Suchergebnisse

The emergence of 'new atheism' during the course of the last decade helped fuel an upsurge of interest in issues around religion. But scholarly analysis of new atheism, particularly its political dimensions, remains embryonic. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining the politics of new atheism across a variety of themes related to politics. These include the causal factors underpinning its emergence and development, its organisational structure and composition, the political strategies pursued by its proponents, and the various internal tensions and conflicts that these dynamics have produced.

The sphere of foreign policy provides a hitherto unexplored field for studying the applicability of interpretivist concepts and concerns. Here, a particularly useful topic of analysis is that of discursive strategies; namely, the way in which government figures seek to legitimise and justify their decisions and behaviour. Operating at the intersection between beliefs, traditions and dilemmas, the examination of foreign policy discourse offers key insights into a variety of important issues, including political communication and media management. This article considers these themes by examining the changing form of New Labour's discursive strategy on Britain's role in the war on terror during the period of Tony Blair's premiership from 2001 to mid-2007. Charting the various shifts to have taken place in this discursive landscape, the article analyses the way in which these changes were driven by dilemmas resulting from tensions between practical developments and the discursive claims made about them. This shows how various rationalities within the sphere of British politics were operationalised and sustained, and how numerous 'dilemmas of discourse' were addressed.

The Big Society agenda forms one of the main programmatic pillars of the Conservative– Liberal Democrat coalition government. Ostensibly based on the principles of decentralisation and empowerment, this envisions a shrinking of the state and a greater role for faith-based organisations in the provision of welfare and social services. For religious groups, involvement with the Big Society is seen as an opportunity to reverse a long-term process of waning social influence and to reshape the role of faith in the public sphere. In the way of these objectives being achieved, however, are a number of serious problems, including the current economic and political situation, the particular characteristics of faith groups themselves and general attitudes towards religion in public life. Given the importance attached to the participation of faith-based organisations in the Big Society project, these issues have significant implications both for the future role of religion in the public sphere and for the unfolding of the programme itself.

AbstractA common complaint from political scientists involved in the study of religion is that religious issues have been largely overlooked by political science. Through a content analysis of leading political science and sociology journals from 2000 to 2010, this article considers the extent of this claim. The results show that political science publications involving religious topics have been significantly fewer than those engaging with subjects typically regarded as being more central to the discipline, and markedly less numerous than religious articles in leading sociology publications. Where political science publications have engaged with religious issues, these articles have also focused on a limited number of subject areas and been concentrated in specific disciplinary subfields. The proportion of articles covering religion has shown no real increase since the turn of the century. These findings underpin calls for political scientists to take religious issues more seriously.