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Homo Religiosus? Religion and Immigrant Subjectivities
Abstract
Once ignored in national and international public policy, religion has made a comeback as policymakers have noticed the significance of the resurgence of religion, especially due to migration flows. While laudatory of these developments, this chapter specifies the need for a theological reading of the migrant religious practitioner as homo religiosus. First, we describe the social geographies of immigrant religion in an international context, drawing attention to the vibrancy of religious devotion, especially Christianity from the global south, among migrant groups. Second, we re-conceptualise religious belief through the theoretical work of John Milbank and Charles Taylor as they recuperate a theological reading of religion that is cautious in imposing secular categories on religious phenomena. Third, we perform an interpretive experiment on immigrant churches through Victor Turner's hermeneutics of the stranger, arguing that a theological interpretation of migrant religions, including those of some social and economic means, demonstrates that they often comprise a liminal 'church of the poor'. We contribute to the geography of religion with a call to conceptualise religious belief and practice by ways that draw out the inner logics of such phenomena instead of imposing foreign theoretical categories on them. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights reserved.
... In this paper, I provide a grounded analysis of the complex topologies of power operating in contemporary humanitarianism, specifically actions taken for and with forced migrants in Europe. 1 I'm interested in the rationalities and practices of faith-based actors, their assumptions and beliefs that are different from (and often juxtaposed with) liberal norms, and the productive intertwining of these webs of belief with those of secular governments and neoliberal organizations (cf. Ager, 2011;Barnett & Stein, 2012;Cloke & Beaumont, 2013;Ley & Tse, 2013;Miller, 2015;Moyn, 2014Moyn, , 2015Williams, 2015). 2 In particular, I look at this constellation of power through an investigation of church actors and their work in support of migrants through the provision of church asylum, also known as sanctuary (cf. Cunningham, 1995;Lippert, 2005;Lippert & Rehaag, 2013;Marfleet, 2011;Neufert, 2014;Rabben, 2016;Snyder, 2012). ...
... In addition to the critiques of uneven development and theory operating at a distance, there have also been arguments against an overweening focus on neoliberalism and its subjectifying dominance (Gibson-Graham, 1996;Larner, 2003). These critiques are based on the importance of widening our theoretical purview so that we can recognize alternative, non-liberal and/or non-capitalist forms of economic and social governance and resistance (Cloke & Beaumont, 2013;Gibson-Graham, 2005;Larner & Craig, 2005;Larner & Le Heron, 2002;Ley & Tse, 2013;Williams, Cloke, & Thomas, 2012;Williams, Goodwin, & Cloke, 2014). Without a broader and more inclusive vision of the multiple determinants of power, it is argued, academics run the risk of missing what's going on at the margins, reifying the central object of study, or overlooking the potential for forms of political activism and resistance that operate interstitially or underground. ...
... As a result of these processes, in the current era there are now more prominent international church networks and other types of faithbased partnerships operating with and alongside the EU, national actors, IGOs, NGOs, and secular philanthropists in migration relief. This constellation of groups and alliances manifests a new structure of humanitarian governance, one that I argue is distinctive in its operations from primarily secular, advanced liberal partnerships, and thus important to probe further (see also Ager, 2011;Ley & Tse, 2013;Moyn, 2015;Williams, 2015). ...
In the context of increasing numbers of vulnerable migrants in Europe, many churches and other faith-based organizations have provided sanctuary to those at risk of deportation. This paper sheds light on the rationalities and practices of actors such as these, and in what ways their beliefs may be different from liberal norms. Investigating both liberal and faith-based understandings of space, time, and freedom I look at the ways that multiple webs of belief intersect to form new constellations of power in humanitarian governance.
... There is a move within geographies of religion away from these simplistic categorizations, towards interpreting the construction of religious meanings and processes (Ley and Tse, 2013). Religion is increasingly perceived as a malleable phenomenon (Ivakhiv, 2006), composed of 'systems of meaning derived from cultural resources by active agents, who come to affectively embody those meanings' (Dittmer, 2007: 738). ...
... Korf (2006) identifies this as a welcome trend because many geographers have tried to understand religion without understanding its theological underpinnings (see Pabst, 2011). Ley and Tse (2013) suggest that analysts have often done 'categorical violence' (p. 156) to religious communities by constraining explanation of theologicallyinspired performances to include only socioeconomic factors (Holloway, 2006;Kong, 2010). ...
This paper intervenes in the recent movement in religious geographies to produce more nuanced understandings of the religious subject. By introducing the concept of theography, this paper explores a religious reflexivity that directs subjects towards struggles over the content of theology, its effects on their spatial imagination, and their praxis. Theography advances conversations about praxis in the geography of religion by tying together poststructural scholarship regarding the religious subject’s potential to subvert abstract categorization, geographies concerning the subject’s reframing of theology, and philosophical contributions vis-à-vis praxes that stem from particular understandings of transcendence.
... American Christians and the way they defined their roles in Chinese churches, this examination of Shigematsu's reading of the New Testament helps us to better understand his ministry philosophy. Such an approach opens a window into a particular understanding of Asian Canadian ministry at Tenth that emphasizes the theological formation of a heterogeneous community, not a homogeneous institution (see LEY; TSE, 2011). Ken Shigematsu's understanding of the Gospel places an embrace of difference at the centre of the evangelical message (see VOLF, 1996). ...
... For example, Karen Chai (1998) Moreover, the contestations that go into forming social capital in religious congregations often only last over the short term because they tend to be generationally contingent. Indeed, churches that began by catering to certain migrants run the risk of becoming increasingly exclusive because they construct their social capital along ethnic lines (BEATTIE; LEY LEY, 2008; TSE, 2011). As Ley (2008) argues, bonding social capital in congregations through ethnicity usually gives way after one generation to bridging social capital between generations and ethnicities. ...
Resumo
This paper explores how the evangelical spatiality of an Asian Canadian senior pastor at a historically Anglo-Saxon congregation has transformed it from an ethnically homogeneous, aging church to a heterogeneously-constituted gathering in an evangelical Protestant tradition. This piece challenges the conventional wisdom of the church growth movement and the new religious economics in the sociology of religion, both of which advise religious groups to construct homogeneity and consensus in efforts for numerical growth over against secularizing forces. The paper argues instead that Pastor Ken Shigematsu’s evangelical spatiality from the mid-1990s to the present must be understood as a theological embrace of difference in a church gifted to him by God over which he prayerfully pastors along with his staff. This paper understands Shigematsu’s evangelical spatiality through his own New Testament exegesis, his denominational affiliation with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, his ancient spiritual practices of indiscriminate hospitality, and his mystical reception of Tenth as a welcoming space toward a multiplicity of ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds. This article contributes to Asian Canadian Christian studies by discouraging a future where pan-Asian churches in Canada are homogeneously constructed and by exploring the concrete possibility of non-strategies in which heterogeneous, complex spaces that include Asian Canadians are received by pastors and studied by academics as a divine gift.
... In this study, both "lifestyle migrants" and "international students" mentioned the importance of religious activities conducted in their native language in relation to their "awareness of being Japanese" (No. 4), as well as their "feelings towards Japan and the Japanese people" (No. 14). Thus, Japanese churches and Japanese worship services serve as "immigrant churches" (Ley 2008;Ley and Tse 2013), which provide a space to stay in touch with their home countries, and church attendance is regarded as important for maintaining a connection with their homeland and preserving their ethnic identity. In addition to the local background, the transnational need to maintain Japanese ethnicity is also important for church attendance and affiliation. ...
This study delves into community participation and retention in religious facilities. And it also analyzes the significance of these roles. It focuses on the interplay between religious activities in Protestant churches and the everyday lives of Japanese migrants in the Gyeonggi region of the Republic of Korea (ROK). Japanese migrants who attended church were categorized into two types: “lifestyle migrants” and “international students.” In particular, the “lifestyle migrants” include many international marriage migrants. Their participation in religious communities was shaped by both problems in their everyday lives and religious backgrounds. Most “lifestyle migrants” attended church for the first time in the ROK, considering it a place to build social relationships and communicate with fellow Japanese migrants during their early stages of migration. Conversely, most “international students” had previous church experience in Japan before migrating, perceiving church activities as an extension of their religious engagements prior to migrating to the ROK. Religious activities influence the social capital and ethnic identity of Japanese migrants. And the development of the religious communities among Japanese migrants in the Gyeonggi region is not only driven by church proselytizing efforts, but also influenced by various challenges arising from changes or divergences in the migration process, residential trends, and the aspirations and difficulties of local community activities. These findings elucidate the impact of religious activities on individual migrants, and also highlight the pivotal role of religion in migration studies and geography.
... C2). Tiah is just one of many devout Christians among the ascendant transnational entrepreneurs of British Columbia's West/East growth machine (Ley and Tse, 2013), accentuating the distinctive intergenerational contradictions of capital accumulation in Canada's colonial present (Bowman, 1931;Smith, 2003;Coulthard, 2014;Joseph, 2018). Canada remained a formal colonial "Dominion" until a constitutional patriation in 1982, and for a full century beginning in Turner's day, Canada pursued a forced assimilation policy in partnership with Christian churches that coercively removed more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families. ...
In the Summer of 2020, as the latest coronavirus quickened its evolutionary journeys through the human mobilities of planetary urban systems, the research journal of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development published an article by the world's most famous urban economist. Edward Glaeser's article, “The Closing of America's Urban Frontier,” celebrates the influential interpretation of U.S. history offered by Frederick Jackson Turner in a lecture delivered in Chicago in 1893, as part of Glaeser's advocacy of neoliberal, supply-side deregulated city-building as social policy. Yet Glaeser carefully evades the fundamental ethnoracial inequalities at the heart of Turner's frontier thesis, which were inseparable from the Social Darwinist hijacking of evolutionary thought that corrupted economics and other social sciences beginning in the late 19th century. In this paper, the Glaeser-Turner genealogy is used to interpret today's evolving materialities and discourses of race, class, identity, and urbanism. A mixed-methods blend of quantitative modeling and simple, descriptive online media analysis in the spirit of Robert Park's “Natural History of the Newspaper” is used to map the contours of competition, succession, and representation in a planetary urbanism that is now diagnosed as a new phase of “cognitive-cultural” capitalism. Cognitive-capitalist urbanism evolves along multiple semiotic frontiers of cosmopolitan diversity and multidimensional, intersectional hybridity – while valorizing performative competitive hierarchies that legitimate the reproduction of the structured inequalities of capital accumulation. Combinatoric expansion of the spatio-temporal reference points of identity and ancestry present daunting challenges to all who pursue equity or equality – requiring careful strategic confrontation of the meanings of neoliberal planetary human evolution.
... A brief review of geographies of religion (see, for example, Hopkins et al. 2013) illustrates the rising importance of this challenge. Until very recently, geographical study of religion has been carried out in a marginalised subfield that has struggled to establish itself as mainstream and has been neglected as a source of interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary initiative (Ley and Tse 2013;Tse 2014). Religion has been the last great otherness in geography; that which has been most shunned and swerved around by the general practice of the subject, which on the whole remains resolutely secular in nature and cautious about conceiving of religion as being interconnected with progressive ethics or politics (see Cloke 2010; 2011). ...
... A brief review of geographies of religion (see, for example, Hopkins et al. 2013) illustrates the rising importance of this challenge. Until very recently, geographical study of religion has been carried out in a marginalised subfield that has struggled to establish itself as mainstream and has been neglected as a source of interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary initiative (Ley and Tse 2013;Tse 2014). Religion has been the last great otherness in geography; that which has been most shunned and swerved around by the general practice of the subject, which on the whole remains resolutely secular in nature and cautious about conceiving of religion as being interconnected with progressive ethics or politics (see Cloke 2010; 2011). ...
... Esta reinversión en ocasiones ocurre en otro sistema de producción, la ganadería de bovinos o de animales de traspatio que nuevamente, están pensados para el autoconsumo familiar y para festejos religiosos que responden a aspectos culturales que fortalecen las bases comunitarias. Las motivaciones por creencias religiosas en diferentes culturas son una guía de comportamiento muy importante, que impone reglas y acciones entre miembros de la comunidad(Ley y Tse, 2013).La producción intensiva y orgánica certificada requiere actitudes individualistas, racionales y calculadoras que rompen la organización comunitaria. En este sentido, uno de los apicultores líderes y con actitud positiva hacia la producción orgánica se refiere así a la manera en que en la cooperativa afrontaron el incumplimiento de los requisitos por uno de los apicultores:Pues yo creo que lo justo es dar de baja a una persona nada más, que no se castigue a todo el grupo. ...
Introducción: En los últimos treinta años las políticas dirigidas al campo mexicano se han orientado a satisfacer las demandas del mercado internacional sin considerar las características específicas de cada sistema agropecuario local y regional, con ello han interferido en la forma en que los campesinos organizan su vida. Buscando entender los impactos específicos que tienen las políticas de conversión productiva sobre los modos de vida campesinos, este artículo aborda la experiencia de comunidades mayas peninsulares que transitaron desde la producción de miel convencional a la producción orgánica certificada y focaliza en los aspectos subjetivos involucrados de dicha transición y en sus transformaciones desde la perspectiva de los apicultores mayas.Método: Seleccionamos el caso de una cooperativa en la península de Yucatán que recibió financiamiento internacional para transformar sus procesos apícolas y a la larga no continuó con la producción de miel orgánica, caso que muestra una situación generalizada en la región. La metodología usada fue cualitativa y se basó en la teoría fundamentada y el análisis del discurso de los apicultores e incluyó la realización de entrevistas semi-estructuradas y a profundidad. Resultados: Los constantes cursos de capacitación dirigidos a los apicultores orientados a la producción orgánica y a la conservación ambiental utilizan dispositivos para convertir al campesino maya en un homo economicus. Asimismo, la producción orgánica exige lineamientos internacionales que se imponen a partir de requisitos de certificación y no permiten la innovación tecnológica desde las comunidades. Para los apicultores líderes, las abejas han pasado de ser una fuente de ahorro a representar su principal fuente de ingresos. Sin embargo, pese a las distintas transformaciones, encontramos que el perfil del maya campesino-apicultor corresponde más a un homo socio-economicus, por lo cual concluimos que la conversión hacia un homo economicus no ha logrado instituirse. Conclusión: Para que el neoliberalismo tenga éxito es necesario que las motivaciones y actitudes de los apicultores ligados más a una visión productiva tradicional se transformen a otra de intensificación convencional de los apiarios. Los resultados cuestionan que los procesos de certificación orgánica propuestos por las políticas nacionales e internacionales sean una estrategia adecuada para mejorar la calidad de vida de los campesinos e incentivar la conservación de las selvas, ya que ella limita la innovación que los apicultores generan en su actividad. Además, la certificación actúa como un proceso de subordinación a los modelos occidentales de producción ya que no surge desde los modelos productivos de las comunidades sino que es impuesto y demanda procesos de subjetivación de los campesinos que no fortalecen su cultura y autonomía económica, social y política.
"Xenophobia", fear against or of foreigners is a concern for managers, organizations, social activists as well as global leaders has long been debated. However, research at the intersection of xenophobia and human resource management is lacking. To fill the lacuna, this study systematically reviewed the literature (N=157) spanning from 1945 to 2021 to dig out conceptualization of the xenophobia, different contexts, types, solutions, antecedents, theoretical foundation, and methodological debates. To screen the articles PRISMA approach was followed in this study. This systematic literature review uncovered many future avenues, which were not considered in the area of human resource management. These findings will help in identifying future research directions, as well as setting managerial guidelines at cross-cultural settings. The study tried to answer various research questions that may help to link past research with the future prospect to converge the research to a single point.
For more than 40 years, Neil Smith's rent gap theory of gentrification has been one of the most influential concepts in critical urban research. In recent years, however, the rent gap has been challenged as an economically deterministic tool suitable only for the study of inner city land parcels in certain types of deindustrializing cities of the Global North. But what if the rent gap was never really about economics, but instead about moral outrage? And what happens when moral and ethical questions about access to urban space are extended across multiple human generations? This article develops the concept of the moral rent gap: juxtapositions, tensions, and often irreconcilable contradictions in the present use of urban land in the context of intergenerational debts and responsibilities. Parcels of urban land are not clear, Cartesian locations, but are portals into multidimensional transformations of space and time produced through diverse, competing moral claims to the benefits of urban life.
Nagar kirtans are street assemblies with Sikh spiritual music, political marches, and free food distribution. They are especially large in April during the Punjabi harvest festival of Vaisakhi but also take place in other months. This paper explores the political praxis of nagar kirtans in Canada to contribute to critiques of secularism and theorize the political ontology in the Sikh context. I conceptualize nagar kirtan as a mobile court of both poetic pilgrimage and politics, which engage an embodied and performative world-making process, termed performed worlding, that is at odds with the modern ontology of the secular state. The empirical study analyzes early 20th century nagar kirtans in Vancouver and contemporary ones in urban Canada in the 2010-decade. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out between 2017 and 2018 including analysis of interviews and archival and media content. Early nagar kirtans in Vancouver were aligned with the anti-colonial Ghadar Movement to protest the racial state of Canada. In the contemporary context, the study reveals competing ways of worlding the political ontologies of the mobile court. On the one hand, there is an increased commodification and state presence that refashions the practice at larger Vaisakhi nagar kirtan to be marketable to Canadian multiculturalism. On the other hand, the bottom-up assembling of participants align a spiritual politics of Sikh and Punjabi world-making, one that is grounded in practices of horizontal organizing and mutual care and sustain a form of embodied expression against racial Canada.
Full Text at: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1efQ93Qu6ubopS
The following research seeks to understand the religious life of a Haitian community in a Chilean parish. The main objectives try to identify (a) the reproduction of Haitian Catholicism in a Chilean parish and (b) the interrelationship with the Chilean community and society through participation in the parish life by Haitian parishioners. The research uses a qualitative framework with participant observations of the Sunday Masses and religious and social activities developed in the parish. The sample is composed of Haitian parishioners that are regular participants of the Masses and activities. The main findings show that the Haitian community is not alone or isolated from Chilean parishioners and society. The participation in ‘integration’ Masses and cultural activities are examples of activities for both Haitians and Chileans. Finally, the language is a tool for remembering the Haitian Mass but not a mechanism for isolating the Haitian community.
Religion represents an appealing topic for social science research. Especially in Eastern European countries, the resurgence of religious identities and practices poses many questions that are of interest to human geography. We approach this research gap in Slovakia, outlining the main research topics that have dominated the scientific field, especially atlases and census data analyses. This paper proposes several possible points of interest where research in Slovakian (and possibly Eastern Central European) religion can proceed. Topics such as secularization, non-religion and demographic aspects of religion, like research in suburban areas and areas of religious identity diminution, are potentially attractive, yet not thoroughly researched, fields. Geographers of religion should be more audible with their analysis of the relationship of religious/non-religious identity and space construction in certain contexts.
Post-secular constructions of space and re-configurations of traditional sacred places are examined inspired by de Certeau’s conceptual quadrant of space, place, strategy and tactics. De Certeau’s theorization enables us to draw out the subversive or disruptive spatial practices of post-secular pilgrimages as instances of pedestrian rhetorics, pilgrimage as a space of enunciations and as the double other of both secular and sacred terrains, as well as ‘proper' practices. The article is based on interviews conducted on and off-season with pilgrims in the region of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela and Fisterra). Beyond an intervention in the geography of religion, this paper is also a contribution to the post-secular debate, post-secular geographies and the blurring of the boundaries between the secular and the sacred elicited by philosophers and social scientists.
Introduction
In this chapter we trace the contribution of geographers to the reimagination of religion and belief. Any claim that Geography has made such a contribution may come as something of a surprise to scholars both outside and inside Geography, given the staunchly secular nature of most geographical endeavour in which acceptance of religion and faith as a legitimate focus for study has been one of the last great areas of otherness that geographers have had to address. For much of its academic history, Human Geography has included a self-contained strand of research about religious spaces (particularly in the US) and in addition has recognised the contributions to wider scholarship from high-profile and self-identifying Christians (such as Lily Kong, David Livingstone and David Ley). More generally, however, the discipline has tended to equate religion with colonising practices of war, violence and proselytisation rather than as a potential contributor to politically progressive or theoretically interesting aspects of space, society and environment.
We identify at least three forms of inquisitiveness that have begun to change this rather skewed pattern. First, from positions outside of Geography, theologians and philosophers of religion have begun to interrogate geographical concepts in order to pose serious questions about space and place; Kim Knott (2005, 2008), for example, has explored specifically geographical ideas in her accounts of the theorisation of spaces and places of religion, belief and politics, and of the utility of spatial metaphors in religious and political discourse. In so doing, inherently geographical discussions about how places and landscapes are infused with social and cultural meaningfulness have attracted the interest of a wider body of scholars of religion. Second, within Geography, the emergence of religion as a global concern served to catalyse enquiry into religion across a range of sub-disciplines, particularly Political Geography (see, for example, work on religious geopolitics by Agnew, 2006; Dittmer, 2007, 2008; Sturm, 2013; citizenship by Nagel and Staeheli, 2008; and war/peace by Megoran, 2010; P. Williams, 2015), and Social and Cultural Geography, especially with regard to geographies of Islam and Muslim identities (Falah and Nagel, 2005; Gale, 2007; Phillips, 2009), intersectionality (Hopkins et al, 2017) and transnational religious subjectivities, mobilities and politics (Olson and Silvey, 2006; Gökarıksel and Secor, 2009; Sheringham, 2010; Vanderbeck et al, 2011; Ley and Tse, 2013).
Introducción:
En los últimos treinta años las políticas dirigidas al campo mexicano se han orientado a satisfacer las demandas del mercado internacional sin considerar las características específicas de cada sistema agropecuario local y regional, con ello han interferido en la forma en que los campesinos organizan su vida. Buscando entender los impactos específicos que tienen las políticas de conversión productiva sobre los modos de vida campesinos, este artículo aborda la experiencia de comunidades mayas peninsulares que transitaron desde la producción de miel convencional a la producción orgánica certificada y focaliza en los aspectos subjetivos involucrados de dicha transición y en sus transformaciones desde la perspectiva de los apicultores mayas.
Método:
Seleccionamos el caso de una cooperativa en la península de Yucatán que recibió financiamiento internacional para transformar sus procesos apícolas y a la larga no continuó con la producción de miel orgánica, caso que muestra una situación generalizada en la región. La metodología usada fue cualitativa y se basó en la teoría fundamentada y el análisis del discurso de los apicultores e incluyó la realización de entrevistas semi-estructuradas y a profundidad.
Resultados:
Los constantes cursos de capacitación dirigidos a los apicultores orientados a la producción orgánica y a la conservación ambiental utilizan dispositivos para convertir al campesino maya en un homo economicus. Asimismo, la producción orgánica exige lineamientos internacionales que se imponen a partir de requisitos de certificación y no permiten la innovación tecnológica desde las comunidades. Para los apicultores líderes, las abejas han pasado de ser una fuente de ahorro a representar su principal fuente de ingresos. Sin embargo, pese a las distintas transformaciones, encontramos que el perfil del maya campesino-apicultor corresponde más a un homo socio-economicus, por lo cual concluimos que la conversión hacia un homo economicus no ha logrado instituirse.
Conclusión:
Para que el neoliberalismo tenga éxito es necesario que las motivaciones y actitudes de los apicultores ligados más a una visión productiva tradicional se transformen a otra de intensificación convencional de los apiarios. Los resultados cuestionan que los procesos de certificación orgánica propuestos por las políticas nacionales e internacionales sean una estrategia adecuada para mejorar la calidad de vida de los campesinos e incentivar la conservación de las selvas, ya que ella limita la innovación que los apicultores generan en su actividad. Además, la certificación actúa como un proceso de subordinación a los modelos occidentales de producción ya que no surge desde los modelos productivos de las comunidades sino que es impuesto y demanda procesos de subjetivación de los campesinos que no fortalecen su cultura y autonomía económica, social y política.
The study of religion is increasingly being accepted as a legitimate and serious subject of inquiry by scholars in the social and policy sciences and humanities and those in regional studies, and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs. Following decades of neglect, religion and faith/belief systems are being recognized as both important in understanding cultures, societies, economies, politics, and history. This chapter summarizes the books remaining 14 parts: nature, ethics and environmental change; sacred spaces and places; pilgrimage landscapes and tourism; education and changing worldviews; business, finance, economic development and law; globalization, diasporas and new faces in the Global North; globalization, diasporas and new faces in the Global South; secularization; megachurches and architecture; culture (museums, drama, fashion, food, music, sports and science fiction); organizations; identity, gender and culture; politics, reconciliation and advocacy; and virtual worlds and the visual media. The 207 chapters discuss religious issues in over 60 countries and are written by scholars from nearly 40 countries. This chapter has an extensive bibliography (over 1,200 items: books, atlases, chapters, journal articles) that includes the contributions of geographers and others writing about historical and contemporary dimensions of religion; it also suggests topics for those wishing to pursue the study of religion and faith issues at all scales (local and global).
Abstract
We are currently witnessing an increased diversification of the field of academic knowledge production where more and more, forms of knowledge kept at periphery for centuries are claiming recognition at centre stage. This reality has pushed scholars to question the impact and lasting legacies of historical processes of racism and colonialism still embedded in mainstream academic knowledge production. This translates today into a major critic of the social science methodologies, critiqued as “master’s tools” serving to reproduce contested coloniality of academic knowledge in most non-Western regions today. In Africa this debate is framed as knowledge decolonial option looking particularly at what forms and whose knowledge is legitimised, reproduced, and for what purpose through the current education structure and what socio-political and cultural functions it plays. This is the debate this paper contributes to. It suggests an ontological turn in order to move from an emphasis on the identities of the producers to focus instead on the knowledge production process itself. The main argument is that there is indeed a timely necessity to advance an ontologically relevant Africanist scholarship that gives a sympathetic theological reading of the African lived experience. As a methodology and scholarly language, ontology constitutes a neutral ground in knowledge production, validation and consumption debates that needs to be taken seriously as it allows scholars to take into account the lived worlds people inhabit and the correlating ways of Being and knowing. The paper highlights particularly the current issues of misreading, misrepresentations as well as the need to avoid reading African realities with external interpretative and explanative lenses.
Keywords: Ontological Turn, coloniality, African, Cosmology
This paper replies to Kong's (2010) lament that geographers of religion have not sufficiently intervened in religious studies. It advocates 'grounded theologies' as a rubric by which to investigate contemporary geographies of religion in a secular age. Arguing that secularization can itself be conceived as a theological process, the paper critiques a religious/secular dichotomy and argues that individualized spiritualities presently prevalent are indicative of Taylor's (2007) nova effect of proliferating grounded theologies. Case studies are drawn from social and cultural geographies of religious intersectionalities and from critical geopolitics.
Churches played a critical role in assisting immigrants’ access to the host society. Churches provide stability for new immigrants in Jamaica by creating a sense of community and often act as extended families. But, limited research has been carried out on the settlement of immigrants and the role of ethnic organisations in Jamaica. This study examines the history, functions and, to a greater extent, the impact of a Chinese Christian Church in Jamaica in facilitating Chinese immigrants’ settlement. The study uses qualitative analysis in the form of case studies from members/ex-members of the church, associated organisations and the Chinese community in Jamaica. The results suggest that the church provides stability and acts as a centre for social networks through which employment, vital services and housing were found. However, the position and the future of the church are questionable due to internal conflicts and the increasing diversity in the Chinese immigrant population.
In the context of the academic interest shown in the enduring transnationalism of contemporary migrants and in the modes of transitions to adulthood in different global settings, in this article we examine the transnational lives of adolescents moving between Vancouver (Canada) and Hong Kong. While there is a lot of literature on the parents' political and economic calculations, there is very little on how adolescents in these situations articulate their geographical sensibilities. We draw on three periods of fieldwork undertaken in 2002, 2008 and 2010 during which we employed a transnational methodology to interview young people in Vancouver and Hong Kong. We argue that becoming an adult involves a process in which, in their discussions about the geographical and emotional distance between themselves and their families, young people articulate their own complex emotions towards specific places in their transnational social field. Their families sporadically interrupt the adolescents' otherwise independent lives with fragmented modes of supervision. By examining the complex intentions and emotions behind circular migration from the perspective of transnational youth in a community of split families, we advance the discussion on transnational geographies, particularly of the family in the context of a flexible global economy.
This article explores and extends the geographies of postsecular theory. Despite growing claims of secularization, religion continues to be a highly public and rapidly diversifying issue, and of growing interest to geographers. We identify the spatial elements of postsecular theory, and consider how spatial approaches, particularly feminist work, that emphasize lived religion and embodiment might provide an alternative to existing analyses. Increasingly present in recent geographical work on religion, these approaches challenge the discursive, political, and social constructions of secularization and its theoretical claims and, we argue, are essential for the continued development of interdisciplinary postsecular approaches and analyses. Drawing on recent empirical research, we apply this argument to the religious subject constructions of young Christian-affiliated people living in Glasgow, Scotland. Their conceptions of authentic faith are intimately bound up in ideas of authenticity and embodied transcendence, which are both reinforced and challenged by particular historical and contemporary meanings of Christian identities. In conclusion, we reflect on the broader empirical and theoretical implications of our research for postsecular approaches to the study of religion and society.
Non‐recognition is one of the key modes of re‐inscribing the Other. In Sydney's anti‐mosque politics this form of oppression was manifest as a discourse of absence. Sydney Muslims have been portrayed as non‐existent within, or external to, localities where mosques have been proposed. In these circumstances claims to belonging and citizenship by Sydney Muslims have been fundamentally injured. Census data are used to challenge the historical and contemporary constructions of Islamic absence in Australia. Sydney Muslims are a culturally diverse and somewhat disparate faith group. They are increasingly present in areas outside of the initial zones of residential focus. This diversity and dynamism is a substantial challenge for Islamic community building (Ummah) in Sydney and presents rich foci for further research.
Why do immigrants abandon their traditional religion and convert to Protestant Christianity? Easting sociological theories of conversion are mostly based on studies of individuals who convert fnto cults. Factors of individual personality and interpersonal bonds in small networks, or assimilation motives, carmot adequately explain the growing phenomenon of conversion to evangelical Protestantism among new immigrant groups from Asia and Latin America. Based on interviews and etnnographic observations in Chinese churches in the Greater Washington, D.C., area, / argue that social and cultural changes m China in the process of coerced modernization are the most important factor for Chinese conversion to Christianity; identity reconstruction of immigrant Chinese in a pluralist modem society also contributes to Chinese conversion to evangelical Christianity; mstftutJonal factors are of secondary importance. This study also has important theoretical implications .to the ongoing debates concerning the reasons for and sources of growth among conservative Christian churches in the VS.
This paper sets out to define what is meant by a spiritual landscape. As such it theorizes the immaterial push of spirit alongside the materiality of landscape by rendering spiritual landscapes as the associate mapping of the relations between bodily existence, felt practice and faith in something immanent but not manifest as such. To achieve this, the paper uses recent debates relating post-phenomenology to one aspect of spirituality-that associated with Christian religion, teasing out how landscape (existence), practice (performance) and affect (immanence) offer up alternative ways to think our being in the world. This is to suggest important new theoretical understandings of how faith and belief, Christianity and phenomenology, recast our notion of being in the world. Thus we seek wider understandings of the importance and centrality of the spiritual landscapes that forge a sense of community, arguing that such a community is already a part of our individual and singular communal disposition.
Guatemala, a nation plagued by the legacy of its brutal 36-year civil war, has, in recent years liberalized its mining law to encourage the entry of multinational mining corporations. These mining companies have included two Canadian companies, which have developed the two most prominent, and controversial, mining projects in Guatemala. Using the lens of political ecology to demonstrate how environmental analysis and policy can be reframed towards addressing the problems of the socially vulnerable, this article analyses the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to mining in Guatemala. The article reviews the development of liberation theology in Latin America and how this has imparted empathy for the poor into the pastoral praxis of the church. The church is opposed to mining largely because of the potential implications of mining's environmental effects upon the livelihoods of the poor. The article postulates that the opposition of the church to mining is an example of an environmental issue connecting groups of people across class and ethnic lines to offset powerful global political and economic forces. The article concludes with a discussion of how this opposition to mining is a demonstration of the opposition of the progressive church to neoliberalism in general.
In this article, the authors describe our clinical observations about the process of delivering a Cantonese-language cognitive- behavioral therapy program to treat depression in Hong Kong immigrants to Vancouver, Canada. Our experiences indicated that standard referral and assessment procedures were not optimal for this population. Other factors that required consideration were how to convert Cantonese terms for dysphoric affect into English equivalents and how to implement cognitive modification strategies when dealing with culture-syntonic beliefs about social relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
To investigate whether recent Chinese immigrants in British Columbia diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness used mental health services at a lower rate than a similar group of nonimmigrants and longer-term immigrants.
Subjects were selected from linked immigration and health administrative databases. Their health service use records for the years 1992 to 2001 were extracted. Rates and rate ratios of use for severe psychiatric disorders for Chinese immigrants and the comparison group were calculated for 4 types of health services: mental health visits to general practitioners (GPs), visits to psychiatrists, psychiatric hospitalizations, and use of psychiatric medications. Rates and rate ratios of use for any mental health condition were calculated for the above 4 types of services, plus community mental health service and nonmental health visits to GPs.
The Chinese immigrants (n = 786) and comparison subjects (n = 3962) having severe and persistent mental illness were identified. For serious mental disorders, Chinese immigrants were more likely to visit psychiatrists (RR = 1.36) but less likely to use the other types of services, with rate ratios ranging from 0.51 to 0.81. Including all mental health conditions, Chinese immigrants were less likely to use all 6 types of services, with rate ratios ranging from 0.41 to 0.90.
Except for psychiatric visits for serious disorders, recent Chinese immigrants diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness used fewer mental health services than subjects from the comparison group. Seriously ill Chinese immigrants may experience problems with access to mental health services.
In this paper I explore the influence of global events on the lives and experiences of young Muslim men living in postdevolution urban Scotland. Expanding upon understandings of scale, I highlight the complex ways that scale is struggled for and over, and in doing so challenge the notion that young people are disengaged from, and apathetic about, mainstream politics. Drawing on the young men’s reactions and experiences of the global, nation, state, and local scales following 11 September 2001 and the subsequent war in Iraq, in this paper I include the voices of minority ethnic youth in political geographies and understandings of political participation.
I examine the enmeshment of transnationally networked religious organizations in predominantly Quechua communities in the southern Andes of Peru. I aim specifically to understand the multiple ways in which transnational religious organizations contribute to the construction of development epistemologies, or the socioeconomics of development truths. Peru has been undergoing a religious transformation similar to the rest of Latin America, with Evangelical and other non-Catholic faiths now well established in the rural highlands. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Provincias Altas of Cusco, Peru, I examine the histories and organizational expressions of development truths promoted by the Iglesia Surandina (the Catholic Church of the Southern Andes), and the Iglesia Evangélica Peruana (the Peruvian Evangelical Church). The ways that these epistemologies become negotiated and translated in two rural districts reinforces the importance of historical context in the formation of development epistemologies, but it also suggests that organizational structures and differences in transnational processes contribute to the acceptance of or challenge to different sets of knowledge regarding development.
Not since the era of Ellis Island have so many immigrants arrived on America’s shores. As in the past, native-born Americans continue to expect immigrants to assimilate; however, in an era of cheap international travel and the Internet, immigrants themselves are now able to keep one foot in their countries of origin, thereby confusing old assumptions about pluralism and American identity. And increasingly it is global religious institutions that enable immigrants to participate in two cultures at once—whether via religious services beamed in by satellite or through an expanding network of global religious organizations. These multicultural religious immigrants, sociologist Peggy Levitt argues in this pathbreaking account, are changing the face of religious diversity in the United States, helping to make American religion just as global as U.S. corporations. In a book with stunning implications for today’s immigration debates—where commentators routinely refer to a “clash of civilizations”—Levitt shows that the new realities of religion and migration are subtly challenging the very definition of what it means to be an American. Filled with impressive original research and charts and statistics that “give an excellent overall view of the results of her thorough on-site research” (Library Journal), God Needs No Passport reveals that American values are no longer just made in the U.S.A. but around the globe.
This is a revised edition of John Milbank's masterpiece, which sketches the outline of a specifically theological social theory. The Times Higher Education Supplement wrote of the first edition that it was "a tour de force of systematic theology. It would be churlish not to acknowledge its provocation and brilliance". Brings this classic work up-to-date by reviewing the development of modern social thought. Features a substantial new introduction by Milbank, clarifying the theoretical basis for his work. Challenges the notion that sociological critiques of theology are 'scientific'. Outlines a specifically theological social theory, and in doing so, engages with a wide range of thinkers from Plato to Deleuze. Written by one of the world's most influential contemporary theologians and the author of numerous books.
The new immigrants, those who have arrived since the radical change in U.S. immigrant laws in 1965, have introduced diversity of all kinds into American society. They come from more varied countries than earlier waves of immigrants; are more racially and ethnically diverse; speak more varied languages and dialects; and, related to the focus of this chapter, have introduced Americans to forms of religion that were unfamiliar prior to their arrival. In addition to bringing with them forms of religion little known in this country, they have helped to introduce new expressions of Christianity to Americans. Because of their large numbers and increasing involvement in public life, the new immigrants are impacting virtually every institution in contemporary society. Health care is no exception and, as health care policymakers have come to realize, the demographic attributes and cultural values of this growing population influence budgets as well as service delivery in many parts of the nation.
Based on extensive interviewing and access to a wide range of databases, this is an examination of the migration career of wealthy migrants who left East Asia and relocated to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, in the 1980s and 1990s. An interdisciplinary project based on over 15 years of research in Vancouver, Toronto, and Hong Kong, with additional comparative visits and consultations in Sydney, Beijing, and Singapore Traces the histories of the migrants families over a 25 year period Offers a critical view of the spatial presuppositions of neo-liberal globalization, and an insertion of geography into transnational theory.
What does becoming American have to do with becoming religious? Many immigrants become more religious after coming to the United States. Taiwanese are no different. Like many Asian immigrants to the United States, Taiwanese frequently convert to Christianity after immigrating. But Americanization is more than simply a process of Christianization. Most Taiwanese American Buddhists also say they converted only after arriving in the United States even though Buddhism is a part of Taiwan's dominant religion. By examining the experiences of Christian and Buddhist Taiwanese Americans, Getting Saved in America tells "a story of how people become religious by becoming American, and how people become American by becoming religious." Carolyn Chen argues that many Taiwanese immigrants deal with the challenges of becoming American by becoming religious. Based on in-depth interviews with Taiwanese American Christians and Buddhists, and extensive ethnographic fieldwork at a Taiwanese Buddhist temple and a Taiwanese Christian church in Southern California, Getting Saved in America is the first book to compare how two religions influence the experiences of one immigrant group. By showing how religion transforms many immigrants into Americans, it sheds new light on the question of how immigrants become American.
Preface. Proposed argument. 1. A Cultural Revolution: Sources, Character, Niches. 2. North America and Europe: Contrasts in Receptivity. 3. Latin America: A Template?. 4. Latin America: Ambiguity in Different Cultural Sectors. 5. Indigenous Peoples. 6. Africa. 7. Asia. 8. Trying Conclusions: A Global Option?. Index.
Based on a three-year ethnography, this article illuminates how institutions and individuals can support immigrants' language learning and settlement in today's globalized, multicultural societies. It focuses on how a Mandarin—English bilingual Chinese church's practices fostered a young couple's English learning and social economic inclusion into the evangelical Christian Chinese community in Canada. Drawing on the conceptualization of learning as legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), concretized by concepts of region and stage (Goffman, 1959) and social capital (Bourdieu, 1977, 1986), I illustrate the multiple effects of this couple's increased participation in their church community. I then analyze how institutionalized, multiple forms of mediation (Vygotsky, 1978) opened up spaces for and assisted their increased participation. I argue that allowing ethnolinguistic minority immigrants a legitimate speaking position, at interpersonal, institutional, and ideological levels, facilitates immigrant language learning and integration.
This article draws upon in-depth discussions conducted with young British Muslim women to explore the ways in which embodied differences are negotiated in the construction and contestation of identity. The author argues that dress is an overdetermined signifier for Muslim women, illustrating the role of clothing, particularly the veil, in the discursive formation of 'Muslim women'. The author explores some of the possibilities for reworking dress to create alternative femininities within different spaces, focusing in particular on the construction of 'hybrid' identities and the articulation of 'new' Muslim identities.
This paper explores the intersections between feminist conceptions of reflexivity and activism in the context of social research on religion in the southern Andes of Peru. Emerging geographies of religion have been strongly influenced by feminist theory and methodology, yet few geographers working on themes of religion have openly analysed the role of reflexivity in research or activism. I draw upon the research that I conducted with the Catholic Iglesia Surandina and the Protestant Iglesia Evangélica Peruana in one of the high provinces of Cusco, and consider two different approaches toward reflexivity—a focus on my own religious identity and considerations of access, and a broader engagement with the politics of knowledge construction in the region. I conclude by suggesting the need for a more thoughtful consideration of the complex and contradictory politics and ethics of social religious research.
The paper evaluates the burst in geographical research on religion in the last decade. It examines: (1) the relative emphases and silences in analyses of different sites of religious practice, sensuous geographies, population constituents, religions, geographies and scales of analyses; (2) the rise in the discourse of postsecularization; and (3) four contemporary global shifts (growing urbanization and social inequality, deteriorating environments, ageing populations, and increasing human mobilities), the ways in which religion shapes human response to them, and the implications for new research agendas.
The burgeoning subfield of the geography of religion has largely advanced under the assumption that secularization is marginal to understanding contemporary religion. This assumption, evinced in terms such as ‘postsecular’, suggests that the theory of secularization has little to offer geography. This paper elaborates on the current debates over secularization theory’s validity within geography and across other disciplines in an effort to salvage several key geographical insights from the most advanced work in secularization theory. It is argued here that secularization theory, far from being irrelevant, offers geographers of religion a powerful theoretical framework for analyzing and interpreting modern religion.
This paper examines the recent emergence of the 'astronaut family' as a migration strategy, practised by Hong Kong and Taiwanese business and professional families and manifest in immigrant gateway cities such as Vancouver, Sydney and Auckland. Exemplifying transnationalism as 'social morphology' (Vertovec 1999), the household is literally split across the Pacific Ocean, as the male head pursues his career in Asia, while his wife and children are relocated overseas. Based upon in-depth interviews with 'astronaut wives' in Vancouver, Canada, I examine these circumstances, challenging a prevalent representation of powerful and cohesive Chinese migrant families. In so doing, I hope to contribute to a much broader literature on transnationalism and transnational social forms. In addition, in light of research on household migration and patriarchal relations, I consider women's distinctive experience of this arrangement. This paper demonstrates the context dependency of female oppression, and highlights the enduring relationship between spatial distance and social relations within a profoundly transnational setting.
This paper draws from interviews conducted with leaders of 46 immigrant Christian churches in Vancouver. The congregations comprise newcomers from Korea, ethnic Chinese who are primarily recent immigrants and an older post-1945 German migration. The churches are identified as a hub in which relations of trust and compatibility generate bonding social capital; from this base, a wide range of personal and social services is provided, significantly aiding co-ethnic members to adapt to their new conditions. In a neo-liberal era, the state is facilitating such activities as part of a policy of contracting-out its own former in-house functions. The capacity of the immigrant church to serve both its own members and adherents and also a broader expanded constituency beyond its co-ethnic clients is important. The paper examines the activities of some of the churches in this transition from bonding to bridging social capital and the challenges that they confront.
This article reviews geographical research on religion in the 1990s, and highlights work from neighbouring disciplines where relevant. Contrary to views that the field is incoherent, I suggest that much of the literature pays attention to several key themes, particu- larly, the politics and poetics of religious place, identity and community. I illustrate the key issues, arguments and conceptualizations in these areas, and suggest various ways forward. These 'new' geographies emphasize different sites of religious practice beyond the 'officially sacred'; different sensuous sacred geographies; different religions in different historical and place-specific contexts; different geographical scales of analysis; different constitutions of population and their experience of and effect on religious place, identity and community; different dialectics (sociospatial, public-private, politics-poetics); and different moralities.
Within the geography of religion, this paper examines two dimensions of the immigrant Christian church, drawing upon field research with ten congregations of ethnic German origin in Vancouver, Canada. Using oral histories and archival material, we first consider the early years of the churches as they displayed characteristics of a total institution, embodying the values of thier founders and providing a very wide range of settlement services to German-speaking immigrants arriving in the 1950s and 1960s. Second, we consider the evolution of these institutions following the acculturation and suburbanisation of German-Canadians, and the end of significant German immigration after 1970. We examine various institutional strategies during the current period: re-location, space sharing, and a difficult re-invention as a multicultural church. A key issue has become identity formation and the willingness of congregations to undertake a 'cultural funeral', thereby passing from a European to a Canadian identity.
This introduction to the subsequent forum addresses social and cultural geography's recent engagement with religion and spirituality. While representing a laudable and increasing willingness to approach religion/spirituality through sophisticated concepts and theories, this engagement should include more than just an imposition of the discipline's emerging paradigms on a new object of study. Geographers need to allow religion to 'speak back'. The articles in this forum suggest that this speaking back may range from, for example, spirituality/religion's insistence on its own centrality in social space, to its tendency to complicate categories and experience, to its reminder that it informs the lives and identities of many geographers.
Studies of the Hong Kong-Vancouver transnational migration network seldom pay close attention to religion in the everyday lives of Hongkonger migrants. Based on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork at St. Matthew's Church, a Hong Kong church in Metro Vancouver, this paper examines the tacit assumptions and taken-for-granted quotidian practices through which a Hongkonger church is made. I argue that St. Matthew's Church has been constructed as a Hong Kong Cantonese-Christian family space through the everyday use of language and invocations of a common educational background. This argument extends the literature on Hongkonger migration to Metro Vancouver by grounding it in a religious site whose intersections with Hong Kong migration to Vancouver consolidates the church as a religious mission with a specifically Hongkonger migration narrative. This consolidation is problematised as I show that contestations in church life by migrants from the People's Republic of China over language and asymmetrical educational backgrounds both reinforce and challenge the church as a Hongkonger congregation. Through an examination of these everyday interactions at St. Matthew's Church, this paper advances the geography of religion as I demonstrate that specific geographical narratives and networks shape quotidian practices in religious sites. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Climate change globalizes and radicalizes social inequality; it exacerbates inequalities of rich and poor, core and periphery, and at the same time dissolves them in the face of a common threat to humanity. Climate change combines with the inequalities arising from globalization, decoupling the producers and subjects of risk. Remapping inequality in the age of climate change and globalization therefore requires taking account of the unbounding of both equality and inequality, and an awareness of the end of the opposition between society and nature, one of the founding principles of sociology. The article outlines four theses of inequality, climate change and globalization, and concludes with the question: what does a cosmopolitan renewal of the social sciences mean and how will it be possible?
This article explores how religious organizations have influenced Chinese immigrant's conversion to evangelical Protestantism.
Using data collected through ethnographic fieldwork in a major metropolitan area in the Midwest from 1998 to 2003, I describe
the extensive resources devoted to evangelism by religious institutions and argue that they must play an important role in
converting Chinese immigrants to evangelical Protestantism.
Despite the existence of research conducted by geographers eschewing or professing religious faith, the influence of researchers and their methods have yet to receive critical attention within the study of religion. The experience of three geographers working on a three-year research project suggests that it is vital to reflect upon the inter-subjective relationships and methodologies used to reconstruct the religious past. How do different subject positions influence our selections from historical records? We also consider whether the spatialities of putatively ‘religious’ archives, whether formally or informally constituted, make a difference to the construction of historiographical knowledge. In attempting to answer these questions, the paper argues that developing an awareness of different types of positionality, vis-à-vis religious faith and practice, combined with reflexivity, vis-à-vis methodology, can enrich the interpretative reconstruction of the religious past.
Texto en torno a las prácticas, conceptos y políticas que han dado forma al secularismo a lo largo de la historia y a la manera cómo ha cristalizado en actitudes y sensibilidades seculares en las sociedades modernas tanto occidentales como del Medio Oriente.
The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculturalism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is actually a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language. In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance, as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms-Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ordering of religions typical of the Christian supremacists of the nineteenth century to the aspirations of early twentieth-century theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who embraced the pluralist logic of "world religions" and by so doing sought to reclaim the universalist destiny of European modernity.
In many parts of the world, the significance of religion has increased during the last years and decades. In the sociology of religion, the secularization thesis was the dominant framework for the interpretation of developments in the realm of religion for a long time. Meanwhile, other explanation patterns have become more prominent, such as the individualization thesis and economic theories. The so-called “spatial turn” does not seem to have reached sociology of religion yet. In history of religion (religious studies), however, questions of spatiality and locality are being studied intensively. Geography of religion has been regarded a diverse and incoherent field until recently. In the past years this has changed. Two directions of research have become apparent. One of them mainly considers social geographical problems and methods while the other has been influenced by the new cultural geography approach. Both should more frequently work with the above mentioned theoretical approaches of sociology of religion. Geography of religion must not, however, lose track of its main goal: it always has to point to the fact that all religious processes take place in space and have a spatial dimension.
Building diversity: City pins big hopes on new mosque. Globe and Mail
- J Armstrong
Religions have the power to bring a passion for social justice to politics, The Guardian
- M Bunting
Finding home: Exploring Muslim settlement in the Toronto CMA. CERIS Working Paper no. 68. Toronto: The Ontario Metropolis Centre
- D Addario
- S Kowalski
- J Leime
- M Preston
Putting it together in the African-American churches: faith, economic development and civil rights
- K Day
Data compiled from Religious Trends 6, Findings of the 2005 English Church Census
- Evangelical Alliance