Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Childhood
Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Childhood

Author: Rachael Shillitoe

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-12-19

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3031398602

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores how and if the mandate for children to worship in schools can be justified within the context of declining church attendance and increasing nonreligious identification in British society. Shillitoe asks what place compulsory worship has in an increasingly diverse and plural society, and what the answer means for the relationship between religion, the secular, and education more broadly. Through in-depth ethnographic fieldwork from across three schools in southwest England, the book reveals how examining the significance of children’s experiences expands our understanding of both collective worship in schooling and religion in social life more broadly and demonstrates that adult-centric anxieties and assumptions in this area do not always reflect the experiences of children.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society
The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society

Author: Caroline Starkey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 823

ISBN-13: 042988317X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In an era which many now recognise as ‘post-secular’, the role that religions play in shaping gender identities and relationships has been awarded a renewed status in the study of societies and social change. In both the Global South and the Global North, in the 21st century, religiosity is of continuing significance, not only in people’s private lives and in the family, but also in the public sphere and with respect to political and legal systems. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society is an outstanding reference source to these key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject area. Comprising over 40 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into 3 parts: Critical debates for religions, gender and society: theories, concepts and methodologies Issues and themes in religions, gender and society Contexts and locations Within these sections, central issues, debates and problems are examined, including activism, gender analysis, intersectionality and feminism, oppression and liberation, equality, bodies and embodiment, space and place, leadership and authority, diaspora and migration, marriage and the family, generation and aging, health and reproduction, education, violence and conflict, ecology and climate change and the role of social media. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and gender studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as cultural studies, area studies, politics, sociology, anthropology and history.

Childhood, Religion and School Injustice
Childhood, Religion and School Injustice

Author: Karl Kitching

Publisher:

Published: 2020-05

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9781782053880

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Debates about religion and education internationally often presume the neutrality of secular education governance, as an irrefutable public good. However, understandings of secular freedom, rights and neutrality in schooling are continuously contested, and social movements have disrupted the notion there is a uniform public to be educated. Simultaneously, unjust, neo-liberal and majoritarian education policies constantly undermine collective notions of what is good and just. The book examines how education policy positions religious and secular school providers as competitors for parents' attention, and shows how inequalities shape parents' interest in and access to secular/religious schools. Kitching particularly explores how children in urban and rural settings negotiate the joys, pleasures, paradoxes and injustices of schooling and childhood. It outlines ways in which children's social position, relationships and encounters with religious and consumer objects inform who they can become, and who and what they value. Drawing on the above research, Childhood, Religion and School Injustice demonstrates the need to engage with each child's plurality, and to recognise multiple inequalities experienced by families across schools. Given the tendency towards mass school privatisation, Kitching argues for the context-specific becoming public of school systems and localities, where majoritarian, narrow self-interest is challenged, unchosen obligations to others are recognised, and collective imaginings of what a 'good' childhood is, are publicly engaged.

Nonreligion in Late Modern Societies
Nonreligion in Late Modern Societies

Author: Anne-Laure Zwilling

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 3030923959

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume presents results from new and ongoing research efforts into the role of nonreligion in education, politics, law and society from a variety of different countries. Featuring data from a wide range of quantitative and qualitative studies, the book exposes the relational dynamics of religion and nonreligion. Firstly, it highlights the extent to which nonreligion is defined and understood by legal and institutional actors on the basis of religions, and often replicates the organisation of society and majority religions. At the same time, it displays how essential it is to approach nonreligion on its own, by freeing oneself from the frameworks from which religion is thought. The book addresses pressing questions such as: How can nonreligion be defined, and how can the “nones” be grasped and taken into account in studies on religion? How does the sociocultural and religious backdrop of different countries affect the regulation and representation of nonreligion in law and policymaking? Where and how do nonreligious individuals and collectives fit into institutions in contemporary societies? How does nonreligion affect notions of citizenship and national belonging? Despite growing scholarly interest in the increasing number of people without religion, the role of nonreligion in legal and institutional settings is still largely unexplored. This volume helps fill the gap, and will be of interest to students, researchers, policymakers and others seeking deeper understanding of the changing role of nonreligion in modern societies.

Where is the Good in the World?
Where is the Good in the World?

Author: David Henig

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-07-08

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1800735529

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bringing together contributions from anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and philosophy, along with ethnographic case studies from diverse settings, this volume explores how different disciplinary perspectives on the good might engage with and enrich each other. The chapters examine how people realize the good in social life, exploring how ethics and values relate to forms of suffering, power and inequality, and, in doing so, demonstrate how focusing on the good enhances social theory. This is the first interdisciplinary engagement with what it means to study the good as a fundamental aspect of social life.

Religion and Education: Framing and Mapping a Field
Religion and Education: Framing and Mapping a Field

Author: Stephen G. Parker

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-08-26

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 9004412956

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This publication makes the case for ‘religion and education’ as a distinct, but cross-disciplinary, field of inquiry. To begin with, consideration is given to the changing dynamic between ‘religion and education’ historically, and the differing understandings of religious education within it. Next, ‘religion and education’ is examined from methodologically specific perspectives, namely the philosophical, historical, sociological and psychological. The authors outline the particular insights to be gleaned about ‘religion and education’ on the basis of their commitment to these methodological standpoints. Overall, this publication is concerned with demonstrating the scope of the field, and the importance of having a range of disciplinary, and interdisciplinary, perspectives informing it.

The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood
The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood

Author: Anna Strhan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 1474251129

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From recent sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, to arguments about faith schools and religious indoctrination, this volume considers the interconnection between the actual lives of children and the position of children as placeholders for the future. Childhood has often been a particular site of struggle for negotiating the location of religion in public and everyday social life, and children's involvement and non-involvement in religion raises strong feelings because they represent the future of religious and secular communities, even of society itself. The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood provides a rich resource for students and scholars of this interdisciplinary field, and addresses wider questions about the distinctiveness of childhood and its religious dimensions in historical and contemporary perspective. Divided into five thematic parts, the volume provides classic, contemporary, and specially commissioned readings from a range of perspectives, including the sociological, anthropological, historical, and theological. Case studies range from Augustine's description of childhood in Confessions, the psychology of religion and childhood, to religion in children's literature, religious education, and Qur'anic schools. - Religious traditions covered include Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, in the UK and Europe, USA, Latin America and Africa - An introduction situates each thematic part, and each reading is contextualised by the editors - Guidance on further reading and study questions are provided on the book's webpage

Negotiating Religion
Negotiating Religion

Author: François Guesnet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-08-25

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1317089316

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Negotiating religious diversity, as well as negotiating different forms and degrees of commitment to religious belief and identity, constitutes a major challenge for all societies. Recent developments such as the ‘de-secularisation’ of the world, the transformation and globalisation of religion and the attacks of September 11 have made religious claims and religious actors much more visible in the public sphere. This volume provides multiple perspectives on the processes through which religious communities create or defend their place in a given society, both in history and in our world today. Offering a critical, cross-disciplinary investigation into processes of negotiating religion and religious diversity, the contributors present new insights on the meaning and substance of negotiation itself. This volume draws on diverse historical, sociological, geographic, legal and political theoretical approaches to take a close look at the religious and political agents involved in such processes as well as the political, social and cultural context in which they take place. Its focus on the European experiences that have shaped not only the history of ‘negotiating religion’ in this region but also around the world, provides new perspectives for critical inquiries into the way in which contemporary societies engage with religion. This study will be of interest to academics, lawyers and scholars in law and religion, sociology, politics and religious history.

Negotiating Religion and Development
Negotiating Religion and Development

Author: Arnhild Leer-Helgesen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-19

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0429688415

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book argues that relationships between religion and development in faith-based development work are constructed through repeated processes of negotiation. Rather than being a neat and tidy relationship, faith-based development work is complex and multifaceted: an ongoing series of negotiations between theological interpretations and theories of human development; between identities as professional practitioners and as believers; between different religious traditions at local, regional and international levels; and between institutional structures and individual agency. In particular, the book draws on a deep ethnographic study of Christian faith-based development work in the Bolivian Andes. The case study highlights the importance of seeing theological interpretations as being firmly embedded in local religious and cultural systems involved in a constant process of identity construction. Overall, the book argues that religion should not be seen as homogeneous, or either 'good' or 'bad' for development; instead, we must recognise that institutional faith-based identities are constructed in many ways, formal, theological and interpersonal, and any tensions between ‘religious’ and ‘development’ goals must be worked through in an ongoing recognition of that complexity. This book will be of interest to researchers working in development studies and religious studies, as well as to practitioners and policymakers with an interest in faith-based development work.

The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism
The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism

Author: Anna Strhan

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0198789610

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What does it mean to grow up as an evangelical Christian today? What meanings does 'childhood' have for evangelical adults? How does this shape their engagements with children and with schools? And what does this mean for the everyday realities of children's lives? Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork carried out in three contrasting evangelical churches in the UK, Anna Strhan reveals how attending to the significance of children within evangelicalism deepens understanding of evangelicals' hopes, fears and concerns, not only for children, but for wider British society. Developing a new, relational approach to the study of children and religion, Strhan invites the reader to consider both the complexities of children's agency and how the figure of the child shapes the hopes, fears, and imaginations of adults, within and beyond evangelicalism. The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism explores the lived realities of how evangelical Christians engage with children across the spaces of church, school, home, and other informal educational spaces in a de-christianizing cultural context, how children experience these forms of engagement, and the meanings and significance of childhood. Providing insight into different churches' contemporary cultural and moral orientations, the book reveals how conservative evangelicals experience their understanding of childhood as increasingly countercultural, while charismatic and open evangelicals locate their work with children as a significant means of engaging with wider secular society. Setting out an approach that explores the relations between the figure of the child, children's experiences, and how adult religious subjectivities are formed in both imagined and practical relationships with children, this study situates childhood as an important area of study within the sociology of religion and examines how we should approach childhood within this field, both theoretically and methodologically.