Douglas Ezzy

• University of Tasmania

This article argues that the focus on the harm and stigma experienced by LGBTQ+ Christians misrepresents the complexity of the experience of many LGBTQ+ Christians, many of whom report affirmation and self-acceptance. A national representative survey indicates 5.5% of all Australians, 2.9% of Christians, and 8.4% of those with no religion identify...

Australian religious conservatives continue to argue that religiously affiliated schools should be able to discriminate based on the sexuality and/or gender identity of students. We argue that this discussion fails to adequately consider the serious harms that discrimination against LGBTQ+ educators has on LGBTQ+ and questioning students. The artic...

This book documents the structure of religious diversity in Australia and examines this diversity in the context of the law, migration, education, policing, the media and interfaith communities. Focusing on Melbourne and Tasmania, it articulates the benefits and opportunities of diversity, alongside the challenges that confront religious and ethnic...

This book documents the structure of religious diversity in Australia and examines this diversity in the context of the law, migration, education, policing, the media and interfaith communities. Focusing on Melbourne and Tasmania, it articulates the benefits and opportunities of diversity, alongside the challenges that confront religious and ethnic...

This book documents the structure of religious diversity in Australia and examines this diversity in the context of the law, migration, education, policing, the media and interfaith communities. Focusing on Melbourne and Tasmania, it articulates the benefits and opportunities of diversity, alongside the challenges that confront religious and ethnic...

This paper examines the religiosity, sexuality, and attitudes towards same-sex relationships among young people who were students at religiously affiliated schools in Australia and the staff who work in these schools, drawing on a national representative survey. It demonstrates that students are increasingly nonreligious, and accepting of alternati...

This article examines the role of anti-discrimination legislation in the negotiation of religious difference in the Australian state of Victoria. We argue for the importance of a relational conceptualisation of the negotiation of religious diversity that draws on concepts of etiquette and limitations, deep equality, and substantive equality. The Vi...

Anti-discrimination laws around the world have explicitly protected LGBTQ+ people from discrimination with various levels of exceptions for religion. Some conservative religious organisations in Australia are advocating to be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people in certain organisations they manage. The political debate in Australia has fo...

Religiously affiliated schools employ a substantial portion of the Australian educational workforce. These religiously affiliated schools are exempt from Australian state‐based anti‐discrimination legislation in varying degrees. This can have a devastating effect on LGBT+ employees. While NSW has broad exemptions to anti‐discrimination legislation,...

This chapter reviews and extends some of the arguments from the book. First, I underline the central claim that nonreligion can provide positive moral ways of living in the world. However, I caution against taking this point too far, arguing that nonreligious people are just as likely as religious people to be moral and immoral. Second, the term “l...

This article examines the role of legal frameworks and everyday interaction in the negotiation of religious diversity in Victoria, Australia. We argue that both formal legal frameworks and everyday interactions are significant in encouraging the respectful negotiation of religious difference. Experiences of historical privilege and visibility impac...

This paper argues for a reconsideration of social cohesion as an analytical concept and a policy goal in response to increasing levels of religious diversity in contemporary Australia. In recent decades, Australian has seen a revitalization of religion, increasing numbers of those who do not identify with a religion (the ”nones”), and the growth of...

Pagan rituals structure the way that Pagans relate to each other and the other-than-human world. I argue that this means that Pagan ethics is predominantly relational ethics. The relational experiences provided by ritual shape the ethical practices of Pagans. I provide a detailed example of one teenager who used ritual to change the way she felt ab...

Obesity is an economic problem. Bariatric surgery is cost‐effective for severe and resistant obesity. Most economic evaluations of bariatric surgery use administrative data and narrowly defined direct medical costs in their quantitative analyses. Demand far outstrips supply for bariatric surgery. Further allocation of health care resources to baria...

Religious anti-discrimination legislation institutionalises non-violent ways of living with radical difference associated with religious diversity. The need to govern the growing number of conflicts generated by increasingly pluralistic societies is a major reason governments have introduced a range of new laws relating to religion. These laws are...

Ezzy examines the reinvention of the Pagan ritual calendar—the Wheel of the Year—in Australia, and the elemental directions used in circle casting. Early Australian Pagans celebrated the seasonal cycle of the northern hemisphere, resulting in Beltane (Spring) celebrations during autumn in Australia. They also invoked fire in the south, as the sun b...

General practitioners (GPs) are increasingly managing patients with class 2 and 3 obesity (body mass index [BMI] > 35 and 40 kg/m(2) , respectively). Bariatric surgery is considered for patients with class 2 obesity and comorbidities or class 3 obesity where sustained weight loss using non-surgical interventions has not been achieved. In Australia,...

Internationally, weight loss surgery is primarily undertaken by women (75%). This difference has been attributed to the appearance concerns of women which is a simplistic and unsatisfactory explanation. The study aims to explore the way gender influences the processes leading up to surgery and life after surgery providing important new insights int...

The objective of this study was to investigate the experience of waiting for publicly funded bariatric surgery in an Australian tertiary healthcare setting. Focus groups and individual interviews involving people waiting for or who had undergone publicly funded bariatric surgery were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. A total of...

Objective: To examine Australian patients’ motivations for seeking bariatric surgery. Background: The reasons for seeking bariatric surgery are incompletely understood. This information is needed to inform health-service planning and therapeutic decisions. Methods: Ten focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed thematicall...

?Religions of practice? are religions that prioritize ritual practice, with little concern for creeds and belief. In these religions, ethical obligations are communicated through ritual practices and aesthetic responses to symbols. Some theories of religion characterize ritual practice and religious aesthetics as secondary outcomes of religious bel...

No abstract is available for this article.

Objective To explore the support needs and experiences of patients who had received publicly or privately funded bariatric surgery and the importance of this support in mediating outcomes of surgery. Methods Seven semi‐structured focus groups were conducted. A broad interview schedule guided the discussions which were audio‐recorded and transcribe...

Pagan studies should allow the inclusion of religionist ideas and concepts within its academic oeuvre. Such concepts and ideas have been, and will probably continue to be, productive empirically and theoretically. Religious language and concepts can provide new and interesting ways of seeing and understanding the world that are empirically insightf...

This chapter introduces the concepts of religion and spirituality , particularly as these relate to young people. It reviews some of the major changes that are occurring in contemporary society and how these changes are reflected in the types of religions and spiritualities that young people are practicing. The processes of globalization, internati...

The sociology of religion has been a moderately strong theme in Australian sociology. Most Australian sociologists of religion have been trained in Australia with a smattering of those trained in the USA, the UK or elsewhere. While Christian churches once maintained research offices including sociologists and some seminaries once included the socio...

Religious symbols are primarily significant because they draw people into relationships. Drawing on actor-network theory the paper demonstrates that symbols are hybrids of beliefs, cognitive interpretations, ritual performances and relational networks. The significance of symbols is located in this middle ground, as they mediate between thought and...

Eighty people dance naked around a large bonfire during an all night ritual at Faunalia, a Pagan festival in Australia. This paper examines how these ritual performances transform embodied forms of gender inequality for women and men. Women with poor body image find self confidence and pleasure in their somatic performance. Men discover new ways of...

This article argues for a broader sociological conception of religion. Religion includes practices that engage with this world in rich and complex ways alongside experiences of transcendence. Religion encompasses a broad palette of aesthetic and emotional experiences that include, but are not confined to, solemnity and beauty. Religious moral ontol...

Religious anti-discrimination legislation in Victoria, Australia, constructively facilitates the nonviolent resolution of religious con�ict through legislation and litigation. The article demonstrates this argument through two detailed case studies of the 2002 complaint by the Islamic Council of Victoria against Catch the Fire Ministries, an evange...

From Volume 26, the Australian Religion Studies Review (the journal of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions) will change to the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion.

Religious anti-discrimination legislation in Victoria, Australia, constructively facilitates the nonviolent resolution of religious confiict through legislation and litigation. The article demonstrates this argument through two detailed case studies of the 2002 complaint by the Islamic Council of Victoria against Catch the Fire Ministries, an evang...

The Rotting Goddess: the Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity by Jacob Rabinowitz Automedia: New Yo r k

M a g i c , W i t c h c r a f t a n d t h e O t h e r w o r l d . By Susan Greenwood. Berg: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 1 85973 450 2, Pbk.

This article argues that some Satanic theodicies used by Christians to explain experiences of suffering can also encourage young people to engage in Satanic tourism. Popular and religious explanations often blame Satan, and Satanic cults, for the rebellious behaviour of teenage Satanists. A number of sociological studies have suggested that Satanic...

Ritual provides an etiquette of relating to, thinking through, and emotionally responding to events and experiences that are otherwise difficult to deal with. Rituals work through embodied performances that are bound up with cultures of cognitive and somatic knowing. Ritual experiences allow participants to develop life-enhancing responses to some...

There are indications that the phenomenal growth of Witchcraft and Paganism during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century may be slowing, based on statistics from selected search engines, websites, and blogs. In particular, inquisitive inquiry about contemporary Witchcraft that is, those who are not Witches but are looking for informatio...

The article argues that the emotional framing of interviews plays a major role in shaping the content of interviews. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Jessica Benjamin and Luce Irigaray, the article describes how interviews can be experienced as either conquest or communion. Qualitative researchers typically focus on the cognitively articulat...

You are how you move. (Roth 1997: xxiii) In the video of a Faithless live performance of the song “God is a DJ”, the camera pans out over a mass of dancing humanity and Maxi Jazz sings: “This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts” (Faithless 2010). The argument of this chapter is that, for Pagans in Australia, dancing to the music of Pagan ba...

Drawing on interviews with 90 young people who have become Witches, we explore the visual media's influence on identity formation and maintenance. Witchcraft is a late modern religion that is highly individualistic and many young people report they have become a Witch without any interaction with other Witches. The rapid growth of interest in this...

Through a detailed analysis of a Guild Day ceremony in early modern England we demonstrate that liminal points in this ritual are interrelated to form a “pattern” or “dance” of liminal pulsations. We argue it is the felt necessity, on the part of participants, to complete that pattern that provides a dynamic to any ritual event. It impels participa...

Steven J. Sutcliffe (ed.), Religion: Empirical Studies. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004, pp. xlii+279, ISBN 100754641589 (hbk).

In an insightful rethinking of what constitutes ‘animism’, Graham Harvey defines animism as: ‘being concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons’ (2005: xi). Further, only some persons are human. In this chapter I ask how we, as humans, can engage respectfully with ‘water persons’ such as rivers, cr...

Gary D. Bouma and Rod Ling, The Research Process (5th edn). Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2004, pp. 264, ISBN 0195517466

Chas S. Clifton and Graham Harvey, eds., The Paganism Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), xi + 387 pp., £65.00/$110 (cloth), £19.99/$34.95 (paper).

Joanne Pearson, ed., Belief beyond Boundaries: Wicca, Celtic Spirituality and the New Age (Milton Keynes: Ashgate and The Open University, 2002), 358 pp., $79.95/£45 (cloth); $29.95/£15.99 (paper).

Witchcraft is often described as a ‘nature religion’ that is attractive because of its environmentally oriented mythology. This article examines the popular literature of contemporary Witchcraft to identify the extent to which Witchcraft reflects a substantial change from the dominant Western anthropocentric orientation to the other-than-human envi...

Cities inscribe on the earth a text of human being-in-the world. They contain, repress, facilitate, control and decimate nature. Put another way, the geography of our being-in-the world profoundly shapes human experience of nature. This article proceeds through a dialogue between my own mystical experiences in nature. and a rereading of Levinas.s a...

A popular new image of Witches has arisen in recent years, due largely to movies like The Craft, Practical Magic, and Simply Irresistible and television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Charmed . Here, young sexy Witches use magic and Witchcraft to gain control over their lives and fight evil. Then there is the...

What is white Witchcraft and how is it different to black magic? The books and practices of the purveyors of white Witchcraft are examined alongside other popular Witches oriented toward consumerism. White Witchcraft is also compared to traditional Witchcraft. I argue that white Witchcraft is a marketing label for a type of Witchcraft consistent wi...

Witchcraft is often described as a 'nature religion' that is attractive because of its environmentally oriented mythology. This article examines the popular literature of contemporary Witchcraft to identify the extent to which Witchcraft reflects a substantial change from the dominant Western anthropocentric orientation to the other-than-human envi...

Surely religion has little to say of significance about the environment? That is a central argument of this chapter. However, it is only half the story, and the opening sentence may not have quite the meaning that you think. It is the Christian tradition and its secularised descendant ‘consumerist capitalism’ that are the religious traditions that...

Cities inscribe on the earth a text of human being-in-the world. They contain, repress, facilitate, control and decimate nature. Put another way, the geography of our being-in-the world profoundly shapes human experience of nature. This article proceeds through a dialogue between my own mystical experiences in 'nature' and a rereading of Levinas's...

Witchcraft is entering mainstream culture through movies, magazines, websites, novels, and spell books. This paper examines a small number of popular spell books to investigate the effects of popularisation on the beliefs and practices of Witchcraft. I interrogate the debate about Witchcraft's relationship to the New Age to identify characteristics...

Qualitative research methods are increasingly utilised by health researchers. Along with this the criteria for assessing the quality of qualitative research are changing from a natural science model to an interpretative social science model. This is a product of the realisation by health researchers that qualitative methods utilise a different epis...

This paper focuses on the cultural and social consequences of the new forms of work organisation variously described as engineered workplace culture, flexibilisation, teamwork, employee involvement, quality circles and post-Fordism. Some celebrate the new form of worker this creates as a consumer of organisationally provided meanings. However, the...

Many people with HIV/AIDS use alternative therapies. Do they choose alternative therapies instead of allopathic therapies? To examine patterns of use of allopathic therapies and alternative therapies among people living with HIV/AIDS. Cross-sectional survey of convenience sample. Nonclinical setting in Australia. 925 men and women living with HIV/A...

Life threatening illness, such as HIV/AIDS, also threaten people's sense of identity and taken-for-granted assumptions about the temporal framing of their lives. In response, people often experience transformations in values, spirituality and life priorities. Drawing on a combined quantitative and qualitative study of people living with HIV/AIDS in...

While sociologists have emphasized the social sources of autobiographical narratives, there has been relatively little sociological reflection on the way that autobiographers themselves make selective use of accounts of social forces and pressures to explain their actions. This paper examines the way individuals' use of social pressures as explanat...

Previous research on comorbidity among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) has focused on the consequences for disease progression. The research reported here examines the broader public health implications of comorbidity. A sample of 925 Australian PLWHA completed a self-administered questionnaire. Comorbid conditions were reported by 28% of respo...

A national survey of 925 people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Australia is used to examine the relationship between disease progression, employment status, poverty and economic hardship. While disease progression has some impact on economic hardship, employment status is found to be the strongest determinant of both poverty and economic hardship....

The objective of this study was to describe the medical, attitudinal and cultural correlates of antiretroviral uptake amongst people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Australia. Stratified purposive sampling produced a sample of 925 PLWHA, which represents 8.3% of the current population of PLWHA in Australia. Respondents completed a self-administered...

The research reported here is of a study of the psychosocial impact of living with HIV/AIDS in Australia focusing on employment, accommodation and income in the environment of new treatments for HIV/AIDS. Many people experience profound changes to their lifestyle as a result of living with HIV/AIDS. In addition to detrimental changes in their healt...

Narrative analysis builds on the strengths of qualitative research by examining the construction of meaning and symbolic systems in a framework that is explicitly temporal and that links research in the humanities with that in the social sciences. Qualitative methodologies often assume reported data accurately reflects the realities of lived experi...

This article argues for a synthesis of George Herbert Mead's conception of the temporal and intersubjective nature of the self with Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory of narrative identity. Combining the insights of Ricoeur's philosophical analysis with Mead's social-psychological orientation provides a subtle, sophisticated, and potent explanation...

Two central unresolved problems in labour process theory are the disjuncture between structure and agency and the problem of what constitutes `good' work. This paper argues that a hermeneutic conception of the self as constructed through narrative provides a resolution to these two issues. Hermeneutics conceptualises the self as neither a solitary...

Existing theoretical explanations of the mental health consequences of unemployment are outlined, critically reviewed and an alternative theory proposed. Theories reviewed include the rehabilitation approach, the stages model, Jahoda's functional model, Warr's vitamin model and Fryer's agency critique. A discussion of the effects of moderating vari...

Should researchers of spirituality and religion be distantly "objective," or engaged and active participants? The traditional paradigm of 'methodological agnosticism' is increasingly challenged as researchers emphasize the benefits of direct participation for understanding beliefs and practices. Should academic researchers "go native," participatin...