Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik, 2021
ZusammenfassungWährend interreligiöse Dialoge durch ikonische architektonische Projekte eine größ... more ZusammenfassungWährend interreligiöse Dialoge durch ikonische architektonische Projekte eine größere öffentliche Sichtbarkeit und mediale Aufmerksamkeit erlangt haben, ist deren breitere gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmung und Wirkung weitestgehend unerforscht. Der Beitrag untersucht gruppenspezifische Wahrnehmungen interreligiöser Beziehungen und Positionierungen zu interreligiösen Dialogen. Im Zentrum der Analyse stehen dabei die Debatten zum Berliner House of One, einem derzeit im Bau befindlichen multireligiösen Gebäude. Unter Rückgriff auf soziologische Konzeptualisierungen zum Verhältnis von Religion, Macht und Stadtraum untersucht der Beitrag, welche unterschiedlichen sozialen Positionen religiöser Akteur*innen (Protestant*innen, Alevit*innen und Muslim*innen) in den kulturellen Hierarchien urbaner Räume sich in solchen Wahrnehmungen dokumentieren. Wir argumentieren, dass die in diskursiven Aushandlungsprozessen zu interreligiösen Dialogen vorgenommenen Positionierungen solche kult...
Intervening in debates on religion and social inequalities, this article advocates a shift from c... more Intervening in debates on religion and social inequalities, this article advocates a shift from concerns with economic ethics to a focus on religious belonging as embodying class-based cultural distinctions. In the first part, I critically review the literature that draws inspiration from Weber’s concept of Protestant inner-worldly asceticism and advance two arguments: Pentecostal orientations toward this-worldly salvation thwart rationalising potentials and feed into magic, or “occult,” economies instead. Simultaneously, however, Pentecostalism promotes personal autonomy by emphasising the possibilities for radical personal change through conversion and becoming “born again.” In the second part, I draw on Bourdieu’s cultural sociology and show that personal autonomy and certain images of Pentecostal modernity are increasingly deployed within practices of cultural distinction between the modern Pentecostal and economically successful and the backward who remain locked in the past. T...
Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transna... more Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route whereby Protestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify social practices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in current NGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists interested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offers valuable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation. Its success was rooted first, in colonia...
Os debates acadêmicos sobre a secularização e o secularismo atingiram um impasse infecundo. Os te... more Os debates acadêmicos sobre a secularização e o secularismo atingiram um impasse infecundo. Os teóricos ortodoxos ou neo-ortodoxos da secularização insistem na universalidade epistemológica e na aplicabilidade universal de conceitos mais ou menos uniformes de secularização. Por contraste, as críticas pós-coloniais procuraram provincianizar a noção de secular, enfatizando sua origem ocidental e sua coimplicação com o Estado-nação, a violência e o colonialismo. Neste artigo, ocupamo-nos criticamente dessas abordagens e sugerimos, como perspectiva alternativa, o conceito de “secularidades múltiplas”. Se, por um lado, as abordagens universalista e pós-colonial tendem a dar forma e essência ao secular, nós pretendemos, por outro lado, historicizar e culturalizar a secularidade. Fazemo-lo argumentando que a secularidade se sustenta cultural e simbolicamente em formas de distinção entre as esferas e as práticas sociais religiosas e não religiosas e que as institucionalizações dessas distin...
Around Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, h... more Around Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, hardback, 240 pages.
Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 2013
In 2012, roughly 23 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected with HIV, the virus that c... more In 2012, roughly 23 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Religious responses to the disease have ranged from condemnation of people with HIV to the development of innovative AIDS-related services. This article utilises insights from the social movement literature about collective identity, framing, resources, and opportunity structures to interrogate religious mobilisation against HIV/AIDS. It demonstrates that mobilisation cannot be divorced from factors such as state–civil society relations, Africa's dependence on foreign aid, or the continent's poverty. Religious HIV/AIDS activities must be analysed in a conceptual space between a civil society/politics approach and a service-provider/anti-politics framework. That is, religious mobilisation may at times seek to engage the public realm to shape policies, while at other times it may shun politics in its provision of services. Case studies that illustrate these themes and demonstrate the multi-faceted interactions between religion and HIV/AIDS are included.
In this article, the author explores the role of religion in social constructions of heterosexual... more In this article, the author explores the role of religion in social constructions of heterosexual masculinity in South Africa in the context of civil society driven programs to fight sexual and gender-based violence and the spread of HIV. Critically engaging with the concept of hegemonic masculinity and the sociological literature on gender relations in conservative Christian communities, the author examines how Charismatic Christian and Pentecostal communities in the townships of Cape Town negotiate their model of masculinity and gender authority in the context of the prevailing hegemonies of ‘traditional’ and ‘liberal’ masculinity. Based on ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with Pentecostal men, the author specifies the concrete mechanisms whereby Pentecostalism both contributes to transform but also to reproduce rather than undermine hegemonic masculinity. He finds that Pentecostalism responsibilizes men not because men adopt its sexual ideology but because the...
En la última década la cuestión del velo integral ha generado acalorados debates políticos en num... more En la última década la cuestión del velo integral ha generado acalorados debates políticos en numerosos países europeos y ha sido objeto de una creciente regulación jurídica a nivel europeo, estatal y local. A partir de un estudio de caso, este artículo se centra en analizar en profundidad los procesos de problematización y regulación legal del velo integral en Cataluña. El objetivo es examinar las razones que explican la emergencia de esta problemática y analizar de qué manera se construyen los argumentos que apoyan o desaprueban la regulación local del uso del velo integral en el espacio público. El objetivo es comprender cómo los discursos en torno a la laicidad y la religión en el espacio público se traducen en posiciones concretas, y cómo se configuran, articulan y confrontan diferentes concepciones sobre el significado, y los límites, de la libertad religiosa en el contexto de ese conflicto. El artículo concluye afirmando la necesidad de ubicar el conflicto más allá de la cues...
Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik, 2021
ZusammenfassungWährend interreligiöse Dialoge durch ikonische architektonische Projekte eine größ... more ZusammenfassungWährend interreligiöse Dialoge durch ikonische architektonische Projekte eine größere öffentliche Sichtbarkeit und mediale Aufmerksamkeit erlangt haben, ist deren breitere gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmung und Wirkung weitestgehend unerforscht. Der Beitrag untersucht gruppenspezifische Wahrnehmungen interreligiöser Beziehungen und Positionierungen zu interreligiösen Dialogen. Im Zentrum der Analyse stehen dabei die Debatten zum Berliner House of One, einem derzeit im Bau befindlichen multireligiösen Gebäude. Unter Rückgriff auf soziologische Konzeptualisierungen zum Verhältnis von Religion, Macht und Stadtraum untersucht der Beitrag, welche unterschiedlichen sozialen Positionen religiöser Akteur*innen (Protestant*innen, Alevit*innen und Muslim*innen) in den kulturellen Hierarchien urbaner Räume sich in solchen Wahrnehmungen dokumentieren. Wir argumentieren, dass die in diskursiven Aushandlungsprozessen zu interreligiösen Dialogen vorgenommenen Positionierungen solche kult...
Intervening in debates on religion and social inequalities, this article advocates a shift from c... more Intervening in debates on religion and social inequalities, this article advocates a shift from concerns with economic ethics to a focus on religious belonging as embodying class-based cultural distinctions. In the first part, I critically review the literature that draws inspiration from Weber’s concept of Protestant inner-worldly asceticism and advance two arguments: Pentecostal orientations toward this-worldly salvation thwart rationalising potentials and feed into magic, or “occult,” economies instead. Simultaneously, however, Pentecostalism promotes personal autonomy by emphasising the possibilities for radical personal change through conversion and becoming “born again.” In the second part, I draw on Bourdieu’s cultural sociology and show that personal autonomy and certain images of Pentecostal modernity are increasingly deployed within practices of cultural distinction between the modern Pentecostal and economically successful and the backward who remain locked in the past. T...
Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transna... more Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route whereby Protestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify social practices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in current NGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists interested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offers valuable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation. Its success was rooted first, in colonia...
Os debates acadêmicos sobre a secularização e o secularismo atingiram um impasse infecundo. Os te... more Os debates acadêmicos sobre a secularização e o secularismo atingiram um impasse infecundo. Os teóricos ortodoxos ou neo-ortodoxos da secularização insistem na universalidade epistemológica e na aplicabilidade universal de conceitos mais ou menos uniformes de secularização. Por contraste, as críticas pós-coloniais procuraram provincianizar a noção de secular, enfatizando sua origem ocidental e sua coimplicação com o Estado-nação, a violência e o colonialismo. Neste artigo, ocupamo-nos criticamente dessas abordagens e sugerimos, como perspectiva alternativa, o conceito de “secularidades múltiplas”. Se, por um lado, as abordagens universalista e pós-colonial tendem a dar forma e essência ao secular, nós pretendemos, por outro lado, historicizar e culturalizar a secularidade. Fazemo-lo argumentando que a secularidade se sustenta cultural e simbolicamente em formas de distinção entre as esferas e as práticas sociais religiosas e não religiosas e que as institucionalizações dessas distin...
Around Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, h... more Around Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, hardback, 240 pages.
Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 2013
In 2012, roughly 23 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected with HIV, the virus that c... more In 2012, roughly 23 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Religious responses to the disease have ranged from condemnation of people with HIV to the development of innovative AIDS-related services. This article utilises insights from the social movement literature about collective identity, framing, resources, and opportunity structures to interrogate religious mobilisation against HIV/AIDS. It demonstrates that mobilisation cannot be divorced from factors such as state–civil society relations, Africa's dependence on foreign aid, or the continent's poverty. Religious HIV/AIDS activities must be analysed in a conceptual space between a civil society/politics approach and a service-provider/anti-politics framework. That is, religious mobilisation may at times seek to engage the public realm to shape policies, while at other times it may shun politics in its provision of services. Case studies that illustrate these themes and demonstrate the multi-faceted interactions between religion and HIV/AIDS are included.
In this article, the author explores the role of religion in social constructions of heterosexual... more In this article, the author explores the role of religion in social constructions of heterosexual masculinity in South Africa in the context of civil society driven programs to fight sexual and gender-based violence and the spread of HIV. Critically engaging with the concept of hegemonic masculinity and the sociological literature on gender relations in conservative Christian communities, the author examines how Charismatic Christian and Pentecostal communities in the townships of Cape Town negotiate their model of masculinity and gender authority in the context of the prevailing hegemonies of ‘traditional’ and ‘liberal’ masculinity. Based on ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with Pentecostal men, the author specifies the concrete mechanisms whereby Pentecostalism both contributes to transform but also to reproduce rather than undermine hegemonic masculinity. He finds that Pentecostalism responsibilizes men not because men adopt its sexual ideology but because the...
En la última década la cuestión del velo integral ha generado acalorados debates políticos en num... more En la última década la cuestión del velo integral ha generado acalorados debates políticos en numerosos países europeos y ha sido objeto de una creciente regulación jurídica a nivel europeo, estatal y local. A partir de un estudio de caso, este artículo se centra en analizar en profundidad los procesos de problematización y regulación legal del velo integral en Cataluña. El objetivo es examinar las razones que explican la emergencia de esta problemática y analizar de qué manera se construyen los argumentos que apoyan o desaprueban la regulación local del uso del velo integral en el espacio público. El objetivo es comprender cómo los discursos en torno a la laicidad y la religión en el espacio público se traducen en posiciones concretas, y cómo se configuran, articulan y confrontan diferentes concepciones sobre el significado, y los límites, de la libertad religiosa en el contexto de ese conflicto. El artículo concluye afirmando la necesidad de ubicar el conflicto más allá de la cues...
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