IPSA RC 43 - Religion and Politics

Religion in International Relations Theory. Interactions and Possibilities

By Nukhet Sandal, Jonathan Fox

Published 16th May 2013 by Routledge – 228 pages

Series: Routledge Studies in Religion and Politics

There is a growing realization among international relations scholars and practitioners that religion is a critical factor in global politics. The Iranian Revolution, the September 11 attacks, the ethno-religious conflicts such as the ones in the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka are among the many reasons for this increased focus on religion in international affairs. The rise of religious political parties across the world ranging from the Christian Democrats in Europe to Bharatiya Janata Party in India similarly illustrated religion's heightened international profile.

Despite all this attention, it is challenging to situate religion within a discipline which has been dominantly secular from its inception. Only a few existent works have ventured to integrate religion into core international relations theories such as Classical Realism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, Constructivism and the English school. This work is the first systematic attempt to comparatively assess the place of religion in the aforementioned theoretical strands of international relations with contemporary examples from around the world.

Written in an accessible and systematic fashion, this book will be an important addition to the fields of both religion and international relations.

Nukhet A. Sandal is Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Ohio University.

Jonathan Fox is Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel.

Ethnicities

Special Issue: Public discourses about Muslims and Islam in Europe: A comparative analysis

April 2013; Vol. 13, No. 2

The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://etn.sagepub.com/content/vol13/issue2/?etoc

Guest Editorial Public discourses about Muslims and Islam in Europe Manlio Cinalli and Marco Giugni Ethnicities 2013;13 131-146 http://etn.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/131

Articles

Political opportunities, citizenship models and political claim-making over Islam Manlio Cinalli and Marco Giugni Ethnicities 2013;13 147-164 http://etn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/147

Dynamics of contestation over Islamic religious rights in Western Europe Sarah Carol and Ruud Koopmans Ethnicities 2013;13 165-190 http://etn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/165

Discursive framing and the reproduction of integration in the public sphere: A comparative analysis of France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany Maarten Koomen, Jean Tillie, Anja van Heelsum, and Sjef van Stiphout Ethnicities 2013;13 191-208 http://etn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/191

The impact of dramatic events on public debate concerning accommodation of Islam inEurope Nathalie Vanparys, Dirk Jacobs, and Corinne Torrekens Ethnicities 2013;13 209-228 http://etn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/209

The changing public face of Muslim associations in Britain: Coming together for common ‘social’ goals? Marta Bolognani and Paul Statham Ethnicities 2013;13 229-249 http://etn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/229

Catholics, Conflicts and Choices An Exploration of Power Relations in the Catholic Church

Series: Gender, Theology and Spirituality Author: Angela Coco

DESCRIPTION: Many Catholics today are disenchanted with the Church’s continuing distrust of women and laity. But, despite this widespread dissatisfaction, traditional power relations have hardly changed over the last century. Catholics, Conflicts and Choices presents detailed interviews with lay people, priests, Sisters, and Christian Brothers, each discussing their personal struggles with church teachings and practices. The conversations are selected to illustrate different experiences of power relations – particularly different aspects of gender dynamics – within the organisational structures of the Church. The interviews are examined within a framework of feminist, sociological and psychological theory. Catholics, Conflicts and Choices reveals how, despite a long history of challenging official notions of authority and obedience and assumptions about intimate relationships, there is little potential for change if the established power relations of the Church are not confronted.

AUTHOR BIO: Angela Coco is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia.

CONTENTS: Part I Experience and Knowledge 1. When this Story Began 2. Growing up Catholic 3. Thinking about Experience 4. Sharing Knowledge Part II Catholic Experiences of Power 5. Questioning the Catholic Institution 6. Engaging with other Catholics 7. Managing One’s Self Part III Gender Work in Christ's Household 8. Catholic Housework 9. A Most Un/natural Order Appendix Bibliography Index

New book:

THE DIASPORA OF BRAZILIAN RELIGIONS Cristina Rocha & Manuel A. Vásquez

http://www.brill.com/diaspora-brazilian-religions

The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions explores the global spread of religions originating in Brazil, a country that has emerged as a major pole of religious innovation and production. Through ethnographically-rich case studies throughout the world, ranging from the Americas (Canada, the U.S., Peru, and Argentina) and Europe (the U.K., Portugal, and the Netherlands) to Asia (Japan) and Oceania (Australia), the book examines the conditions, actors, and media that have made possible the worldwide construction, circulation, and consumption of Brazilian religious identities, practices, and lifestyles, including those connected with indigenized forms of Pentecostalism and Catholicism, African-based religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda, as well as diverse expressions of New Age Spiritism such as the John of God Movement, and Ayahuasca-centered neo-shamanism like Vale do Amanhecer and Santo Daime.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Brazil in the New Global Cartography of Religion Manuel A. Vásquez and Cristina Rocha

SECTION I: BRAZILIAN CHRISTIANITY: CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM

Ch 1: Edir Macedo's Pastoral Project: A Globally Integrated Pentecostal Network Clara Mafra, Claudia Swatowiski, and Camila Sampaio

Ch 2: Brazilian Churches in London: Transnationalism of the Middle Olivia Sheringham

Ch 3: The 'Devil's Egg': The Football Players as New Missionaries of the Diaspora of Brazilian Religions Carmen Rial

Ch 4: Brazilian Pentecostalism in Peru: Affinities between the Social and Cultural Conditions of Andean Migrants and the Religious Worldview of the Pentecostal Church "God is Love" Dario Paulo Barrera Rivera

Ch 5: Catholicism for Export: The Case of Canção Nova Brenda Carranza and Cecília Mariz

SECTION II: AFRO-BRAZILIAN RELIGIONS

Ch 6: Umbanda and Batuque in the Southern Cone: Transnationalization as cross-border religious flow and as social field Alejandro Frigerio

Ch 7: Pretos Velhos across the Atlantic: Afro-Brazilian Religions in Portugal Clara Saraiva

Ch 8: Transnational Authenticity: An Umbanda Temple in Montreal Deirdre Meintel and Annick Hernandez

Ch 9: Japanese Brazilians among Pretos-Velhos, Caboclos, Buddhist Monks and Samurais: An Ethnographic Study of Umbanda in Japan Ushi Arakaki

Ch 10: Mora Iemanja? Axé in Diasporic Capoeira Regional Neil Stephens and Sara Delamont

SECTION III: NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

Ch 11: Building a Transnational Spiritual Community: The John of God Movement in Australia Cristina Rocha

Ch 12: The Valley of Dawn in Atlanta, Georgia: Negotiating Gender Identity and Incorporation in the Diaspora José Cláudio Souza Alves and Manuel A. Vásquez

Ch 13: The Niche Globalization of Projectiology: Cosmology and Internationalization of a Brazilian Parascience Anthony Fischer D'Andrea

Ch 14: Transcultural keys: Humor, Creativity and other Relational Artifacts in the transposition of a Brazilian Ayahuasca Religion to the Netherlands Alberto Groisman

Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality

Ethnographic Approaches

Edited by Anna Fedele and Kim Knibbe

Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality

This book contains captivating descriptions of the entanglements of gender and power in spiritual practices and detailed analyses of the strategies spiritual practitioners use to attain what to social scientists might seem an impossible goal: creating spiritual communities without creating gendered hierarchies.

Contemporary spiritual practitioners tend to present their own spirituality as non-hierarchical and gender equal, in contrast to ‘established’ religions. Current studies of these movements often reproduce their selfdescription as empowering, while other literature reacts polemically against these movements, describing them as narcissist and irrelevant and/or in league with capitalism. This book moves between these two poles, recognizing that gender and power are always at work in any socio-cultural situation.

What strategies do people within these networks use to attain gender equality and gendered empowerment? How do they try to protect and develop individual freedom? How do gender and power nevertheless play a role?

The contributions collected in this book demonstrate that in order to understand contemporary spirituality the analytical lenses of gender and power are essential. Furthermore, they show that it is not possible to make a clear distinction between established religions and contemporary spirituality:

the two sometimes overlap, at other times spirituality uses religion to play off against while reproducing some of the underlying interpretative frameworks. While recognizing the reflexivity of spiritual practitioners and the reciprocal relationship between spirituality and disciplines such as anthropology, the authors do not take the discourses of spiritual practitioners for granted. Their ethnographic descriptions of lived spirituality span a wide range of countries, from Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands to Mexico and Israel.

“An important and original contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of gender and power in alternative forms of spirituality.” – Sabina Magliocco, California StateUniversity, Northridge, USA

“Central to spirituality is a desire for personal liberation, we hear again and again. Yet this rich collection of ethnographies demonstrates that it is deeply shaped by performances ofgender and power.” – Dick Houtman, Erasmus University, Netherlands

https://genderandpowerincontemporaryspirituality.wordpress.com/

Between State and Synagogue The Secularization of Contemporary Israel

Guy Ben-Porat, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Paperback

Series: Cambridge Middle East Studies(No. 42)

ISBN:9780521176996 Publication date:March 2013

A thriving, yet small, liberal component in Israeli society has frequently taken issue with the constraints imposed by religious orthodoxy, largely with limited success. However, as this thoughtful new book by Guy Ben-Porat suggests, in recent years, in part because of demographic changes and in part because of the influence of an increasingly consumer-oriented society, dramatic changes have occurred in secularization of significant parts of public and private lives. Even though these fissures often have more to do with lifestyle choices and economics than with political or religious ideology, the demands and choices of a secular public and a burgeoning religious presence in the government are becoming ever more difficult to reconcile. The evidence, which the author has accrued from numerous interviews and a detailed survey, is nowhere more telling than in areas that demand religious sanction such as marriage, burial, the sale of pork, and the operation of businesses on the Sabbath. This book makes an important and timely contribution to the study of contemporary Israeli society, as new alliances are being forged in the political arena.

Religion and Human Security A Global Perspective Edited by James K. Wellman and Clark B. Lombardi

Since the1950s the world has witnessed a period of extraordinary religious revival in which religious political parties and non-governmental organizations have gained power around the globe. At the same time, the international community has come to focus on the challenge of promoting global human security. This groundbreaking book explores how these trends are interacting. In theoretical essays and case studies from Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, the Americas, Africa and Europe, the contributors address such crucial questions as: Under what circumstances do religiously motivated actors advance or harm human welfare? Do certain state policies tend to promote security-enhancing behavior among religious groups? The book concludes by providing important suggestions to policymakers about how to factor the influence of religion into their evaluation of a population's human security and into programs designed to improve human security around the globe.

About the Author(s)

James K. Wellman, Jr. is Associate Professor and Chair of the Comparative Religion Program at the Jackson School of International Studies. He is the author of The Gold Church and the Ghetto: Christ and Culture in Mainline Protestantism and Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures and the editor of several books, including, Belief and Bloodshed: Religion and Violence Across Time and Tradition.

Clark B. Lombardi is Associate Professor of Law and Adjunct Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Washington. He is the author of State Law as Islamic Law: The Incorporation of the Shari`a into Egyptian Constitutional Law as well as numerous academic articles. He is co-editor of the Oxford Islamic Legal Studies series .

Whatever Happened to the Islamists?: Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims, and the Lure of Consumerist Islam Eds. Amel Boubekeur & Olivier Roy Columbia/Hurst, 2012

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15426-0/whatever-happened-to-the-islamists

Widespread confusion over the use of the terms Islamism or Political Islam often obscures the fact that these are not new phenomena and can be traced back more than a century. But like all utopian beliefs, such as Communism, Islamism cannot entirely resist the broader currents of political and social change that confront it today, especially globalisation. Through meticulous on the ground and theoretical research in to the trajectories of current and former Islamists, the contributors to this book seek to understand what has become of political Islam. While many scholars have focused on the drift to violence of historical Islamism, they look at the other side of the coin to describe the continuities and not the ruptures of Islamism with its own ideology. Political Islam remains relevant to a new generation of militants but the channels through which it is expressed have changed. Jihad is often conducted electronically, via membership of Islamist e-mail list-servers; Islamist activism has been personalised, domesticated even, through the consumption of Islamic soft drinks and other lifestyle choices; and, the street protests that characterised the Islamist struggle in its heyday face competition from Islamic rap stars' concerts. These are among the issues addressed in this innovative volume.

Reviews

Although recent events in the Middle East seem to answer the question posed by this volume's title, news headlines obscure a tectonic shift in Islamism that has occurred over the last couple of decades. Whatever Happened to the Islamists? represents one of the most exciting and innovative analyses of contemporary dislocations in the ideological project of political Islam to be published in recent years. It points the way forward for an entire field of study. (Peter Mandaville, George Mason University and author of Global Political Islam )

Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy present a refreshing and provocative collection of essays, including several by younger scholars and others whose writings are rarely available in English. They display the iconoclasm, unanticipated fusions, and the modernity of contemporary Islamic activism, much of which does not see conquest of state power as a central objective. Islamic activism today is manifested in all-women heavy metal bands, consumerism, corporate big business, and individualised consumer and cultural choices. This book deserves to be widely read and debated, especially by journalists, pundits, and public policy makers who may have thought they already knew what Islamism is. (Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University )

Whatever Happened to the Islamists? will be welcomed by all who seek to understand the impact of the Arab uprising and the role of Islamists during this historic period of political transformation in the Arab world. (John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of The Future of Islam ) About the Authors

Amel Boubekeur is a research fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. She has been an Associate Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Centre for European Policy Studies. Working on Islam in Europe and Arab politics, she is the author of European Islam : Challenges for Public Policy and Society and Le voile de la mariée.

Olivier Roy is a professor at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. A world authority on Islam and politics, Roy's books are Secularism Confronts Islam, The Failure of Political Islam, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, and, with Mariam Abou Zahab, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection.

Religion in the Neoliberal Age Political Economy and Modes of Governance Edited by François Gauthier, University of Fribourg, Switzerland and Tuomas Martikainen, University of Helsinki, Finland Ashgate 2013

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409449782

This book, together with the complementary volume Religion in Consumer Society, focuses on religion, neoliberalism and consumer society; offering an overview of an emerging field of research in the study of contemporary religion. Outlining changes in both the political-institutional and cultural spheres, the contributors offer an international overview of developments in different countries and state of the art representation of religion in the new global political economy.

'Tuomas Martikainen and François Gauthier seek to break new ground and work toward a synthesis and clarification of the diverse and often contradictory approaches to understanding the transformation of religion in today's globalized world. The contributors to the volume analyze these changes as integral to the recent economic shaping of culture in the form of consumerism and neoliberalism. They explore the changing landscape of relations between religions and states in the context of the rise of market-oriented, neoliberal modes of governance and management, including as concerns religious organizations.' - Peter Beyer, University of Ottawa, Canada

Contents

Introduction: Religion in Market Society François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen and Linda Woodhead

PART I Religions in the New Political Economy

1 Entrepreneurial Spirituality and Ecumenical Alterglobalism: Two Religious Responses to Global Neoliberalism Joanildo A. Burity

2 Making Religion Irrelevant: The 'Resurgent Religion' Narrative and the Critique of Neoliberalism James V. Spickard

3 The Decline of the Parishes and the Rise of City Churches: The German Evangelical Church in the Age of Neoliberalism Jens Schlamelcher

4 Catholic Church Civil Society Activism and the Neoliberal Governmental Project of Migrant Integration in Ireland Breda Gray

5 Faith, Welfare and the Formation of the Modern American Right Jason Hackworth

PART II Political Governance of Religion

6 Neoliberalism and the Privatization of Welfare and Religious Organizations in the United States of America David Ashley and Ryan Sandefer

7 Multilevel and Pluricentric Network Governance of Religion Tuomas Martikainen

8 Regulating Religion in a Neoliberal Context: The Transformation of Estonia Ringo Ringvee

9 Neoliberalism and Counterterrorism Laws: Impact on Australian Muslim Community Organizations Agnes Chong

10 From Implicitly Christian to Neoliberal: The Moral Foundations of Canadian Law Exposed by the Case of Prostitution Rachel Chagnon and François Gauthier

11 Religious Freedom and Neoliberalism: From Harm to Cost-benefit Lori G. Beaman