Description
Book Synopsis While social scientists, beginning with Weber, envisioned a secularized world, religion today is forthrightly becoming a defining feature of life all around the globe. The complex connections between religion and politics, and the ways in which globalization shapes these processes, are central themes explored in this volume by leading scholars in the field of religion. Does the holism of numerous past and present day cosmologies mean that religions with their holistic orientations are integral to human existence? What happens when political ideologies and projects are framed as transcendental truths and justified by Divine authority? How are individual and collective identities shaped by religious rhetoric, and what are the consequences? Can mass murder, deemed terrorism, be understood as a form of ritual sacrifice, and if so, what are the implications for our sensibilities and practices as scholars and citizens? Using empirical material, from historical analyses of established religions to the everyday strife of marginalized groups such as migrants and dissident movements, this volume deepens the understanding of processes that shape the contemporary world.
Trade Review “This edited volume is an excellent attempt to connect not just the concepts of religion and politics—a task usually undertaken in a number of other publications—but also the forces of globalisation. The latter construct is of great significance to any current discussion of how religion and politics interact…this volume is to be commended for aptly translating the interactions of religion and politics in a globalised world, as diverse as they may be, in very clear terms.” · Journal of Contemporary Religion
"This volume is an important contribution to current rethinking of the sociological categories of religion and the secular. As a whole the collection demonstrates the development of new perspectives and presents a number of highly relevant case studies…It is significant as part of a growing discourse aimed at re-addressing old issues in a fresh and highly insightful manner." · Bruce Kapferer, University of Bergen
Table of Contents List of Figures
Preface
Don Handelman
Chapter 1. After Understanding: A Memoir of Galina Lindquist
Michael Jackson
Chapter 2. Religion, Politics, and Globalization: The Long Past Foregrounding the Short Present - Prologue and Introduction
Don Handelman and Galina Lindquist
SECTION I: SHAPING RELIGION THROUGH POLITICS
Chapter 3. Ethnic Identity and Religious Competition: Buddhism and Shamanism in Southern Siberia
Galina Lindquist
Chapter 4. The Global Constitution of Religious Competition: Hindutva and Globalization
Henrik Berglund
SECTION II: OPEN CONFLICTS OF RELIGION AND POLITICS
Chapter 5. Church Confronts State: The 2004 Manifestasaun in Timor-Leste
David Hicks
Chapter 6. Religion, Secularism, Secularism, and Politics in Contemporary Spain: The Case of the Imam of Fuengirola
Eva Evers Rosander
SECTION III: THE TIGHT EMBRACE OF RELIGION AND POLITICS
Chapter 7. Actors of History? Religion, Politics and ‘Reality’ Within the Protestant Right in America
Simon Coleman
Chapter 8. The Ambiguities of Islamism and a Century of Iranian Opposition
David Thurfjell
SECTION IV: OPENING NEW SPACE FOR RELIGION
Chapter 9. Amazighite, Arab/Islamic Hegemony, and the Christian Evangelical Challenge
Mira Amiras
Chapter 10. Self-Exploders, Self-Sacrifice, and the Rhizomic Organization of Terrorism
Don Handelman
Chapter 11. Afterword: Fixation of Belief and the Dilemmas of Fallibility
Robert Innis
Notes on Contributors
