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In the Caucasus region, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and their powerful neighbours Russia, Turkey, Iran and the EU negotiate their future policies and spheres of influence. This volume explores the role of religion in the South Caucasus to describe and explain how transnational religious relationships intermingle with transnational political relationships. The concept of ‘soft power’ is the heuristic starting point of this important investigation to define the importance of religion in the region. Drawing on a three-year project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the book brings together academics from the South Caucasus and across Europe to offer original empirical research and contributions from experienced researchers in political science, history and oriental studies. This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of post-Soviet studies, international relations, religious studies and political science.
This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries’ declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries.
The book series „European Studies in the Caucasus” offers innovative perspectives on regional studies of the Caucasus. By embracing the South Caucasus as well as Turkey and Russia as the major regional powers, it moves away from a traditional viewpoint of European Studies that considers the countries of the region as objects of Europeanization. This first volume emphasizes the movements of ideas in both directions—from Europe to the Caucasus and from the Caucasus to Europe. This double-track frame illuminates new aspects of a variety of issues requiring reciprocity and intersubjectivity, including rivalries between different integration systems in the southern and eastern fringes of Europe, various dimensions of interaction between countries of the South Caucasus and the European Union in a situation of the ongoing conflict with Russia, and different ways of using European experiences for the sake of domestic reforms in the South Caucasus. Topics range from identities to foreign policies, and from memory politics to religion.
Over the last 30 years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become increasingly present in international discourses and active in international decision-making. Among the estimated several million NGOs in existence today, an increasingly visible number of organizations are defining themselves in religious terms – referring to themselves as "religious", "spiritual", or "faith-based" NGOs. This book documents the initial encounters between the particularly international segment of those organizations and the UN while at the same time covering the Protestant and Catholic spectrum that dominated the early years of their activities in the UN-context. This book focuses on the construct...
This volume emphasizes the movements of ideas in both directions--from Europe to the Caucasus and from the Caucasus to Europe. This illuminates a variety of issues, including rivalries between different systems, interaction between the South Caucasus and the European Union, and different ways of using European experiences for domestic reform.
The South Caucasus is the key strategic region between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and the regional powers of Iran, Turkey and Russia and is the land bridge between Asia and Europe with vital hydrocarbon routes to international markets. This volume examines the resulting geopolitical positioning of Georgia, a pivotal state and lynchpin of the region, illustrating how and why Georgia's foreign policy is 'multi-vectored', facing potential challenges from Russia, int ernal and external nationalisms, the possible break-up of the European project and EU support and uncertainty over the US commitment to the traditional liberal international order.
In den letzten Jahren ist Religion wieder starker in der Offentlichkeit sichtbar geworden & sei es, dass uber Religion diskutiert wird, sei es, dass sich Religionsgemeinschaften als solche in der Offentlichkeit zu erkennen geben, Forderungen stellen, kontroverse Positionen vertreten. Zum einen lasst sich ein quantitativ vermehrtes und qualitativ prononcierteres Auftreten von Religionsgemeinschaften beobachten, zum anderen findet dieses Phanomen seinen Niederschlag in der offentlichen Wahrnehmung: in Medien, Wissenschaft, Politik, Schule. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes gehen den verschiedenen Aspekten des Phanomens nach und versuchen, Perspektiven fur den Umgang der Offentlichkeit mit den Religionen und der Religionen mit der Offentlichkeit zu skizzieren.
Das vorliegende Buch stellt die Frage nach Einheit und Differenz in der Religionswissenschaft in einer Zeit, in der die Pluralität von methodischen und theoretischen Zugängen signifikant zugenommen hat. Indem die einzelnen Beiträge auf ein abstraktes Mehr-Ebenen-Modell von Religion Bezug nehmen, wird aufgezeigt, wie eine solche Einheit lediglich durch Differenzen imaginiert werden kann. Die deutschsprachige Religionswissenschaft des späten 20. Jahrhundert hat sich weitgehend durch den Bezug auf "Kulturwissenschaft" und in Abgrenzung zur Theologie konzipiert. Dieses Selbstverständnis ist durch neuere Entwicklungen innerhalb der Kulturwissenschaften fraglich geworden. Neue theoretische Re...