ISBN : 9780199938643
The thirteen essays in this volume offer a challenge to conventional scholarly approaches to the sociology of religion. They urge readers to look beyond congregational settings, beyond the United States, and to religions other than Christianity, and encourage critical engagement with religion's complex social consequences. By expanding conceptual categories, the essays reveal how aspects of the religious have always been part of allegedly non-religious spaces and show how, by attending to these intellectual blindspots, we can understand aspects of identity, modernity, and institutional life that have long been obscured. Religion on the Edge addresses a number of critical questions: What is revealed about the self, pluralism, or modernity when we look outside the U.S. or outside Christian settings? What do we learn about how and where the religious is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions about it embedded in the categories we use? Religion on the Edge offers groundbreaking new methodologies and models, bringing to light conceptual lacunae, re-centering what is unsettled by their use, and inviting a significant reordering of long-accepted political and economic hierarchies. The book shows how social scientists across the disciplines can engage with the sociology of religion. By challenging many of its long-standing empirical and analytic tendencies, the contributors to this volume show how their work informs and is informed by debates in other fields and the analytical purchase gained by bringing these many conversations together. Religion on the Edge will be a crucial resource for any scholar seeking to understand our post-modern, post-secular world.
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Religion on the Edge: An Introduction
Courtney Bender, Wendy Cadge, Peggy Levitt, David Smilde
Part I. Rethinking Categories: Theoretical Approaches
1. Grappling with the Legacy of Modernity: Implications for the Sociology of Religion
Manuel A. Vasquez
2. Beyond Cultural Autonomy in the Sociological Study of Religion
David Smilde
3. Toward a Comparative Historical Sociology of Religious Politics
Ates Altinordu
4. Religious Self-Constitution: A Relational Perspective
Michal Pagis
5. Studying Public Religion: Beyond the Beliefs-Driven Actor
Paul Lichterman
6. Pluralism and Secularism
Courtney Bender
7. Religion on the Move: Mapping Global Cultural Production and Consumption
Peggy Levitt
Part II. Exemplary Cases: Empirical Examinations
8. Difficult Dialogues: The Technologies and Limits of Reconciliation
Dawne Moon
9. Negotiating Religious Differences in Secular Organizations: The Case of Hospital Chapels
Wendy Cadge
10. The Meaning and Challenges of Pluralism in Quebec: Debating "Reasonable Accommodation"
Genevieve Zubrzycki
11. Revisiting Religious Power: The Korean Evangelical Church as a Disciplinary Institution Kelly H. Chong
12. Crossing Borders: Transnational Sanctuary, Social Justice, and the Church
Jacqueline Hagan
13. Conclusion: Working the Edges
Index