https://orientblackswan.com/details?id=9789390122004

Authors:

Sudha Sitharaman is Professor, Department of Sociology, Pondicherry University, Puducherry.

Anindita Chakrabarti is Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

The resurgence of religion and its militant mixing with politics is now a ubiquitous feature of our times. Since 9/11, discussions on religion, particularly Islam, have been characterised by debates surrounding the rise of political Islam, war on terror and the ascent of religious politics globally. Islam, particularly, appears as the bearer of a frightening tradition, and stereotypes render it an anathema in the modern world. The notion of a unitary, timeless and unchanging religion has been reinforced not only by sections of academia and the media, but also through the Muslim communities’ interpretations and representations of their own religion.

Religion and Secularities challenges these quotidian ‘facts’ about Islam. It brings together a collection of essays focusing on the reconfiguration of Islam in the world’s largest democracy, India. Investigating the relationship between religion, civil society and the state, this volume explores the nation’s long history with Islam as well as the categorisation of Muslims as a minority community.

Based on ethnographic studies conducted in different regions of the country—from Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal to Karnataka and Kerala—this volume addresses the diverse issues of religious piety that include community activism and civic participation; disputes and debates around visitation to historic-religious sites; the changing contours of matrilineal practices in a Muslim community; and how Muslim women negotiate personal/Islamic law in a plural judicial landscape. The essays highlight the impossibility of understanding contemporary Islam outside the logic of modern, secular-liberal governance—a standpoint that helps take the secularism debate forward.

This volume will be valuable for students and scholars of sociology, social anthropology and religious studies.

Virtual book launch next week. The book is Civil Religion and the Enlightenment in England: 1707-1800 . This is by a colleague of mine here at Cardiff University, Ashley Walsh. He’s an historian and treats the subject historically, but with interest in the question of civil religion among sociologists of religion.

Along with Walsh, the event will feature Rachel Hammersley (Newcastle) and Stephen Taylor (Durham), and another Cardiff historian, Lloyd Bowen, will host the event. It’s 4pm on Tuesday 8 September, and this is the Zoom link. https://cardiff.zoom.us/j/97119035062?pwd=QjF0aGdJWkgvRDVBNDhrcmU3WXl2Zz09. 

For more details on the book itself, here’s a link to the publisher’s site: https://boydellandbrewer.com/civil-religion-and-the-enlightenment-in-england-1707-1800.html

Edited by Adam Possamai – Professor, Western Sydney University and Anthony J. Blasi – Tennessee State University (Retired)

The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion takes a three-pronged look at this, namely investigating the role of religion in society; unpacking and evaluating the significance of religion in and on human history; and tracing and outlining the social forces and influences that shape religion.  This encyclopedia covers a range of themes from:

• fundamental topics like definitions
• secularization
• dimensions of religiosity to such emerging issues as civil religion
• new religious movements

This Encyclopedia also addresses contemporary dilemmas such as fundamentalism and extremism and the role of gender in religion.

It is now available both in print and online: https://au.sagepub.com/en-gb/oce/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-the-sociology-of-religion/book245093

Autori e curatori: Fenggang Yang , Emanuela Claudia Del Re

Contributi: Roberto Cipriani

In breve

Tradotto per la prima volta in Italia, il volume affronta il tema del revival delle religioni, della loro “resilienza” e ri-emergenza anche in un’area di stretto controllo e di periodica repressione quale la Cina contemporanea, su cui lo studio si focalizza. Prendendo spunto dal contesto cinese, il libro getta quindi nuova luce anche sulle trasformazioni religiose intervenute nel mondo occidentale nello stesso periodo storico.

Presentazione del volume

Sono principalmente due i nodi centrali che vengono messi a tema in questo libro, che appare nella sua prima traduzione italiana, ed entrambi sono estremamente attuali e rilevanti. Il primo riguarda il revival delle religioni, la loro “resilienza” e ri-emergenza anche in un’area di stretto controllo e di periodica repressione quale è la Cina contemporanea, su cui lo studio si concentra.
Il secondo nodo riguarda la trasformazione delle religioni, le loro dinamiche interne, che Yang analizza a partire dalla sua originale categoria di lettura (il triplice mercato religioso) secondo la quale le regolamentazioni politico-amministrative di una nazione non intervengono tanto nella eradicazione della religione (nonostante dure persecuzioni) ma piuttosto nella dinamica di un bisogno religioso che si adegua e si canalizza in forme sotterranee e clandestine (il mercato nero), ma anche in nuove forme espressive di confine (il mercato grigio), in cui pseudo-religioni e spiritualismi di varia origine si contaminano e si influenzano reciprocamente.
Lo studio condotto sull’esperienza cinese risulta essenziale nel gettare nuova luce anche sulle trasformazioni religiose intervenute nel mondo occidentale negli stessi decenni. E infine il libro, con la sua rigorosa documentazione, mette in evidenza anche l’importanza degli studi scientifici sulle religioni rispetto alle dinamiche dell’esperienza religiosa, la presenza di pregiudizi e di categorie ideologiche vincolanti, e infine il ruolo del coraggio intellettuale che permette la ripresa di tali studi anche in contesti difficili, quale l’orizzonte del marxismo ateo dominante in Cina negli ultimi settanta anni.

Fenggang Yang è professore di Sociologia all’Università Purdue di West Lafayette (Indiana, USA). Studioso di livello internazionale, è considerato la massima autorità nel campo degli studi di sociologia della religione in Cina. Già presidente (2014-15) della Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, è il primo presidente della East Asian Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2018-2020). Autore di oltre 130 pubblicazioni (monografie, curatele, saggi in volumi e riviste), tra cui Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation and Adhesive Identities (Penn State University Press, 1999) e Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts (Leiden, Brill Academic Publishers, 2018).

Emanuela Claudia Del Re, sociologa specialista di conflitti, questioni religiose, minoranze, migrazioni e sviluppo con intensa attività di ricerca sul campo (Balcani, Africa, Medio Oriente), è professore associato abilitato in Sociologia generale e docente di Sociologia politica presso l’Università telematica Uninettuno. Vicedirettrice di Religioni & Società, membro del consiglio redazionale di Limes, è autrice di diversi volumi e saggi, tra i quali Women and Borders. Refugees Migrant and Communities, (Tauris, London, 2017).

Indice

Roberto Cipriani, Presentazione
Emanuela C. Del Re, Introduzione. La Religione come “stato mentale”. Lo studio di Fenggang Yang nel grande affresco storico della CinaPrefazione
Spiegare la vitalità religiosa
Una definizione di religione per lo studio scientifico-sociale della religione
Ateismo marxista cinese ed implicazioni politiche
Regolamentare la religione
I mercati rosso, nero e grigio della religione
L’economia di scarsità della religione sotto il comunismo
Dinamiche di oligopolio: Cina e oltre
Bibliografia.

Carlo Prandi: Religione e popolo: Continuità e fratture

MORCELLIANA, Brescia 2020

La dicotomia religione/popolo è tipica delle religioni del Libro, dove si forma storicamente un ceto di specialisti (sacerdoti, teologi) che detengono i poteri e i saperi e guidano la massa dei “fedeli”. Ma la vita religiosa non è monodirezionale: il “popolo” recepisce i messaggi e li trasforma entro la complessità del vissuto quotidiano, in parte con obbedienza legata alla tradizione, in parte con forme devozionali ed etiche relativamente autonome, in parte rivendicando, per lo più implicitamente, una propria capacità d’iniziativa. In questo libro si seguono, in ambito cristiano, alcuni itinerari di tale complessa fenomenologia a doppio senso, che è costellata di incontri, scontri e forme di reciproco adattamento, ma è anche sottoposta agli inesorabili processi di erosione/metamorfosi cui l’incalzare della modernità sta sottoponendo il proteiforme mondo delle religioni.

Carlo Prandi ha insegnato Sociologia delle religioni e Storia delle religioni nelle università di Arezzo, Padova, Parma e presso la Fondazione “Bruno Kessler” di Trento. Collabora con le riviste «Humanitas», «Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni», «Social Compass». Ha recentemente curato la traduzione italiana del testo di Marcel Mauss, La nozione di persona. Una categoria dello spirito (Morcelliana, 2018). In stampa anche la traduzione del’opera fondante di E. Durckheim.

RELIGIONE E POPOLO. CONTINUITA’ E FRATTURE
Autore: PRANDI CARLO
Editore: MORCELLIANA
Data di pubblicazione: Maggio 2020
Collana: ORSO BLU
Codice: 9788828401643
DISPONIBILE SUBITO
€ 19,50 € 18,53

https://brill.com/view/title/55810

Editors: Cristina Rocha, Mark P. Hutchinson and Kathleen Openshaw

In this edited book, Rocha, Hutchinson and Openshaw argue that Australia has made and still makes important contributions to how Pentecostal and charismatic Christianities have developed worldwide. This edited volume fills a critical gap in two important scholarly literatures. The first is the Australian literature on religion, in which the absence of the charismatic and Pentecostal element tends to reinforce now widely debunked notions of Australia as lacking the religious tendencies of old Europe. The second is the emerging transnational literature on Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. This book enriches our understanding not only of how these movements spread worldwide but also how they are indigenised and grow new shoots in very diverse contexts.

Table of Contents

Preface: Paul Freston

Introduction: Australian Charismatic Movements as a Space of Flows

Mark Hutchinson, Cristina Rocha, Kathleen Openshaw

Section I: Situating Pentecostal Charismatic Christianities in Australia

Chapter 1: Reframing Howard Carter: Alternative ‘Routes’ for the Emergence of the Australasian Charismatic Renewal

Mark Hutchinson

Chapter 2: Australian Proto-Pentecostals: The Contribution of the Catholic Apostolic Church

Peter Elliott

Chapter 3: City, Portal and Hub: Brisbane and Catholic Charismatic Renewal

John Maiden

Chapter 4: Strong Church or Niche Market? The Demography of the Pentecostal Church in Australia

Andrew Singleton

Section II: Home-grown Australian PCMs

Chapter 5: A Match Made in Heaven: Why Popular Music is Central to the Growth in Pentecostal Charismatic Christianities

Daniel Thornton

Chapter 6: Marketing and Branding Practices in Australian Pentecostal Suburban Megachurches for Supporting International Growth

Mairead Shanahan

Chapter 7: Andrew Evans: The Making of an Australian Pentecostal Politician

Denise A. Austin

Chapter 8: “The Work of the Spirit:” Hillsong Church and a Spiritual Formation for the Marketplace

Tanya Riches

Chapter 9: The Wacky, the Frightening and the Spectacular: Hearing God’s Voice in Australian Pentecostal Churches

Tania Harris

Section III: A Meeting between Pentecostalism from the Global South and North

Chapter 10: “Living the Dream:” Post-Millennial Brazilians at Hillsong College

Cristina Rocha

Chapter 11: Extraordinary Sacrifice and Transnational Spiritual Capital in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Kathleen Openshaw

Chapter 12: “The demon is growing with sins, but there are angels around:” Bundjalung Pentecostalism as Faith and Paradox

Mahnaz Alimardanian

Chapter 13: Epilogue: Allan Anderson

G. Giordan, S. Zrinščak (Eds.) Global Eastern Orthodoxy.Politics, Religion, and Human Rights. Springer.

This volume highlights three intertwined aspects of the global context of Orthodox Christianity: religion, politics, and human rights. 

The chapters in Part I address the challenges of modern human rights discourse to Orthodox Christianity and examine conditions for active presence of Orthodox churches in the public sphere of plural societies. It suggests theoretical and empirical considerations about the relationship between politics and Orthodoxy by exploring topics such as globalization, participatory democracy, and the linkage of religious and political discourses in Russia, Greece, Belarus, Romania, and Cyprus. 

Part II looks at the issues of diaspora and identity in global Orthodoxy, presenting cases from Switzerland, America, Italy, and Germany. In doing so, the book ties in with the growing interest resulting from the novelty of socio-political, economic, and cultural changes which have forced religious groups and organizations to revise and redesign their own institutional structures, practices, and agendas.

More info: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030286866

Suspicions about the integration of Islam into European cultures have been steadily on the rise, and dramatically so since 9/11. One reason lies in the visibility of anti-Western Islamic discourses of salafi origin, which have monopolized the debate on the “true” Islam, not only among Muslims but also in the eyes of the general population across Europe; these discourses combined with Islamophobic discourses reinforce the so-called incompatibility between the West and Islam.

This book breaks away from this clash between Islam and the West, by arguing that European Islam is possible. It analyzes the contribution that European Islam has made to the formation of an innovative Islamic theology that is deeply ethicist and modern, and it clarifies how this constructed European Islamic theology is able to contribute to the various debates that are related to secular-liberal democracies of Western Europe. Part I introduces four major projects that defend the idea of European Islam from different disciplines and perspectives: politics, political theology, jurisprudence and philosophy. Part II uses the frameworks from three major philosophers and scholars to approach the idea of European Islam in the context of secular-liberal societies: British scholar George Hourani, Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane and the American philosopher John Rawls. The book shows that the ongoing efforts of European Muslim thinkers to revisit the concept of citizenship and political community can be seen as a new kind of political theology, in opposition to radical forms of Islamic thinking in some Muslim-majority countries.

Opening a new path for examining Islamic thought “in and of” Europe, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Islam in the West and Political Theology.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Idea-of-European-Islam-Religion-Ethics-Politics-and-Perpetual-Modernity/Hashas/p/book/9780367509743?utm_medium=email&utm_source=EmailStudio&utm_campaign=B190608179_3649951

Ever wondered what non-muslims actually do with media stories about
Islam and how it relates to Islamophobia? How is society affected by
repeated discussions of Islam and Muslims in print and television
news? My new book (Islam in British media discourses: Understanding
perceptions of Muslims in the news) attempts to provide an answer to
those questions. See description and table of contents below:

DESCRIPTION:

Media reporting on Islam and Muslims commonly relate stories about
terrorism, violence, or the lack of integration with western values
and society. Yet there is little research into how non-Muslims engage
with and are affected by these news reports. Inspired by the overtly
negative coverage of Islam and Muslims by the mainstream press and the
increase in Islamophobia across Europe, this book explores the
influence of these depictions on the thoughts and actions of
non-Muslims.

Building on extensive fieldwork interviews and focus groups, Laurens
de Rooij argues that individuals negotiate media reports to fit their
existing outlook on Islam and Muslims. Non-Muslim responses to these
reports, de Rooij argues, are not only (re)productions of local and
personal contextuality, but are co-dependent and co-productive to the
reports themselves.

Book details page

Introduction
1 Modes of production: British media as a discursive system
2 Symbolic representations of Islam and Muslims
3 A dialectic of media theory and audience praxis
4 Examining the influence of current media portrayals of Islam and Muslims
Conclusion
Index