The 35th Conference International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) conference will be held in Barcelona, Spain, 9-12 July, 2019 under the title “The Politics of Religion and Spirituality”.
The last International Society for the Sociology of religion (ISSR) conference on ‘Religion and Politics’ was organised in Venice in 1979. It is time we revisited this theme, 40 years later. Religion and spirituality are intertwined with politics at micro, meso, and macro levels, and their connection may vary strongly, both geographically and over time. The themes that could be addressed are numerous and are core to the sociology of religion: religion and international relations, identity-claims and nation-state sovereignty, debates on sexual and reproductive rights, anti-Islam parties and new demands for secularism, the role of religious values and influences in politics, religiously motivated conflicts, religious extremism, and religion and the refugees crisis.
Some of the questions which could be examined at the conference are the following:
- How are religion and spirituality used by individual or collective actors to promote specific interests in the context of social power dynamics?
- How are religion and spirituality influenced by the recent resurgence of nationalism and populism in many countries?
- What political and juridical strategies are used when trying to delimit the concepts of religion and spirituality in society?
- How are transformations in gender relations related to the politics of religion and spirituality? How do the politics of religion and spirituality change in generations from the post-war boomers to the current millennials?
It is welcome papers on these and other topics of interest to sociology of religion and more broadly to the social sciences of religion.
Important Dates
Conference Date: July 9-12, 2019
Venue: Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Proposal Submission Deadline: August 30
Conference Website: sisr-issr.org