CFP. RC22 The Best of All Gods: Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe - ISA CONFERENCE 2014

Call for papers, deadline 30 September

Please find below description for a session to held at the XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama, Japan 13 - 19 July 2014 (https://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2014/). Paper proposals can be sent via the site (https://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2014/) starting on June 3rd, with a deadline for submission of September 30th, 2013.

RC22 The Best of All Gods: Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe

Session Organizer
Jose MAPRIL, CRIA-FCSH, New University of Lisbon, Portugal, jmapril

Ruy Blanes, University of Bergen and ICS, University of Lisbon

Clara Saraiva, IICT and CRIA-FCSH, New University of Lisbon

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:

  1. spatial settings such as mosques and other religious edifices and grounds;

  2. spaces and itineraries of religious mobilities – from pilgrimage paths to networks and circulations of ideas and objects;

  3. 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)

Our goal, therefore, is to focus on the existing debates about the place of religion and the secular in Southern European public spheres.