British Sociological Association

Sociology of Religion Study Group

Call for Papers

Belief and Identity in Late Modernity:
Transcending Disciplinary Boundaries

University of Sussex, Saturday 8 November 2008 10-4 pm

A Study Day organised by ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Abby Day,

and Prof. Simon Coleman, Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex,
in conjunction with the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group.

What do people believe in and how do we find out? The question of 'belief', usually associated with 'religious' belief, is a term that is often used unproblematically in academic research and writing. People are said to be 'believers' or 'unbelievers' without sufficient attention being paid to what the term 'belief' may signify for both researchers and their interlocutors. The problem becomes more complicated when the unexplored concept of belief is then linked to issues of 'identity'. How can we understand how someone's belief forms a sense of who they are or how they are perceived without being clear about how and in what context the term 'belief' is being deployed? Crude distinctions between the 'religious', the 'spiritual' or the 'secular' provide an inadequate explanatory framework in such cases.

Media reports on religion appear almost daily, sometimes focusing on apparently 'moral' issues, such as whether gay people should be ordained, abortion and stem cell research should be banned, or Harry Potter books encourage occult practices. Other debates focus on links between religion, ethnic identities and violence, and whether modernity and religion are incompatible. Such discourse demonstrates that discussion of secularisation, belief and religion reaches to the heart of Western understandings of who we are in 'modern' society, and about how it is possible to be 'modern' and religious -especially in an age where religion and politics seem so interlinked.

This Study Day is designed to bring together scholars who are exploring themes of belief and identity. Papers are invited from the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, theology, psychology, political science and others where questions of belief are being interrogated. We are also interested in presentations that compare disciplinary approaches to belief. Empirical, methodological and theoretical papers are welcomed. The Study Day will be organised as a single stream so that the day is as much about discussion as it is about presentation, and therefore the number of formal papers will be limited.

Abstracts (250 words) for proposed papers should be emailed to both the Study Day organisers by 1 June 2008:
s.m.coleman@sussex.ac.uk
a.day@sussex.ac.uk.