Author: Mark D. Steinberg
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253220386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
"This collection reveals the presence and power of religious belief and practice in public life after the demise of Soviet socialism. Based on recent research and interdisciplinary methodologies, Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies examines how religious organizations and individuals engage the changing and troubled environment in which they live, which presents expanded civil freedom but much everyday uncertainty, unhappiness, injustice, and suffering"--Page [4] of cover.
Author: Jarrett Zigon
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 085745210X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
In the post-Soviet period morality became a debatable concept, open to a multitude of expressions and performances. From Russian Orthodoxy to Islam, from shamanism to Protestantism, religions of various kinds provided some of the first possible alternative moral discourses and practices after the end of the Soviet system. This influence remains strong today. Within the Russian context, religion and morality intersect in such social domains as the relief of social suffering, the interpretation of history, the construction and reconstruction of traditions, individual and social health, and business practices. The influence of religion is also apparent in the way in which the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly acts as the moral voice of the government. The wide-ranging topics in this ethnographically based volume show the broad religious influence on both discursive and everyday moralities. The contributors reveal that although religion is a significant aspect of the various assemblages of morality, much like in other parts of the world, religion in postsocialist Russia cannot be separated from the political or economic or transnational institutional aspects of morality.
Author: Nils Ole Bubandt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136668640
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Varieties of Secularism is an ethnographically rich, theoretically well-informed, and intellectually coherent volume which builds off the work of Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, and others who have engaged the issue of secularism(s) and in socio-political life. The volume seeks to examine theories of secularism/secularity and examine concrete ethnographic cases in order to further the theoretical discussion. Whereas Taylor’s magisterial work draws up the conditions and problems of a belief in God in Western modernity, it leaves unexplored the challenges posed by the spiritual in modernity outside of the North Atlantic rim. This anthology seeks to begin that task. It does so by suggesting that the kind of secularity described by Taylor is only one amongst others. By attending to the shifting relationship between proper religion and ‘bad faiths’; between politically valorised and embarrassing spiritual phenomena; between the new visibilities and silences of magic, ancestors, and religion in democratic politics, this book seeks to outline the particular formations of secularism that have become possible in Asia from China to Indonesia and from Bahrain to Timor-Leste. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian religion, politics and anthropology.
Author: Andrew Dawson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317648641
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity engages with one of the most characteristic features of modern society. An increasingly prominent and potentially contentious phenomenon, religious diversity is intimately associated with contemporary issues such as migration, human rights, social cohesion, socio-cultural pluralisation, political jurisdiction, globalisation, and reactionary belief systems. This edited collection of specially-commissioned chapters provides an unrivalled geographical coverage and multidisciplinary treatment of the socio-political processes and institutional practices provoked by, and associated with, religious diversity. Alongside chapters treating religious diversity in the ‘BRIC’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, are contributions which discuss Australia, Finland, Mexico, South Africa, the UK, and the United States. This book provides an accessible, distinctive and timely treatment of a topic which is inextricably linked with modern society’s progressively diverse and global trajectory. Written and structured as an accessible volume for the student reader, this book is of immediate interest to both academics and laypersons working in mainstream and political sociology, sociology of religion, human geography, politics, area studies, migration studies and religious studies.
Author: A. Krawchuk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137377380
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 439
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Book Description
From diverse international and multi-disciplinary perspectives, the contributors to this volume analyze the experiences, challenges and responses of Orthodox Churches to the foundational transformations associated with the dissolution of the USSR.
Author: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317461126
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
Russia is not only vast, it is also culturally diverse, the core of an empire that spanned Eurasia. In addition to the majority Russian Orthodox and various other Christian groups, the Russian Federation includes large communities of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and members of other religious groups, some with ancient historical roots. All are in a state of ferment, and securing formal state recognition for specific communities is often daunting. This collection provides entry into the diversity of Russia's religious communities. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer's introduction to the volume illuminates major political, social, and cultural-anthropological trends. The book is organized by religious tradition or identity, with further thematic perspectives on each set of readings. The authors include ethnologists, sociologists, political analysts, and religious leaders from many regions of the Federation. They analyze the changing dynamics of religion and politics within each community and in the context of the current drive to recentralize both political and religious authority in Moscow. Topical coverage extends from reassertions of Russian Orthodoxy to activities of Christian and Muslim missionaries to the revival of many other religions, including indigenous shamanic ones.
Author: Gerhard Besier
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152757394X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 535
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Book Description
The history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe has always been one of persecution. This third volume documents this history, turning eastward. For the first time, the circumstances of a religious minority under different political systems can be compared across the continent. The studies gathered here provide insight into the methods of repression used by governments and mainstream churches, the survival strategies of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and their various experiences under Eastern European dictatorships. The initially cordial relationship with Jehovah’s Witnesses that developed after 1990 has steadily reverted to religious discrimination, culminating in Russia’s renewed ban of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017 and the confiscation of their properties. By violating the universal human right of religious freedom, the same conditions that prevailed in the Soviet era have now returned to “modern” Russia: With severest discrimination and abusing jurisdictional procedures to reach their political aspirations, the State tries to crush a religious community. Against this background, it is all the more important not to turn a blind eye to the situation of religious minorities in Eastern Europe, but instead to take an honest public stance against it.
Author: Catherine Wanner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501764977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine reveals how and why religion has become a pivotal political force in a society struggling to overcome the legacy of its entangled past with Russia and chart a new future. If Ukraine is "ground zero" in the tensions between Russia and the West, religion is an arena where the consequences of conflicts between Russia and Ukraine keenly play out. Vibrant forms of everyday religiosity pave the way for religion to be weaponized and securitized to advance political agendas in Ukraine and beyond. These practices, Catherine Wanner argues, enable religiosity to be increasingly present in public spaces, public institutions, and wartime politics in a pluralist society that claims to be secular. Based on ethnographic data and interviews conducted since before the Revolution of Dignity and the outbreak of armed combat in 2014, Wanner investigates the conditions that catapulted religiosity, religious institutions, and religious leaders to the forefront of politics and geopolitics.
Author: John Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317606639
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
This book explores the politics of conservative Christian churches and social movements in Russia and the United States, focusing on their similar concerns but very different modes of political engagement. Whilst secularisation continues to chip away at religious adherence and practice in Europe, religion is often, quite rightly, seen as an influential force in the politics of the United States, and, more questionably, as a significant influence in contemporary Russia. This book looks at the broad social movement making up the US Christian Right and the profoundly hierarchical leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church as socially conservative actors, and some of the ways they have engaged in contemporary politics. Both are seeking to halt the perceived drift towards a more secular political order; both face significant challenges in handling the consequences of secularism, pluralism and liberal individualism; and both believe that their nations can only be great if they remain true to their religious heritage. In exploring their experience, the book focuses on shared and different elements in their diagnosis of what is wrong with their societies and how this affects their policy intervention over issues such as religious and ethnic belonging, sexual orientation and education. Drawing on political, sociological and religious studies, this work will be a useful reference for students and scholars of religion and politics, Russian politics and American politics.
Author: Liliana Gómez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 144118810X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
This book reflects the way in which the city interacts with the sacred in all its many guises, with religion and the human search for meaning in life. As the process of urbanization of society is accelerating thus giving an increasing importance to cities and the 'metropolis', it is relevant to investigate the social or cultural cohesion that these urban agglomerations manifest. Religion is keenly observed as witnessing a growth, crucially impacting cultural and political dynamics, as well as determining the emergence of new sacred symbols and their inscription in urban spaces worldwide. The sacred has become an important category of a new interpretation of social and cultural transformation processes. From a unique broader perspective, the volume focuses on the relationship between the city and the sacred. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, combining the expertise of philosophers, historians, architects, social geographers, sociologists and anthropologists, it draws a nuanced picture of the different layers of religion, of the sacred and its diverse forms within the city, with examples from Europe, South America and the Caribbean, and Africa.
