This book explores the recent trend toward the transformation of religious symbols and practices into culture in Western democracies. Analyses of three legal cases involving religion in the public sphere are used to illuminate this trend: a municipal council chamber; a town hall; and town board meetings. Each case involves a different national context—Canada, France and the United States—and each illustrates something interesting about the shape-shifting nature of religion, specifically it...

As a result of widespread mistreatment and overt discrimination, women in the developing world often lack autonomy. Towards Gender Equity in Development brings together leading scholars working on gender issues to explore key sources of female empowerment and discuss the current challenges and opportunities for the future. Exploring three key domains, this book adopts a clear multi-disciplinary approach to present different perspectives from gender-focused economics and social res...

How, and to what extent, can religion be included within commitments to multiculturalism? Multiculturalism and Religious Identity addresses this question by examining the political recognition and management of religious identity in Canada and India.In multicultural policy, practice, and literature, religion has until recently not been included within broader discussions of multiculturalism, perhaps due to worries of potential for conflict with secularism. This collection ...

Policing Sexuality explores the regulation of sexual behaviour and identity by nation states, and questions how and why states have sought to influence and control the sexuality of its citizens.Julian C. H. Lee presents both theoretical and ethnographic literature, distilling common themes and causes and presenting factors that contribute towards a state's desire to control both the sexual behaviour and sexual identity of its citizens, such as the influence of colonialism, class, r...

This collection of essays presents groundbreaking work from an interdisciplinary group of leading theorists and scholars representing the fields of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and anthropology. The volume will introduce readers to some of the most compelling new conceptual and theoretical understandings of secularism and the secular, while also examining socio-political trends involving the relationship between the religious and the secular from a variety of location...

More than almost anything else, globalization and the great world religions are shaping our lives, affecting everything from the public policies of political leaders and the economic decisions of industry bosses and employees, to university curricula, all the way to the inner longings of our hearts. Integral to both globalization and religions are compelling, overlapping, and sometimes competing visions of what it means to live well.   In this perceptive, deeply personal, and bea...

A comparative look at religion and spirituality in postcolonial China and IndiaThe Modern Spirit of Asia challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. Peter van der Veer begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used ...

Religious concerns stand at the center of international politics, yet key paradigms in international relations, namely realism, liberalism, and constructivism, barely consider religion in their analysis of political subjects. The essays in this collection rectify this. Authored by leading scholars, they introduce models that integrate religion into the study of international politics and connect religion to a rising form of populist politics in the developing world.Contributors ide...

The decline in power, popularity and prestige of religion across the modern world is not a short-term or localized trend nor is it an accident. It is a consequence of subtle but powerful features of modernization. Renowned sociologist, Steve Bruce, elaborates the secularization paradigm and defends it against a wide variety of recent attempts at rebuttal and refutation. Using the best available statistical and qualitative evidence Bruce considers the implications for the

Many aspects of religion are puzzling these days. This 2003 book looks at ways of improving our understanding of religious change by strengthening the links between social theory and the social scientific study of religion. It clarifies the social processes involved in constructing religion and non-religion in public and private life. Taking illustrations of the importance of these boundaries from studies of secularisation, religious diversity, globalisation, religious movements and self-i...

Religion in China survived the most radical suppression in human history--a total ban of any religion during and after the Cultural Revolution. All churches, temples, and mosques were closed down, converted for secular uses, or turned to museums for the purpose of atheist education. Over the last three decades, however, religion has survived and thrived even as China remains under Communist rule. Christianity ranks among the fastest-growing religions in the country, and many Buddhist and D...

This book conducts a post-colonial, gendered investigation of women-centred South Asian films. In these films, the narrative becomes an act of political engagement and a site of feminist struggle: a map that weaves together multiple strands of subjectivity—gender, caste, race, class, religion, and colonialism. The book explores the cinematic construction of an oppositional narrative of feminist dissent with a view to elaborate a historical understanding and theorisation of the ‘materiality...