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This book paves the way for a more enlarged discussion on religion and migration phenomena in countries of Northern and Southern Europe. From a comparative perspective, these are regions with very different religious traditions and different historical State/Church relations. Although official religion persisted longer in Nordic Protestant countries than in South Mediterranean countries, levels of secularization are higher. In the last decades, both Northern and Southern Europe have received strong flows of newcomers. From this perspective, the book presents through various theoretical lenses and empirical researches the impact mobility and consequent religious transnationalism have on multi...
Due to growing negative perceptions about relations between historically entrenched, dominant populations and various minority groups, issues relating to the need to better manage cultural and religious diversity have been intensifying in many countries. These negative perceptions have recently led to a significant increase in popular support for right and extreme right nationalist discourses, and have created so much public tension that national governments have had no choice but to respond. In the last two decades, in several Western contexts in particular, the issues raised by such combined challenges have culminated in the creation of government-initiated or private national commissions....
This volume focuses on Muslims in Finland, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, representing the four corners of the European Union today. It highlights how Muslim experiences can be understood in relation to a country’s particular historical routes, political economies, colonial and post-colonial legacies, as well as other factors, such as church-state relations, the role of secularism(s), and urbanisation. This volume also reveals the incongruous nature of the fact that national particularities shaping European Muslim experiences cannot be understood independently of European and indeed global dynamics. This makes it even more important to consider every national context when analysing patterns in European Islam, especially those that have yet to be fully elaborated. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the contradictory dynamics of European Muslim contexts that are simultaneously distinct yet similar to the now familiar ones of Western Europe’s most populous countries.
This book is an empirical comparative study of the complexity of religion in the public spheres of the five Nordic countries. The result of a five-year collaborative research project, the work examines how increasingly religiously diverse Nordic societies regulate, debate, and negotiate religion in the state, the polity, the media, and civil society. The project finds that there are seemingly contradictory religious trends at different social levels: a growing secularization at the individual level, and a deprivatization of religion in politics, the media, and civil society. It offers a critique of the current theories of secularization and the return of religion, introducing religious complexity as an alternative concept to understand these paradoxes. This book is for scholars, students, and readers with an interest in understanding the public role of religion in the West.
The purpose of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion (ARSR) is to investigate the “new” role of religion in the contemporary world, which is characterized by cultural pluralism and religious individualism. It is the aim of the ARSR to combine different methods within the social scientific study of religion. The ARSR employs an interdisciplinary and comparative approach at an international level, to describe and interpret the complexity of religious phenomena within different geopolitical situations, highlighting similarities and discontinuities. Dealing with a single theme in each volume, the ARSR intends to tackle the relationship between the practices and the dynamics of everyday life and the different religions and spiritualities, within the framework of the post-secular society. This volume presents the religious and spiritual life of the young: an ever new and complex world which highlights the changes that are happening in the field of religion in general. With an outlook which is opened to various international contexts, its chapters offer a picture of the current situation between religion and the young, suggesting possible future trends.
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (RSSSR) publishes reports of innovative studies that pertain empirically or theoretically to the scientific study of religion, including spirituality, regardless of their academic discipline or professional orientation. It is academically eclectic, not restricted to any one particular theoretical orientation or research method. Most articles report the findings of quantitative or qualitative investigations, but some deal with methodology, theory, or applications of social science studies in the field of religion.
This volume examines the role and function of religious-based organizations in strengthening associational life in a representative sample of West European countries: newly democratized and long-established democracies, societies with and without a dominant religious tradition, and welfare states with different levels and types of state-provided social services. It asks how faith-based organizations, in a time of economic crisis, and with declining numbers of adherents, might contribute to the deepening of democracy. Throughout, the volume invites social scientists to consider the on-going role of faith-based organizations in Western European civil society, and investigates whether the concept of muted vibrancy aids our theoretical understanding.
Sociologies of Religion: National Traditions presents fourteen histories of the sociological study of religion in a diverse set of nations. Each of the histories is newly written by author who are uniquely situated to tell narrate the story of the field in their countries. They give us the stories behind major personages, theoretical traditions, seminal works, research institutes, and professional associations. The histories trace the various ways the field was established in different academic and religious contexts and the trajectories it took in emerging as a scientific specialty.
Italy’s traditional subcultures - Communist, Socialist, Liberal, Republican, Right-wing - have largely dissolved and yet Catholics have retained their vitality and solidity. How can the vast majority of Italians continue to maintain some connection with Catholicism? How much is the Italian situation influenced by the closeness of the Vatican? Examining the religious condition of contemporary Italy, Religion Italian Style argues that the relationship between religion and society in Italy has unique characteristics when compared with what is happening in other European Catholic Countries. Exploring key topics and religious trends which question how the population feel - from the laity and the role of religions in the public sphere, to moral debates, forms of religious pluralism, and new spiritualities - this book questions how these affect religious life, and how intricately religion is interwoven with the nation’s fabric and the dynamics of the whole society.