Opportunities Digest – 30 March 2012
We have moved opportunities digests until Fridays, largely to promote more discussion related to the reponse essays and podcasts, and also to give readers the chance to think about the opportunities over the weekend. We have linked each heading below to the appropriate section so you can (hopefully) jump to whatever you are interested in. We are not responsible for any content contained herein, but have simply copied and pasted from a variety of source
Contained below
Sociology of Religion – http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent?etoc
The Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, new to Oxford Journals in 2012, has just published its first issue!
The OJLR will be freely available online in 2012, so visit the table of contents for the first issue:
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/4452/6
Make sure to create or update your My Account profile so you don’t miss Advance Access alerts for the OJLR’s articles as they publish online ahead of print here:
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/4452/6
2012 Australian Association for the Study of Religion Conference
University of Western Sydney
Parramatta Campus, 28-30 September 2012
Multiple Religious Modernities
Deadline for submissions of abstracts (individual paper or panel proposals): 31 May, 2012
At the local and global level, religion is changed through social processes, but religion also impacts on societies at the structural and grass roots levels.
As modernity and (de)secularisation are multilateral processes, the conference explores the multiple types of (de)centralisation, pluralism and voluntarism of religious life.
First Call for Individual or Panel Presentations
• Individual paper proposals (200-300 words)
• Panel proposals (200 word for the panel concept and 200-300 words on each panel paper).
• For each paper, please provide a bio (up to 50 words) of the presenter(s).
• Please submit your abstract to Alan Nixon at: A.Nixon@uws.edu.au
Local Organising Committee
- Julia Howell
- Alphia Possamai-Inesedy
- Adam Possamai
- Judith Snodgrass
- Irena Veljanova
Programme Committee
- Carole Cusack, University of Sydney
- Jamila Hussein, University of Technology, Sydney.
- Jay Johnston, University of Sydney and University of New South Wales
- Paul Oslington, Australian Catholic University.
- Adam Possamai, University of Western Sydney
- Malcolm Voyce, Macquarie University
The event is hosted by the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, the School of Social Sciences and Psychology and the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. Your assistance in distributing this information to other interested parties will be appreciated.
An International, Interdisciplinary Conference:
POLITICS, PROBITY, POVERTY AND PRAYER: AFRICAN SPIRITUALITIES, ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION
University of Pretoria, South Africa. December 2-5, 2012
This International Conference brings together scholars/researchers, practitioners of diverse religious traditions and spiritualities, FBOs/NGOs and policy makers to interrogate how and to what extent various religions and spiritualities in Africa and the African diaspora engage in processes of economic, social and political transformation. Public commentators often criticize political entrepreneurs and African states of their failure to develop an ethic of public probity and accountability, partly exemplified by corruption. The enigmas of public transparency and probity can hardly be limited to public governance. We can also explore how religious institutions in Africa interrogate, critique, practice or fail to eschew transparency, accountability and probity in the quest for economic and social-political transformation. Religious entrepreneurs grapple with similar issues of leadership, good governance, probity, integrity as a reflection of their wider societies. Ecclesiastical, Islamic, or Indigenous religious polities are situated within wider pluralistic (secular) polities in Africa and are thus mutually reinforcing each other. The significance of leadership and corporate governance (religious/secular) lies in its contribution to prosperity, peaceful coexistence, moral regeneration and accountability. Accountability requires appropriate rules and regulations, doctrines, codes of conduct, values and behaviour to make for viable transformation. For instance, a historical perspective on leadership dynamics can be helpful in the present crisis in leadership in church and secular contexts. The churches and missionary societies played a crucial role in the shaping of South African cultures, as much in the colonial period as during the years of the formation of the Union and the apartheid era.
The conference provides a platform in which scholars/researchers, practitioners and policy makers will explore, through historical and contemporary perspectives, how authority structures, institutionalized myths, beliefs, and rituals of authority differently mobilize and influence members? behaviour and attitudes towards financial probity and organizational policies. How do various hierarchical/decentralized religious polities (i.e. structures of church government) in Africa deal with issues of probity (moral regeneration), equity and sustainable development? What values do African religions and spiritualities evince that represent a boon or bane for improving corporate governance and ensuring improved ethics and probity in African systems of governance? How should religious polity structures respond, critique and identify with national/international policies that are aimed at a disciplined management and equitable distribution of public resources, and the establishment of a viable culture of financial probity? What various models condition religious polities and leadership in Africa, and how have these been influenced by modern political movements, such as Western democracy, as well as by modern economics and technology? Are liberal or conservative forms of religiosity compatible with Western democracy? How and to what extent should religious insights be present in the public sphere of the secular polity and vice versa? ?How do engage prayer ritual action impact on their religious and national polities to maximize probity at personal and institutional levels?
The conference will highlight and explore how and to what extent African and diaspora religious traditions and spiritualities may cohere on the critical issues, such as that of probity, equity and accountability, which confront the African continent, their ?faiths? in relation to the wider, global community. Interrelated issues on religion, spirituality, leadership, social capital, public role, poverty, corruption, transparency will be discussed. The conference is intended to build synergies and forge dialogue on how religious/spiritual communities in Africa and the African Diaspora can combat poverty and foster probity and sustainable development.
The conference programme shall focus on the following and related sub-themes:
- African politico-economies, religious polity and accountability
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religious polity structures, corruption and transparency
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religious polity, social and religious capital
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religious values, behaviour, probity and financial accountability
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ethics, socio-cultural values, and social action
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democracy and ecclesiastical polity
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traditional (indigenous) systems of governance and probity
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religion/spiritualities, prayer and poverty
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religion, politics and socioeconomic empowerment
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church polity, apartheid and post-apartheid transformation
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religion, spiritualities and sustainable development in Africa and the African Diaspora
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Probity and African and African-derived religions/spiritualities in a new global order
Paper/presentation proposals based or related to one or more of the above themes are invited from the interested public: scholars, religious/spiritual communities and organizations, policy makers, and FBOs/NGOs. Interested panelists are invited to submit a paper/abstract proposal (max. 200 words), stating institutional affiliation, on or before 28 May 2012. The conference will be jointly hosted by the University of Pretoria, University of South Africa, The University of Edinburgh, and PANAFSTRAG. Abstract proposals and all correspondences regarding the conference should be sent electronically (email) to the conference organizers: Afe Adogame: a.adogame@ed.ac.uk and Graham Duncan: Graham.Duncan@up.ac.za
Journal for the Academic Study of Religion: Special Postgraduate Issue
Religion and Rethinking the Human
The ‘human,’ like that of ‘religion,’ is a category always under contestation. In current Euro-American scholarship and public culture, there is an acute anxiety about humans’ excessive reliance on technology, its environmental costs, and the ominous prospect of a post-human dystopia. These anxieties have been recognised, theorised, and allayed by a number of academic sub-disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. It is therefore noteworthy that the study of ‘religion,’ ultimately concerned with the consideration of one of the most enduring products of the ‘human,’ has yet to wholeheartedly embrace a deconstruction of this seemingly transparent category.
Although ‘humans’ are credited with creating ‘religion,’ ‘religion’ itself has played a central role in constructing the ‘human’ as we understand it today. This symbiotic relationship is multifaceted, multivalent, and under-theorised within much of the current field of the contemporary study of religion. In order to bridge this gap between the study of religion and the plethora of recent ‘turns’ in academic scholarship that trouble the ‘human,’ the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion (formerly the Australian Religion Studies Review) seeks papers that provide a valuable insight into this issue of endurance and relevance from a variety of interdisciplinary and methodological perspectives.
Articles may present viewpoints, arguments, and analyses on broad delineations of religion, religiosity, and any of the following, or other and divergent, topics:
- The historical construction of the human
- The human and the non-human, super-human, or post-human
- Anthropocentrism and the biopolitical processes that bring about the centrality of the human and of certain humans
- Notions of sentience, identity, and individualism
- Human rights, law, governance, politics, media, and relations with ‘nature,’ climate, and the environment
- Interspecies relations, especially between the human, the animal, the plant, the microbial, and the technological
- Human evolution and cognition
- The politics and governance of death, dying, and decomposition
This issue of the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion is a special issue that will be edited by postgraduate students featuring contributions from national and international postgraduate students. We are hoping that this will provide students not only with an important platform from which to share their research interests and efforts, but also an invaluable opportunity for the academic community at large to sample the high quality work and the innovation of scholars at a postgraduate level. We are seeking unique essays on the subject of Religion and Rethinking the Human that showcase the original research of students, and we welcome a variety of submissions that provide a unique insight into this highly pertinent issue.
If you would like to contribute to this Special Issue, please send your abstract to the guest postgraduate editors: George Ioannides (george.ioannides@sydney.edu.au<mailto:george.ioannides@sydney.edu.au>) and Venetia Robertson (venetia.robertson@sydney.edu.au<mailto:venetia.robertson@sydney.edu.au>) by 1 July 2012. Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words and accompanied by a brief author biographical statement. Authors will be notified by the end of July, and the deadline for submission of complete articles (6000 words) will be 1 December 2012. Papers will be published subject to peer review. This special issue of the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion will be published in December 2013.
Seminar: Muslim Women at Risk: Gendered Islamophobia by Dr. Barbara Perry, Professor of Criminology, Associate Dean, Faculty of Social Science & Humanities, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Tuesday 24th April – 4-5:30pm
Room 230, Geoffrey Manton Building, All Saints Campus, Manchester Metropolitan University
Location:
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/maps/mmu_maps_allsaints_aytoun.pdf
All welcome
Abstract:
Post 9/11, most western nations have seen dramatic increases in bias motivated violence against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim. Predicated on the long-lived vilification of Muslims by the media and the state, such violence is a reactionary reminder of Muslims’ outsider status. Interestingly, little attention has been paid to the particular vulnerability of women and girls to anti-Muslim hate crime. This paper begins such a dialogue, drawing on extant scholarship as well as early findings from an ongoing project on anti-Muslim violence in Ontario, Canada.
Biography
Dr. Barbara Perry has written extensively in the area of hate crime, including two books on the topic: In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crime; and Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader. She has just completed a book manuscript for University of Arizona Press entitled The Silent Victims: Native American Victims of Hate Crime, based on interviews with Native Americans, and one on policing Native American communities for Lexington Press. She is also General Editor of a five volume set on hate crime (Praeger), and editor of Volume 3: Victims of Hate Crime of that set.
1) Lecturer in Sociology, Job Reference Number: UOS004300
2) Lecturer in Social Policy, Job Reference Number: UOS004299
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociological Studies
Salary: £37,012 to £44,166 per annum, with potential to progress to £49,689 (grade 8 )
Closing Date: 26th April 2012
3) Research Assistant
Job Reference Number: UOS004272
Contract Type: Fixed term until 31 March 2014
Working Pattern: 40%, days of working to be agreed
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociological Studies
Salary: £28,401-£35,938 per annum (pro-rata) (grade 7)
Closing Date: 5th April 2012
Further information for all three jobs can be found at www.sheffield.ac.uk/jobs