Suchergebnisse

1. Religion and urban theory -- 2. Discourses of diversity -- 3. The two towers -- 4. Religion in a context of super-diversity -- 5. Taking to the streets -- 6. The year of the golden pig -- 7. Urban memory -- 8. Managing discourses of religious diversity.

"The Balkans offer classic examples of how empires imagine they can transform themselves into national states (Ottomanism) and how nation-states project themselves into future empires (as with the Greek "Great Idea" and the Serbian "Načertaniye"). By examining the interaction between these two aspirations this volume sheds light on the ideological prerequisites for the emergence of Balkan nationalisms. With a balance between historical and literary contributions, the focus is on the ideological hybridity of the new national identities and on the effects of "imperial nationalisms" on the emerging Balkan nationalisms. The authors of the twelve essays reveal the relation between empire and nation-state, proceeding from the observation that many of the new nation-states acquired some imperial features and behaved as empires. This original and stimulating approach reveals the imperialistic nature of so-called ethnic or cultural nationalism"--

The article presents a theoretical and discursive understanding of international terrorism and links the hegemonic power relations constituting the international order with the formation of global discourses on international terrorism. Starting from the understanding of international terrorism as a discursive construction, it analyses theoretically the implication of labelling a specific kind of violence as "terrorism" and the resulting depoliticization and securitization. Grounded in these theoretical reflections, it is argued here that the discursive construction of a specific kind of violence such as international terrorism at a global standardised level depends on the power relations that constitute the international community, its identity and its legitimacy – i.e., the reason of state, the reason of the system and the reason of civilisation. The main thesis is that, from this theoretical perspective, the historical discursive formations of international terrorism centred on a specific kind of violence representing an ideological threat to these power relations, their universality and legitimacy. The article presents a genealogy of these standardised discursive formations which emerged at an international level in contemporary history and it deconstructs these formations through the theoretical approach presented here. ; Este artículo presenta un acercamiento teórico-discursivo al terrorismo internacional, y vincula las relaciones de poder hegemónicas que constituyen el orden internacional con la formación de los discursos globales sobre terrorismo internacional. Al entender el terrorismo internacional como una construcción discursiva, el documento analiza lo que supone etiquetar un determinado tipo de violencia como "terrorismo", y la consecuente despolitización y securitización de esta violencia. Basándonos en estas reflexiones teóricas, se argumenta que el proceso de construcción discursiva de un determinado tipo de violencia política como terrorismo internacional estandarizado a nivel global depende de las relaciones de poder que constituyen la comunidad internacional, su identidad y su legitimidad; la razón de Estado, la razón de sistema y la razón de civilización. Al partir de este plantea - miento teórico, se propone que las formaciones histórico-discursivas globales sobre terrorismo internacional se han construido alrededor de un tipo de violencia política que representaba un desafío ideológico a estas relaciones de poder, su universalidad y su legitimidad. Finalmente, se presenta una genealogía de las formaciones discursivas estandarizadas que emergieron internacionalmente en la historia contemporánea y se deconstruyen estas formaciones a través del planteamiento teórico propuesto.

Abstract
This article scrutinizes the history of "esoteric" and "occult" as comparative terms and outlines a concrete methodology for their examination and potential practical application, based on the theoretical framework of Global Religious History. My main argument is that "esoteric" and "occult" are today de facto comparative terms that are employed worldwide within and beyond academia. Similar to the case of "religion," they are not the result of the unilateral diffusion of "Western" knowledge but of globally entangled exchanges that can serve as concrete objects of research. Their synchronic and diachronic historical contextualization forms the basis of the development of substantiated comparative terms and their (experimental) application in different contexts. Departing from scholarship on "Western esotericism," "esoteric Buddhism," and "the global occult," the article outlines a five-step methodology that illustrates the practical use of Global Religious History for religious comparativism based on concrete historical examples.

AbstractTwo concurrent agendas in the sociology of religion explore how conditions of secularism in the United States result in widespread norms of "spiritual seeking", and how religion functions as a basis of belonging for U.S. immigrants. This study brings these subfields together by asking whether new immigrants from Ghana, West Africa, also exhibit an orientation of spiritual seeking in their religious trajectories, and how they engage with normative conditions of spiritual seeking within institutional contexts. I find strong evidence of spiritual seeking in their narratives, and I identify processes within the social institutions of family and coethnic networks, higher education, and African Evangelical Christianity that support a seeking orientation. I argue for more focus on the counter-impulses of seeking versus dwelling in immigrant religion, and that more studies of religion and culture should explicitly analyze the institutional contexts that mediate between normative culture and trajectories of social practice.

What determines whether a country has more or less restrictive policies regarding intercountry adoption? Despite the growing importance of intercountry adoption as a political issue, and as an explicitly human face of globalization, there is virtually no systematic empirical work on intercountry adoption. We introduce a measure of the restrictiveness of the adoption laws in Sub-Saharan African countries and test possible explanations for the variations in legal restrictions on intercountry adoption among these countries.Factors that are commonly cited as explanations for the restrictiveness of intercountry adoption policies do not hold up very well in our assessment. Openness to adoption is not determined by the severity of the orphan crisis or the AIDS crisis within the sending country, nor are democratic countries more responsive to the needs of their orphans. Additionally, African signatories to the Hague Convention, which aimed to increase transparency and accountability in intercountry adoption, tend to be among the most restrictive. On the other hand, a stronger connection with the global economy is associated with greater openness to intercountry adoption. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for orphans and for intercountry adoption.

Since the 1970s the feminization thesis has become a powerful trope in the rewriting of the social history of Christendom. However, this 'thesis' has triggered some vehement debates, given that men have continued to dominate the churches, and the churches themselves have reacted to the association of religion and femininity, often formulated by their critics, by explicitly focusing their appeal to men. In this book the authors critically reflect upon the use of concepts like feminization and masculinization in relation to Christianity. By presenting case studies that adopt different gendered a