The American Academy of Religion’s Sociology of Religion Group’s (SOR) core mission is to foster the innovation that emerges when general sociological theory and methodologies are applied to the study of religious phenomena. This year SOR is sponsoring or co-sponsoring five panels and the SORAAAD Pre-conference workshop.
SOR’s panel, “General Sociological Theory and Religion” features scholars deploying Bruno Latour, Niklas Luhmann, Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman to prompt new understandings of: the limits and utility of Actor-Network Theory to study the “Nones”; global Buddhism; religious categories in scientific thinking in India and the observable impacts of urban environments on religious communication in London.
SOR is co-paneling with the Religion Media and Culture Group to present, “Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and New Challenges.” SOR along with CTDR and CHSR, through the Social Theory and Religion Cluster, and the Religion and Ecology group are co-sponsoring “Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things.” SOR is co-panel with the SBL’s Ideological Criticisms Group to stage “Theorizing Time, Change and Religion.” SOR along with Secularisms and Secularities, Religious Conversions and Religion and the Social Sciences are sponsoring, “Religious “Nones”: Understanding the Unaffiliated.”
SOR’s Program for the Annual Meeting with abstracts is available for download as a PDF.
A23-129
Religion, Media, and Culture Group and Sociology of Religion Group
Theme: Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and New Challenges
Mia Lövheim, University of Uppsala, Presiding
Saturday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
Convention Center-326
In todays mediatized discourse on religion gender emerges as a key aspect highlighting changes in social relations and tensions between cultural values across national and religious contexts. Nevertheless, work on gender has for long remained in the fringes of mainstream research in the field of media, religion and culture. This roundtable brings together some of the authors presented in an edited collection entitled Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and New Challenges, published by Routledge in the spring 2013. The participants will, drawing on their various disciplinary perspectives from theology, communication studies, religious studies, and studies of religion and entertainment media, discuss how a focus on gender can highlight emerging transformations and key issues in current research as well as initiate a critical debate about challenges that calls for attention in future research on the interplay between religion, media and culture.
Panelists:
Diane Winston, University of Southern California
Joyce Smith, University of Toronto
Stewart M. Hoover, University of Colorado
Curtis Coats, Millsaps College
Mary E. Hess, Luther Seminary
Mia Lövheim, University of Uppsala, Presiding
23-203 Social Theory and Religion Cluster (SOR, CTDR and CHSR) and Religion and Ecology Group
Theme: Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things
Sarah M. Pike, California State University, Chico, Presiding
Saturday – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM
Convention Center-307-308
This roundtable session will explore and respond to the themes of the 2013 Gifford Lectures, delivered by anthropologist of science and philosopher Bruno Latour on the topic of “Facing Gaia: A New Inquiry into Natural Religion.” Confirmed panelists include leading scholars on religion and nature (Bron Taylor), immanence and secularism (William Connolly), ecology and enchantment (Jane Bennett), ecological cultural critique (Timothy Morton), and global geopolitics and identity (Daniel Deudney). The panel is being organized in parallel with a special issue of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (JSRNC) devoted to Latour and his Gifford Lectures. It will be introduced, along with a brief summary of Latour’s lectures, by JSRNC associate editor Adrian Ivakhiv, and presided over by Sarah Pike.
Panelists:
Adrian Ivakhiv, University of Vermont
Bron Taylor, University of Florida
Daniel Deudney, Johns Hopkins University
Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University
Tim Morton, Rice University
William E. Connolly, John Hopkins University
Business Meeting:
Ipsita Chatterjea, Vanderbilt University
Randall Styers, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
A24-112
Religion and the Social Sciences Section and Religious Conversions Group and Secularism and Secularity Group and Sociology of Religion Group
Theme: Religious “Nones”: Understanding the Unaffiliated
Per D. Smith, Boston University, Presiding
Sunday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
Convention Center-327
The papers in this session employ a variety of social science methodologies and analytical frameworks to explore the rise of the American religious “nones.” Together, they not only point to the heterogeneity of beliefs and practices among the unaffiliated but also problematize the very categories at stake in discussing them.
Joseph Blankholm, Columbia University
After Secularization: Formations of a Secular Movement and a Secular Identity
Alfredo Garcia, Princeton University
What Encourages the Nonreligious to Organize?
Daniel Dion, Loyola University, Chicago
Who are the Nones? Deconstructing a Misleading Category
Brett Esaki, Central Michigan University
Sociological Factors Influencing Asian American Religious Nones
A25-337
Sociology of Religion Group
Theme: General Sociological Theory and Religion
Ipsita Chatterjea, Vanderbilt University, Presiding
Monday – 4:00 PM-6:30 PM
Hilton Baltimore-Key 6
This panel highlights the Sociology of Religion Group’s core mission – the innovation that can emerge when general sociological theory and methodologies are applied to the study of religious phenomena. The panelists deploy Bruno Latour, Niklas Luhmann, Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman to prompt new understandings of: the limits and utility of Actor-Network Theory to study the “Nones”; global Buddhism; religious categories in scientific thinking in India and the observable impacts of urban environments on religious communication in London.
Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, Quest University Canada
Ships in the Night: The Importance of Disconnection in the Study of Religion
Francois Thibeault, Université du Québec à Montréal
Buddhist Globality: How Buddhism is Modeled through and beyond Buddhists
Robert Geraci, Manhattan College
Framed and Unframed: The Performance of Religion at the Indian Institute of Science
Anna Strhan, University of Kent
Conservative Evangelicals, Coherence, and the Moral Lives of the Metropolis
Responding:
Gustavo Benavides, Villanova University
Business Meeting:
Ipsita Chatterjea, Vanderbilt University
Melissa M. Wilcox, Whitman College
A26-123
Sociology of Religion Group and SBL Ideological Criticism Group
Theme: Theorizing Time, Change and Religion
Randy Reed, Appalachian State University, Presiding
Tuesday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
Hilton Baltimore-Key 1
This panel will be comprised of papers submitted to the SBL’s Ideological Criticisms program unit and Sociology of Religion, and focus on the social, cultural and temporal aspects of religious change. The papers address the following topics: Pagan notions of time; Charles Taylor’s understanding of social change; the impact of Protestant conceptualizations of “progress” on attitudes toward Judaism in Biblical Studies and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s thinking on race, economics and the terms of social change.
Alisha Pomazon, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan
Desperate for Change: Hermann Cohen’s Fight for Religious, Social, Political and Academic “Progress”
Natalie Houghtby-Haddon, George Washington University
“The Fierce Urgency of Now”: Fifty Years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Has Anything Changed?
Angela Coco, Southern Cross University (Lismore)
Working on Pagan Time: Changing Consciousness through a Pagan Worldview
German McKenzie, Catholic University of America
What has Charles Taylor Brought to the Sociological Table? An Exploration of his View on Social Change in his Meta-Narrative on Secularization in the West
Steven Knowles, University of Chester
Reflexive Apocalypticism: Risk Society and the Fundamentalist Turn
