Books in the Religion and Society series

This book is about the legendary Rajput chieftain Hammira Chauhan, the king of the impregnable fortress of Ranthambore in southern Rajasthan who died in 1301 CE after a monumental battle against Alauddin Khalji, the sultan of Delhi. This singular event reverberates through time to the point of creating a historical and cultural region that crystallizes through copious texts composed in different genres and languages (Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Rajasthani, English) in shifting religious and political contexts, medieval as well as modern. The main poetical-historical work composed in Sanskrit, the Hammira-Mahakavya (¿great poem¿) by the Jaina poet Nayachandra Suri (15th century), is propelled by a dream in which the dead king urges the poet to write about his deeds. Can history with its preoccupation for the factual, begin in a dream? What does it mean to think about history and time via the imagination? Is time, whether past, present or future linked to imagination? Do imagination, time, and history arise together? What are the implications of thinking of history as something that appears in our experience? What does it mean to write a history as a historical being in whom diverse temporalities intertwine in the here and now?

This volume examines the different and sometimes contradictory approaches of four UN human rights committees to the concept of religion. Drawing on critical perspectives from religious studies, the book combines a genealogical assessment of the role of religion in international law with a detailed textual study of the reporting practice of the committees monitoring racial discrimination, civil and political rights, women's rights, and children's rights. Arsheim argues that the role of religion within the rights traditions monitored by the committees varies to the extent that their recommendations risk contradicting one another, thereby undermining their credibility and potential to bring about real change on the ground: Where some committees view religion singularly as a core individual right, others see religion partly as an inherent threat to the realization of other rights, but also as a potent social force to be reckoned with. In order to remedy this situation, Arsheim proposes the publication of a joint general comment by all the committees, spelling out their approach to the role of religion in the implementation of human rights.

The book explores the complex world of Islam from the perspective of its adherents and activists in Azerbaijan. Baku, the most secular Muslim capital city, is a battlefield for the minds and souls of ethnic Muslims."e; Visiting pirs was till now the typical expression of religiosity among Azerbaijani Muslims. Sunni-Shia division was blurred. Nowadays, Shia and Sunni Muslim movements propose new distinctive identities. Foreign and local preachers took advantage of liberal religious policies of the 1990s to promote their ideas. Salafis stress the pristine"e; Islam and the idea of universalism, while Shias underline rationality in their faith tradition. Turkish model of Islam is more inclusive towards local customs. Sufism, although not as powerful as before, also finds a committed audience. Finally, independent charismatic local leaders gain supporters. The book investigates how this pluralism affects both religious groups and believers. Competitive environment requires effective strategies and flexibility. In this process, the traditional dominance of Shiism is challenged by Sunni movements. Shiism, however, is not giving up and adapts its concepts and practices to contemporary contexts.

Two unprecedented, striking developments form part of the reality of many Latin Americans. Recent decades have seen the dramatic rise of a new religious pluralism, namely the spread of Pentecostal Christianity - Catholic and Protestant alike - and the growth of indigenous revitalization movements. This study analyzes these major transitions, asking what roles ethnicity and ethnic identities play in the contemporary process of religious pluralism, such as the growth of the Protestant Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movements, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the indigenous Maya movement in Guatemala. This book aims to provide an understanding of the agenda of religious movements, their motivations, and their impact on society. Such a pursuit is urgently needed in Guatemala, a postwar country experiencing acrimonious religious competition and a highly contentious debate on religious pluralism. This volume is relevant to scholars and students of Latin American Studies, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Practical Theology, and Political Sciences.

This volume offers unique insights into the mutually constitutive nature of social media practices and religious change. Part 1 examines how social media operate in conjunction with mass media in the construction of discourses of religion and spirituality. It includes: a longitudinal study of British news media coverage of Christianity, secularism and religious diversity (Knott et al.); an analysis of responses to two documentaries 'The Monastery' and 'The Convent' (Thomas); an evaluation of theories of the sacred in studies of religion and media within the 'strong program' in cultural sociology in the US (Lynch); and a study of the consequences of mass and social media synergies for public perceptions of Islam in the Netherlands (Herbert). Part 2 examines the role of social media in the construction of contemporary martyrs and media celebrities (e.g., Michael Jackson) using mixed and mobile methods to analyse fan sites (Bennett & Campbell) and jihadi websites and YouTube (Nauta). Part 3 examines how certain bounded religious communities negotiate the challenges of social media: Judaism in Second Life (Abrams & Baker); Bah'ai regulation of web use among members (Campbell & Fulton); YouTube evangelists (Pihlaja); and public expressions of bereavement (Greenhill & Fletcher). The book provides theoretically informed empirical case studies and presents an intriguing, complex picture of the aesthetic and ethical, demographic and discursive aspects of new spaces of communication and their implications for religious institutions, beliefs and practices.

In The Netherlands, the arts have gained a sacralized status, while religion is increasingly viewed through the lens of heritage. The dynamic resonance of sacred forms this results in, is exemplary for the postsecular. Exploring this resonance, this book offers a strong counterweight to the popular trope of the arts having replaced religion in secularized societies. Instead it approaches artistic performance, religion, and its heritage as mutually engaging sacred forms. Lieke Wijnia thoroughly connects theoretical perspectives on the sacred with ethnographic research at the annual festival Musica Sacra Maastricht. She explores the continued relevance of a broad conceptual approach to the sacred, as well as the practical side to negotiating the sacred at the festival. The resulting analyses shed new light on topics like musical performance as generator of the sacred, how art and heritage impact the continuity of religion in secularized societies, and the fragility of artistic performance in the contemporary fragmented framework of the sacred. This book offers an innovative and interdisciplinary interpretation of the continuing significant role of art and religion in postsecular societies.

What does it mean to be modern? This study regards the concept of 'society' as foundational to modern self-understanding. Identifying Arabic conceptualizations of society in the journal al-Manar, the mouthpiece of Islamic reformism, the author shows how modernity was articulated from within an Islamic discursive tradition. The fact that the classical term umma was a principal term used to conceptualize modern society suggests the convergence of discursive traditions in modernity, rather than a mere diffusion of European concepts.

The book is an anthropological study of a phenomenon observed within the range of contemporary Polish Catholic religiosity. The Crucified focuses on two fundamental issues: passion plays and performance theory. It presents an analysis of material collected during five years of field research, which sheds light on the varied world of religious performances. The phenomenon of passion plays is extremely complex and to some extent heterogeneous, hence its in-depth analysis reveals much not only about its own nature, but also about the entire modern religiosity. As a result, the book is constructed in such a way as to focus on a single phenomenon, but with conclusions extending to a much wider range of contemporary religious practices. The book reveals the need for self-expression of one¿s own attitudes observable in contemporary spirituality, as well as the increasing participation of believers in the development of their religious life and thus in the formation of their own religious identity. All these processes are interpreted in terms of performance theory. Applying this approach makes it possible to capture the believers¿ need for activity and creativity in the field of practices alternative to the liturgy.

The whole world is changing with incredible speed towards something radically new, yet people across the globe also show resistance to the forces that homogenize our lives. This book deals with a community that has found its niche in the remote Niamgiri mountain range of Odisha (India) and is struggling to preserve its way of life: the Dongria Kond. In recent years, they made the headlines as the real "e;Avatars"e; because they successfully fought a multinational company's plans to mine the mountains. From the perspective of the Dongria Kond, these mountains are the seat of gods, and the whole environment is animated by spiritual forces. This highly complex cosmic order includes humans and non-humans and rests on a divine law (niam). This book captures the viewpoint of the Dongria Kond and provides deep insights into their vision of the world. It offers elaborate accounts of how the Dongria relate to the outside world, conceive of their own society and engage in complex rituals in order to (re-)establish the cosmos. The book confronts the reader with radically different imaginings of familiar human concerns: love, fertility, wealth, status and well-being.

Islam is more than a system of rigid doctrines and normative principles. It is a diverse mosaic of subjective, often contradictory interpretations and discrepant applications that prohibit a narrow, one-dimensional approach. This book argues that to uncover this complex reality and achieve a more accurate understanding of Islam as a lived religion, it is imperative to consider Islam from the point of view of human beings who practice their faith. Consequently, this book provides an important contribution through a detailed ethnographic study of two contemporary Sufi communities. Although both groups shared much in common, there was a fundamental, almost perplexing range of theological convictions and ritual implementations. This book explores the mechanism that accounts for such diversity, arguing for a direct correlation between Sufi multiformity and the agency of the spiritual leader, the Shaikh. Empirical research regarding the authority by which Shaikhs subjectively generate legitimate adaptations that shape the contours of religious belief are lacking. This study is significant, because it focuses on how leadership operates in Sufism, highlighting the primacy of the Shaikh in the selection and appropriation of inherited norms.

This volume assesses critically key concepts in the intellectual history and development of Chinese religions. These concepts include endogenous Chinese concepts and exogenous ideas from the West and Japan. The chapters in this volume explore the history of the formation and use of these terms, each of which has become a core conceptual term in Chinese religions.

Explores the state of religious and civic life and politics on the margins of state spaces by analysing the themes of borders, education, and religions in northern Europe. This book suggests that the formation of religious and civic identity through education is not becoming less parochial and more culturally open.

Based on the author's cross-regional fieldwork, archival findings, and critical reading of memoirs and creative works of Tibetans and Chinese, this book recounts how the potency of Tibet manifests itself in modern material culture concerning Tibet, which is interwoven with state ideology, politics of identity, imagination, nostalgia, forgetting, remembering, and earth-inspired transcendence. The physical place of Tibet is the antecedent point of contact for subsequent spiritual imaginations, acts of destruction and reconstruction, collective nostalgia, and delayed aesthetic and environmental awareness shown in the eco-religious acts of native Tibetans, Communist radical utopianism, former military officers' recollections, Tibetan and Chinese artwork, and touristic consumption of the Tibetan landscape. By drawing connections between differences, dichotomies, and oppositions, this book explores the interiors of the diverse agentive modes of imaginations from which Tibet is imagined in China. On the theoretical front, this book attempts to bring forth a set of fresh perspectives on how a culturally and religiously specific landscape is antecedent to simultaneous processes of place-making, identity-making, and the bonding between place and people.

There has not been conducted much research in religious studies and (linguistic) anthropology analysing Protestant missionary linguistic translations. Contemporary Protestant missionary linguists employ grammars, dictionaries, literacy campaigns, and translations of the Bible (in particular the New Testament) in order to convert local cultures. The North American institutions SIL and Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) are one of the greatest scientific-evangelical missionary enterprises in the world. The ultimate objective is to translate the Bible to every language. The author has undertaken systematic research, employing comparative linguistic methodology and field interviews, for a history-of-ideas/religions and epistemologies explication of translated SIL missionary linguistic New Testaments and its premeditated impact upon religions, languages, sociopolitical institutions, and cultures. In addition to taking into account the history of missionary linguistics in America and theological principles of SIL/WBT, the author has examined the intended cultural transformative effects of Bible translations upon cognitive and linguistic systems. A theoretical analytic model of conversion and translation has been put forward for comparative research of religion, ideology, and knowledge systems.

The book examines emerging methods and debates on the projected impacts of the digital social on religion and belief. It presents epistemological and ethical considerations that researchers must contend with in this space, while critically exploring our current methodological tool box. This collection of contemporary research presents the potential that scholars in the field have to re-imagine and expand our research practices in the digital age.

What is the significance of sustainable resource management for the functioning of Mediterranean island societies? How do human-environment relations reflect in a multi-ethnic religious landscape? This book poses these questions in the context of the Ottoman, British, and modern history of Cyprus. It explores the socio-ecological dimension of the Cyprus conflict and considers the role of local environmental practices for historical coexistence and modern division. The book synthesizes theoretical approaches from the research on 'religion and ecology' with the anthropology of Cyprus, with the goal to develop and establish an ecological perspective on coexistence and conflict in the Mediterranean. Religion is seen as the place where local representations of nature and traditions of resource management are generated and maintained. The work takes a comparative look at the impact of Eastern Orthodox and Islamic institutions on the island's landscape, as well as the religious and economic practices of the rural peasant communities. The findings are then spelled out in the context of current discourses on religion, environmental ethics, and social justice.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems¿ both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Few thorough ethnographic studies on Central Indian tribal communities exist, and the elaborate discussion on the cultural meanings of Indian food systems ignores these societies altogether. Food epitomizes the social for the Gadaba of Odisha. Feeding, sharing, and devouring refer to locally distinguished ritual domains, to different types of social relationships and alimentary ritual processes. In investigating the complex paths of ritual practices, this study aims to understand the interrelated fields of cosmology, social order, and economy of an Indian highland community.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

This book explores the religious identity of the indigenous Gujjarsliving in Rajaji National Park (RNP), Uttarakhand, India. In the broader context of forest conservation discourse, steps taken by the local government to relocate the Gujjars outside RNP have been crucial in their choice to associate with NGOs and Deobandi Muslims. These intersecting associations constitute the context of their transitioning religious identity.The book presents a rich account of the actual process of Islamization through the collaborative agency of Deobandi madrasas and Tablighi Jama'at. Based on documents and interviews collected over four years, it constructs a particular case of Deobandi reform and also balancesthis with a layered description of the Gujjar responses. It argues that in their association with the Deobandis, the Gujjars internalized the normative dimensions of beliefs and practices but not at the expense of their traditional Hindu-folk culture. This capacity for adaptation bodes well for the Gujjars, but their proper integration with wider society seems assured only in association with the Deobandis. Consequently this research also points toward the role of Islam in integrating marginal groups in the wider context of society in South Asia.

This book critically explores the idea of Europe since the French Revolution from the perspective of intellectual history. It traces the dominant and recurring theme of Europe-as-Christendom in discourse concerning the relationship of religion, politics and society, in historiography and hermeneutics, and in theories and constructions of identity and 'otherness'. It examines the evolution of a grand narrative by which European elites have sought to define European and national identity. This narrative, the author argues, maintains the existence of common historical and intellectual roots, common values, culture and religion. The book explores its powerful legacy in the positive creation of a sense of European unity, the ways in which it has been exploited for ideological purposes, and its impact on non-Christian communities within Europe.