Main theme

Religion, justice and democratization in contemporary societies

Programme coordinator

Eloísa MARTIN, University of Brasilia, Brazil, eloisamartin@hotmail.com

Deadlines

Session proposals: June 20, 2011

On-line abstract submission will be open from August 25 to December 15, 2011.

Call for sessions

The current debate on religion in the public space has been intense, extensive and sophisticated during the last decades. However, it has not paid enough attention to concepts such as justice and democratization.

The purpose of this RC22 meeting is thus to explore the relationships between religion, justice and democratization– understood in a broad sense– in the public space and in everyday life.

We invite RC22 members to propose sessions that deal with these subjects, in their relationship with contemporary debates in the Sociology of Religion.

Sessions could focus on theoretical, methodological and/ or empirical approaches that address issues such as:

the different understandings of Justice -comprising, but not limited to social justice or law justice- and religion;

religious pluralism and democratization processes;

the role of religion as a carrier in the struggle for democracy;

the legal recognition of religious minorities;

religion and empowerment in everyday practices;

struggles for religious freedom;

lay State and the national (religious) culture;

religiously inspired social movements;

justice, religion and wars;

religion and human rights;

popular religion and alternative practices of justice; etc.

Submissions

To propose a session, please send an abstract (no more than 300 words), your full name, institutional affiliation, e-mail and a short bio to the Programme Coordinator.

Please note that to submit a session proposal it is necessary to be a RC22 member and that one cannot present a paper in the same session that one is chairing.

Para más detalles de la International Sociological Association (ISA): http://www.isa-sociology.org/buenos-aires-2012/rc/rc.php?n=RC22

Gothenburg, Sweden, 12-17 July 2010

Research Committee on Sociology of Religion – RC22

Call for Papers for Session 2: Religion and Power: Observing Catholicisms from the Global South

Organizer: Eloísa Martín, University of Brasilia, Brazil eloisamartin@hotmail.com

This session proposes to discuss power relationships within Catholicism (specially State-Church, but also catholics-Church) in the Global South (Latin America, South Africa, and South and Southeast Asia). The comprehension that Europe –and the USA ultimately – could offer universal paradigms to understand religion (and its relationship with Modernity), left durable effects. The very existence of something as an international globalized academy is largely based on the prevalence of a Europhilic model of knowledge organization and production, that has, as a consequence, the almost impossible contact between scholars and researchs from the Global South. It is more evident within studies on Catholicism, because of its European power centralization, tends to be mediated by and compared to European perspectives.

This session aims to link and compare empirical and theorical discussions focused on Catholicisms, connecting and constrasting different post-colonial contexts. The mechanical comparison between issues that present some kind of similarity may not be the most appropriate way to approach Global South contexts. However, the connection and confrontation of their idiosyncratic experiences may offer interesting solutions to rethinking them.

Please send your proposed paper for this session to the session chair by the 31st of October 2009. Please include with your proposal, a title, a 100-200 words abstract, your name (family name first), your affiliation and your e-mail address. Do not send the same paper to more than one session.

Any individual may participate on up two sessions. Once your presentation is approved by the session chair, you must then submit an abstract of your paper on-line (instructions will be made available in due course). Abstracts are only accepted by the system from those who are already registered for the Congress. The deadline for submission of approved abstracts is May 4, 2010.

More information: http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010/rc/rc22.htm