Call for Papers| 5-6 July 2018, King’s College London

Worldviews in World View:
Particularizing Secularism, Secularity and Nonreligion
Convener: Dr Stacey Gutkowski, King’s College London
Conference Assistants: Yosr Ben Slima and Sam Jeffery
Keynote Speakers:
Dr Samuli Schielke, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and Freie Universitaet Berlin
Dr Erica Baffelli, Japanese Studies, University of Manchester
Dr Reza Gholami, School of Education, University of Birmingham
Special Plenary:
Keeping Worldviews in Mind: The Psychology and Cognitive Anthropology of Nonreligion
Dr Miguel Farias, Coventry University
Dr Jonathan Lanman, Queen’s University Belfast
Dr Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Dr Valerie Van Mulukom, Coventry University

In his Formations of the Secular, Talal Asad called on researchers to attend to the nuanced,
case-specific, historical processes whereby conceptual binaries are established and mobilized
towards the formation of the ‘secular’ as a modern epistemic category and ‘secularism’ as amodern political doctrine – what Saba Mahmood has since termed a ‘critical secular studies’.
Similarly, proponents of the Critical Religious Studies approach aim to identify the historicalcircumstances in the West which brought about ‘religion’ as a modern category of thought, inorder to problematize the term. Additionally, scholars working on ‘nonreligion’, ‘unbelief’, and‘religion’s Others’ argue for supplementing these approaches by unpacking the ways in whichpeople draw positively on resources within and beyond traditional religion to fashion
worldviews and meaning-making practices.

This conference endeavours to bring these three strands of scholarly work into deeper
dialogue with one another, for the purpose of theoretical refinement and advancement acrossthe strands. It aims to provincialize some of the theoretical assumptions made in the literature
on nonreligion, which has drawn heavily, though by no means exclusively, from European andNorth American case studies. It also provides an opportunity to re-read theoreticalassumptions made within Critical Secular and Critical Religious Studies, in order to further
advance thinking within these areas about phenomena such as atheism, agnosticism,humanism, rationalism and spirituality.
The conference provides an opportunity:•••••to showcase rich, empirical fieldwork from case studies from the Middle East, Asia,
Sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean and other regions.
for scholars of cases from Europe or the Americas to analyse the provincial nature ofthese case studies, to reflect upon and problematize some of the most significant
theoretical concepts used thus far to define the field of study (including, but not limitedto, ‘nonreligion’, ‘irreligion’, and ‘unbelief’).
to think through diversity within these contexts, including the practices and beliefs ofnon-Christian minority cultures in Europe and the Americas.
to reflect upon ‘the West’ as a cultural formation and political modality whose
geography is not confined to Europe or the Americas.
for scholars using a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including
experimental methods in psychology and cognitive science, to reflect on theimplications of these constructed categories for their work.

Reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of its membership, the NSRN welcomes proposals forpapers and panels from a diverse range of scholars from Anthropology, Sociology, Geography,
History, Religious Studies, Politics, International Studies, Cognitive Science, Psychology,
Philosophy, Cultural Studies and the Arts.
Publication Outcome: We are planning to publish a selection of the papers presented at theconference in a journal special issue.
The deadline for abstract submission (250 words max) is 27 October 2017. Please send
your abstract together with a short biographical note to nsrnconference@gmail.com.
The event is co-sponsored by the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, theUnderstanding Unbelief Programme, University of Kent, the Department of Theology andReligious Studies, King’s College London, the Department of War Studies, King’s CollegeLondon and DeGruyter Press.