes slippery. What are the particular challenges and choices this presents in different disciplines, in different places and times? And what are the ethical, political and methodological implications of this?

To find out more about how participants from a variety of disciplines and contexts have engaged with the choices and challenges of teaching and studying religion, join us on December 15 at the BSA Meeting Room in London, for a BSA Socrel symposium, chaired by Abby Day (Department of Religious Studies, University of Kent and Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex) and Anna Strhan (Department of Religious Studies, University of Kent). We are grateful to the Higher Education Academy, for funding. It won’t be your usual ‘stand-and-deliver’ event. Our presenters are working hard to condense their work into short summaries that will be distributed to all participants in advance of the day via e-mail. All participants will be expected to read the summaries and come prepared for a full day of engaging in vibrant exchanges across disciplines, countries, methods and other conventional boundaries.

Total delegate numbers are restricted to 30. Registration for the symposium is now available on the BSA website at http://bsas.esithosting.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10172

Information on the venue location and transport links, is available at http://www.britsoc.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/62CE3722-EE65-4B30-8058-90E8ACEFB636/0/BSA_Imperial_Wharf_directions041209.pdf

For any further information, please contact Abby Day (a.day@sussex.ac.uk) and Anna Strhan (as702@kent.ac.uk). The full programme for the day will be published on the BSA Socrel website:http://www.socrel.org.uk/

Members of the Modern Cultural History Seminar are reminded that Professor Callum Brown, of the University of Dundee, will speak tomorrow, Wednesday, 12 October, at 5:00 pm in the Panelled Combination Room, Gonville Court, Gonville and Caius College.

The title of the paper is:  ‘The People of No Religion:  The Demographics of Secularisation in the English-Speaking World since c.1900’.

21 September, 2011
EASA Network Conference
Atheism and Anthropology: Researching Atheism and Self-searching Belief and Experience

University College London, Daryll Forde seminar room, 2nd floor, Taviton Street 14
Sponsored by the European Association of Social Anthropologists and EASA Anthropology of Religion Network

Convenors
Ruy Llera Blanes (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon)
Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic (University College London)

Headline clashes between new atheists such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and various religious leaders have shown that strong convictions inform atheist and religious discourses, searching to convey their own propositional truths. Some people argue that atheism has turned militant; others suggest religious education is a menace. Yet, what is atheism? How are subjectivities, ideas, embodied practices and material environments inflected with atheism? These matters are often neglected in anthropology for the simple reason that the discipline itself is an offspring of methodological atheism caught in an awkward relationship with theology and religious performances.

This workshop adopts a two-pronged approach to the research of atheism. We have invited scholars who research atheism as historical, political, and cultural articulations of non-belief, atheistic critique, political and practical disinterestedness in matters of religions. Through our workshop, we will explore the definitions and manifestations of atheism through the comparison and analysis of a number of ethnographic case studies. Furthermore, we will address the questions of specifically religious reflexivity in anthropology by considering the ethical and methodological implications of conducting research as atheist anthropologists and representing religious traditions and ontologies in the secular language of anthropology.. A few questions worth considering:

• Is an anthropology of atheism possible, or necessary?
• Are atheism and religiosity competing, opposed regimes of truth? Can atheism be researched as a form of belief? What are the additional dimensions of atheism that are not covered by the concept of belief?
• What does secularism tell us about atheism?
• Is atheism as awkward as theology for anthropology? Is anthropology an inevitably non-theistic discipline? Can you teach anthropological theories of religion to students of anthropology who take witchcraft seriously?

Keynote Lecture given by Matthew Engelke (London School of Economics)

Update: December 2011 – The NSRN have published an Event Report on this event. Here are the details:

Atheism and Anthropology: Researching Atheism and Self-Searching Belief and Experience Workshop
University College, London, 21 September 2011
Report by Lorna Mumford, University College London
Published by the NSRN, 14 December 2011