3rd International Scientific Conference of the Lithuanian Society for the Study of Religions

LIFE HERE AND HEREAFTER: BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Vilnius, Lithuania

23-24 October, 2015

Vilnius University and Vytautas Magnus University

Call for Papers

Life here and hereafter is considered to be one of the core concerns of an individual throughout the history of humanity. Quest for the meaning of life, role of death, possibilities of life after death are challenged with a broad scope of perceptions, reflections and expressions among various spiritual and religious traditions, emerging spiritualities, groups and individuals.

This conference addresses the topic of life here and hereafter and focuses on beliefs and practices of diverse origins, their formation, spread and expressions. It also focuses on the past and current representations of the phenomenon in specific regions and worldwide, discussing its diverse manifestations and changes concerning institutional and individual religiosities on (trans)national and (trans)regional levels.

The conference welcomes both empirical and theoretical contributions from various disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary approaches towards beliefs and practices within the domain of life here and hereafter. Of particular interest are those that combine perspectives and methods drawn from all social sciences and humanities on historical, present, and newly emerging approaches towards conceptions, manifestations and representations, as well as research methods, issues and problems, and new directions in studies of this phenomenon.

The 3rd Conference of the Lithuanian Society for the Study of Religions Life Here and Hereafter: Beliefs and Practices will be held on October 23-24, 2015 at Vilnius University,Vilnius. We welcome scholars from religious studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, political science, and other disciplines to contribute to historical and contemporary studies of the role and manifestations of the phenomenon of life here and hereafter, in this way enriching its academic understandings. We expect individual paper proposals as well as panel proposals with three to four presentations.

We invite papers and panels including, but not limited to the following topics:

• - Methodological implications, challenges and issues
• - Life here and hereafter and their socio-cultural representations
  - Death and dying related beliefs and practices
• - Divinations, predictions and prophecies
  - The role of individuals and institutions in practices related to beliefs in life here and hereafter
• - Life here, hereafter and cultural memory
• - Life here and hereafter: religious and secular approaches
  - Life, dying and afterlife in traditional religious groups and churches in the past and in the 21st century
• - Life here and hereafter within contemporary spirituality, individual religiosity, combined forms of organized and individual religions
• - Institutional arrangements, development and changes of beliefs and practices within the domain of life here and hereafter
• - Afterlife and social imagination
• - Life here and hereafter in the public sphere
• - Life here and hereafter in the popular culture

Please submit a 250-300 words abstract of your presentation accompanied by a short CV by e-mail to: religiousstudieslt@gmail.com by June 15, 2015. If you are interested in another topic related to the study of life here and hereafter, we encourage you to organize a session/panel. In this case, please submit a 200-300 words proposal by July 15, 2013 to the same email address.

The authors of accepted proposals will be notified by July 15, 2015.

Key dates
Submission of paper and session/panel proposals – June 15, 2015
Notification of acceptance and opening of the registration – July 15, 2015
The final date of the registration for the conference – September 15, 2015
Final program – September 20, 2015

Fees

Conference fee (50 Euro) may be paid by bank transfer or in cash (not by card) at the registration desk.

The costs of travel and lodging should be covered by the participants.

Special events
Participants of the conference will be offered excursion in Vilnius city.

Organisers: dr. Eglė Aleknaitė (Vytautas Magnus University), assoc. prof. Milda Ališauskienė (Vytautas Magnus University), prof. Audrius Beinorius (Vilnius University), assoc. prof. Aušra Pažėraitė (Vilnius University), dr. Rasa Pranskevičiūtė (Vytautas Magnus University), prof. Edgūnas Račius (Vytautas Magnus University), assoc. prof. Annika Hvithamar (Copenhagen University).

Any conference related queries are to be sent to the conference email address. More information is available at https://en.religijotyra.lt/

Please feel free to spread this message.

Call for papers for panel at the BASR Annual Conference, Religion in the Global and Local: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Challenges, 7-9  September 2015, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

Panel: Religion, Ethics, and Economic Life

Organizers: David Henig and Anna Strhan (University of Kent)

The interrelations between religion, values, and the economy were central preoccupations in the work of the founding thinkers of anthropology and sociology. With both the growing marketization of different spheres of human activity and the questioning of current economic orders following the financial crisis of 2008, with religion often perceived as providing resources to (re)moralize the markets and challenge the idea that ‘the market has become God’ (Frank 2001), these questions are once again returning to prominence. Religions have responded to the global extension of market ideologies in the post cold-war era across different spheres of social life in complex ways.

Some have provided moral motivations and resources to foster work ethics and practices that closely align with broader logics of economic ‘growth’ and ‘productivity’. Others have offered challenges to the pervasiveness of the idea of human life as shaped by logics of commodification and the socio-economic inequalities associated with the expansion of global capitalism. Others have offered a critique of contemporary economic values while also drawing on market logics and practices to their own ends.

A growing body of recent scholarship has focused on such questions as the commodification of religion and spirituality, how religion is influenced by consumer culture, how faith-based organizations are involved in forms of welfare provision in neoliberal political economies, and how religious groups have responded to experiences of increasing economic scarcity. This panel seeks to open up analysis of the lived interrelations between religion, economics, and ethics. How are the ethical practices, values, and understandings of religious groups shaped by and responding to particular aspects of economic life? How do religious groups seek to engage with the question of what, or where, is the Good in economic and market practices? What does the increasing public prominence of some religious leaders’ comments on the economy tell us about the place of religion in wider social life, and
how does this relate to everyday religious interrelations with economic structures?

Please send a 200 word abstract to D.Henig@kent.ac.uk and A.H.B.Strhan@kent.ac.uk by 10 June 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS: 44th Annual Conference of the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS)
“Sectarianism in Islam and Muslim Communities”

Brown University, Providence, RI Saturday, September 19, 2015
Deadlines: Abstracts: May 15, 2015 Final Papers: August 31, 2015

Sectarian difference and conflict has been part of Islamic history from early times, beginning in a tangible, if not fully established, way during the First Civil War in the mid-1st/7th century. By the late 3rd/9th century, Islamic heresiographers began to document a wide variety of real or reified sectarian identities within the Islamic community. This sectarian history has always been tempered, however, by a well-established Islamic principle that allowed for a certain degree of theological and legal pluralism within the Muslim community, and the fairly widespread acceptance of the idea that the unity of the Muslim ummah was best achieved through the tolerance of a certain degree of diversity. Indeed, some might argue that “sects” and “sectarianism,” as they are understood in a Christian context, do not actually exist in the Islamic world, given that the unifying fundamentals of Islam – its scripture, its central beliefs and practices - are essentially the same across all interpretations of Islam, and communal boundaries have historically been more porous and informal between, for example, Sunnis and Shi`is than between certain Christian sects and denominations.

Nonetheless, conflict has waxed and waned between Sunnis and Shi`is, and among Shi`i groups, and there have been varying degrees of intolerance for smaller sectarian groups in the Islamic world. Today, sectarian intolerance and violence, particularly between Sunnis and Twelver Shi`is seems to be growing increasingly acute, not only in the Middle East, but also in South and Southeast Asia as well. This conference aims to explore the conceptual and religious significance of such sectarian divisions in Islam, as well as the practical and material manifestations of those divisions in Muslim communities both historically and in the contemporary world. The conference aims to examine the issue both in the context of Muslim majority countries, and among minority Muslim communities in North American and Europe. It seeks to investigate not only the religious and historical origins and bases for sectarian
differences in the Islamic world, but also the social, political, and economic conditions that generate, exacerbate, or ameliorate sectarian tensions.

We invite a diverse range of papers from professors and advanced Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences.

Abstracts (250 words) are due by May 15, 2015:

Abstracts ONLY from professors and advanced Ph.D. candidates will be considered. Abstracts will be evaluated according to the following categories: originality of theme, clear data and methodology, clarity and relevance of the proposal to the conference theme, and contribution to the conference theme. Final papers must be submitted by August 31, 2015.

Program panelists are required to preregister and pay non-refundable conference fees by June 29, 2015.

Program Chair: Professor Beshara Doumani, Brown University, Providence, RI
Send abstracts and final papers to Layla Sein, Director of Academic
Affairs, at conferences@naaims.org

CFP: Panel on ‘In Search of Faith: Itinerant Religiosities and Negotiated Moralities in Asia’
Conference: Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society, Melbourne, Australia, 1-4 December 2015
Conference Website: https://www.nomadit.co.uk/aas/aas2015/cfpan.shtml

Deadline for Abstracts: Friday, 12 June 2015

We would like to invite paper proposals to our AAS panel. Focusing on the ritual, missionary and pastoral dimensions of religion in the context of migration, this panel aims to explore how Asian migrant communities interpret religious commitments, grapple with alternative moralities and refashion narratives of displacement. A detailed panel abstract is appended below.

Please email your abstracts (max. 250 words) to the Co-Convenors of this panel by Friday, 12 June 2015. Our contact details are as follows:

• Sin Wen Lau, University of Otago (sinwen.lau@otago.ac.nz)
• Bernardo Brown, Asia Research Institute (aribeb@nus.edu.sg)

We look forward to hearing from all interested parties.

Panel Abstract:

Religious observance in a foreign country is not merely an effort to uphold traditional values and to connect to the homeland, it is an important way of negotiating alternative moralities, generating new meanings, re-signifying the experience of migration, and increasingly, extending the global reach of formerly regionally bounded religious traditions. This panel aims to unpack the religious innovations of Asian migrant communities in order to explore the lines of connection that emerge between transnational flows and religious identities. We focus on understanding how migrant communities pursue their religiosity when unfastened from local settings, and explore what spatial displacements do to religious experiences, practices and duties, and how the affective dimensions of migration are addressed by old and new religious commitments. In doing so, this panel examines the multiple ways in which migrant communities negotiate new and old moralities and how these activities factor in the quality of the migratory experience.