Religion is living culture. It continues to play a role in shaping political ideologies, institutional practices, communities of interest, ways of life and social identities. Mediating Faiths brings together scholars working across a range of fields, including cultural studies, media, sociology, anthropology, cultural theory and religious studies, in order to facilitate greater understanding of recent transformations. Contributors illustrate how religion continues to be responsive to the v...

Questioning Performance Measurement: Metrics, Organizations and Power is the first book to interrogate the organizational turn towards performance metrics critically. Performance measurement is used to evaluate a diverse range of activities throughout the private, public and non-governmental sectors. But in an increasingly data driven world, what does it really mean to measure ‘performance’?Taking a sociology of quantification perspective, this book traces the rise of perf...

In the new edition of this widely praised text, Alan Aldridge examines the complex realities of religious belief, practice and institutions. Religion is a powerful and controversial force in the contemporary world, even in supposedly secular societies. Almost all societies seek to cultivate religions and faith communities as sources of social stability and engines of social progress. They also try to combat real and imagined abuses and excess, regulating cults that brainwash vulnerable peo...

This Reader brings together a selection of key writings to explore the relationship between religion, media and cultures of everyday life. It provides an overview of the main debates and developments in this growing field, focusing on four major themes:Religion, spirituality and consumer cultureMedia and the transformation of religionThe sacred senses: visual, material and audio cultureReligion, and the ethics of media and cult...

In this lively and accessible study, David Lyon explores the relationship between religion and postmodernity, through the central metaphor of 'Jesus in Disneyland.'

Fewer Canadians identify with a religion, believe in a god, or attend weekly religious services than in past decades. What explains higher and lower levels of religiosity? Is secularization a myth or reality? What impact does religiosity or secularity have on a society’s social and civil fabric?In The Meaning of Sunday, Joel Thiessen addresses these questions by weaving together narratives from interviews with members of both religious and secular communities. Exploring th...

For the majority of cultures around the world, religion permeates and informs everyday rituals of survival and hope. But religion also has served as the foundation for national differences, racial conflicts, class exploitation, and gender discrimination. Indeed, religious spirituality, having been transformed by contemporary economic and political events, remains both empowering and controversial. Religions/Globalizations examines the extent to which globalization and religion are...

Religion is now high on the public agenda, with recent events focusing the world's attention on Islam in particular. This book provides a unique historical and comparative analysis of the place of religion in the emergence of modern secular society. Bryan S. Turner considers the problems of multicultural, multi-faith societies and legal pluralism in terms of citizenship and the state, with special emphasis on the problems of defining religion and the sacred in the secularisation debate. He...

Why is religion still important? Can we be fully modern and fully religious?In this new edition, Davie follows up her discussion of the meaning of religion in modern society and considers how best to research and understand this relationship. Exploring the rapid movements within the sociology of religion today, this revised and updated book:• Describes the origins of the sociology of religion• Demystifies secularization as a process and a theory• Relates rel...

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

The place of religion in the modern world has changed significantly over the past two decades. This has been partially reflected in the academic study of religion, but little, if at all, in religious education. In addition, the place of RE in schools has been the subject of intense debate due to changes to the curriculum and school structure, as well as being part of wider debates on religion in the public sphere.Written by two highly experienced leading practitioners of RE, Do...

To the dismay of religious leaders, study after study has shown a steady decline in affiliation and identification with traditional religions in America. By 2014, more than twenty percent of adults identified as unaffiliated--up more than seven percent just since 2007. Even more startling, more than thirty percent of those under the age of thirty now identify as "Nones"--answering "none" when queried about their religious affiliation. Is America losing its religion? Or, as more and more Am...