bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Can Political Science Learn from Statistics and Psychology?
Authors: Wasserman Stanley
Published: June 2017

This chapter is one of six in this book in which a leading scholar from another field is interviewed about network science. These scholars bring to bear the perspective and experience of their fields, as well as insights about how network science integrates with questions that tend to be of interest to political scientists. They have knowledgeable and unique perspectives on the potential intellectual contributions that political scientists can make using network science approaches.
Country Music as Cultural Practice
Authors: Murphy Clifford R.
Published: June 2017

This chapter argues that country music should be examined first and foremost as social practice—as a driver of community expression and social capital through music, words, and dance. While country music functions in a multitude of ways, from narrative storytelling to commercial product and points in between, the commercial sphere of country music has been exhaustively examined. Scholarly inquiry into country music, rooted in the folk revival of the mid-twentieth century and significantly influenced by collectors (and collections) of commercial country music, has maintained a southern, commercial focus for much of the past half-century. As such, scholarly and popular understanding of what, where, and who country music springs from has ignored significant regional vernacular forms and uses of country music. Ethnographic inquiry has made it possible to tell the story country music culture and traditions. Murphy illustrates his argument with examples from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and Atlantic Canada.
Country Music Studies and Folklore
Authors: Brady Erika
Published: June 2017

This chapter suggests that academic folklorists have been slow to undertake study of country music until the late twentieth century in part due to the discipline’s early history as an outgrowth of European, British, and American nineteenth century intellectual movements embracing the notion of the “folk” as a social entity retaining a pure and uncontaminated oral tradition of song. On the other hand, promoters, musicians, and audiences have embraced country music because of both a constructed myth and an authentic legacy of cultural identity, both deriving from American folk music. The global nature of country music in an era of extensive digitalization of media presents challenges within the industry to retain at least a pretense of history/regionalism and within academic folk studies to address new and unfamiliar media as conduits of tradition and new definitions of musical community.
The Sociology of Country Music
Authors: Lloyd Richard
Published: June 2017

How can a sociological approach improve our understanding of country music? This chapter answers this question by focusing on the intersections between country music history and the core sociological theme of modernity. Challenging standard interpretations of country music as folk culture, it shows how the emergence of the popular commercial genre corresponds to the increasing modernization of the American South. The genre’s subsequent growth and evolution tracks central objects of sociological study including industrialization, geographic mobility, race and ethnic relations, the changing social class structure, political realignment in the United States, and (paradoxically) urbanization. Country music is comparatively understudied in the sociology of music despite its rich history and massive popularity; this chapter shows that the genre and the discipline nevertheless mutually illuminate one another in robust and often surprising ways.
The Sacred in Country Music
Authors: Shearon Stephen
Published: June 2017

The key to understanding the vast majority of sacred expression in country music is understanding the gospel song and the religious developments for which it was the primary musical outlet. By the time the country market was established, gospel song had undergone a century or more of development. Changes in sacred country music, moreover, tracked the changes in gospel song. The earliest songs were northern product of the sort produced by Fanny Crosby. As southern production grew, songs such as those by Albert E. Brumley were added. And country artists themselves wrote new gospel songs. In the 1950s, country artists began incorporating gospel songs written by African Americans such as Thomas A. Dorsey. From the late 1960s, contemporary Christian songs and semisacred ballads were added to the mix. But country music also includes non-Christian sacred expression. John Anderson’s “Seminole Wind” evokes the animism of Native American cultures.
On the Notion of “Old-Time” in Country Music
Authors: Reish Gregory
Published: June 2017

This chapter investigates the origins, connotations, and uses of “old-time” and related terms in country music, with an emphasis on the hillbilly era of the 1920s and 1930s, the postwar string band revival, and the field of country music scholarship. Use of “old-time” as an appellation for prewar country is shown to have derived from the marketing of printed musical collections in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and employed by the marketers of early commercial country music. During the postwar revival, scholars and taste-making musicians used “old-time” to establish a canon of artists, styles, and repertories that has solidified even more in the twenty-first century, as personal connections to the precommercial era of folk music become rare. There is now a positivistic documentation of early commercial country music and sharing of that information with the community of revivalist musicians through the publication of regional studies and biographies.
Gendered Stages
Authors: McCusker Kristine M.
Published: June 2017

This chapter examines the ways country music performers and producers created contingent, gendered stages that evolved from the industry’s start in the 1920s. It also examines the ways country artists and others have welded ideas of an authentic and genuine music to those performances to make those contingent stages seem solid, stable, and unchanging, even as they reflect a southern culture in transition. The chapter describes those gendered strategies from the early barn dance radio years to the mid-1950s country and western music to the current industry, including the recent “tomato” controversy. It assumes a tight connection between the images presented on stage and the off-stage relationships between performers, producers, and other industry insiders, an interconnection that has had ramifications for country music scholarship as well. We need to examine and move beyond the links between the genre’s authenticity narratives and its various gendered stages.
Social Comparison and Learning From Others
Authors: Beckman Christine M. , Lee Hyeun J.
Published: June 2017

Using social comparison theory as an overarching perspective, we review the literature on learning from others’ experience. We examine how social referents are chosen, based on (1) different cues—structural, cognitive, affective, social, or external cues; and (2) different motivations—self-assessment, self-enhancement, or self-improvement. We highlight the usefulness of considering these cues for reference group selection, in predicting the likelihood, the type, and the level of learning. We describe several challenges in predicting learning outcomes based on motives alone. Taken together, we call for more understanding of different cues and bases of social comparison, alongside consideration of motivation, to better understand from whom actors can learn and what can be learned from them.
Trust and Rational Choice
Authors: Cook Karen S. , Santana Jessica J.
Published: June 2017

This chapter provides an overview of the rational choice orientation to the study of trust, rooted primarily in economics, political science, and sociology. Conceptualizations of trust that build on a rational choice framework focus on the cognitions that form the basis of judgments of trustworthiness and decisions to place trust in another, as well as the embeddedness of trust relations in networks, groups, and institutions. The strengths of rational choice approaches to trust and their limitations are discussed, and brief comparisons are made with other approaches that have gained popularity in the social sciences (many of which are represented in this volume). Much of the trust we see in society is based on reasoned assessments of the evidence at hand that lead one to evaluate others as trustworthy given past performance, reputational information, and the incentives at play, including those derived from network embeddedness or the institutional context.
Trust and Participation in Associations
Authors: Paxton Pamela , Ressler Robert
Published: June 2017

This chapter provides an overview of theory relating participation in voluntary associations to increased levels of trust. It highlights theory that explains how trust is generalized to individuals outside of associations, theory that distinguishes among types of associations in their ability to produce generalized trust, and additional theory that refutes these claims. The chapter also introduces new theory that combines the two most common distinctions—bridging versus bonding associations and connected versus isolated associations. The end of the chapter documents how each of the theories and mechanisms have been supported, challenged, or neglected in existing empirical evidence and concludes with recommendations for how to test theories on trust and participation moving forward.
Introduction
Authors: Kahan Dan M. , Scheufele Dietram A. , Jamieson Kathleen Hall
Published: June 2017

The introductory chapter defines a science of science communication, examines efforts to advance scholarship in this area, provides an overview of the contents within the six parts of the handbook, and indicates ways in which communication about the Zika virus relates to each of those parts and to chapters within them.
A Recap
Authors: Hilgard Joseph
Published: June 2017

This synthesis chapter recapitulates the major themes of Part II. These themes concern the various problems within science that may produce misleading results and prevent the correction of errors. These problems include publication bias, bias in statistical analysis, hyping of study results, and, in rare cases, fraud. The collected authors suggest that these may be symptomatic of a scientific culture that overvalues exciting, novel, and significant results and undervalues incremental contributions and null results. Institutional reforms are discussed as ways to better align researcher behavior with scientific goals, and consideration is given to the challenges of self-correction in a contentious political climate.
Communications About Biotechnologies and GMOs Across Europe
Authors: Bonfadelli Heinz
Published: June 2017

Against the background of policy debates by advocates and opponents like nongovernmental organizations about regulation of biotechnology, this chapter summarizes communication by mass media about biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the public sphere. On the one hand there are several Eurobarometer surveys dealing with knowledge, perceptions, and opinions for or against biotechnology in the different European countries, and on the other hand, several analyses of media content have been realized, focusing on key events like the sheep Dolly and issues, cycles, or media frames like scientific progress, economic prospects, ethics, or Pandora’s box and arguments for or against biotechnology. The existing research demonstrates how media and lay persons perceive and construct risks as well benefits of new technologies like biotechnology and GMOs.
Science Communication at Scientific Institutions
Authors: Lohwater Tiffany , Storksdieck Martin
Published: June 2017

This chapter presents communication perspectives on two reputable science institutions in the United States, each with historic and modern roles in shaping the enterprise of science, as well as practice in communicating science: the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The discussion includes an overview of how these institutions synthesize and communicate scientific knowledge and an examination of their efforts not only to convey scientific information to the broader public but also to serve as a respected voice for the scientific community. It reveals tensions that occur when institutions dedicated to the advancement of science interface with the complex world of public perception and public policy. The chapter concludes by advocating for better connecting the theory and practice of science communication and calls for encouraging increased interaction and collaboration between science communication researchers and practitioners.
The Role of Governmental Organizations in Communicating About Regulating Science
Authors: Morris Jeffery
Published: June 2017

Governments rely on regulatory science to support decisions related to the protection of human health and the environment. Not only is regulatory science produced and used differently than discovery-driven science practiced outside the government, but it also has its own means of being communicated within democratic societies and has its own challenges for public engagement. This chapter examines how regulatory science is communicated within the US federal government, principally by the US Environmental Protection Agency, using nanotechnology and biotechnology as case studies to illustrate the challenges of, and opportunities for, engaging the public on the use of scientific information to inform decisions on the introduction and use of emerging technologies into society.
The Role of Funding Organizations: Foundations
Authors: Christopherson Elizabeth Good
Published: June 2017

This chapter examines the distinct roles of philanthropic foundations in promoting knowledge and acceptance of scientific evidence, often in the face of controversy. The chapter reviews notable foundation efforts to advance and apply scientific research, support collaboration, elevate science communication, and encourage public engagement. It also draws attention to the lack of comprehensive research about foundations’ work in these areas, suggesting that future efforts more fully examine the impacts of foundation efforts and the potential for integrating the science of science communication with strategic foundation initiatives. The chapter concludes with actionable approaches to propel new work and research related to foundations’ roles in the science engagement landscape.
The Changing Popular Images of Science
Authors: Kirby David A.
Published: June 2017

Studies of popular culture show that contemporary images of science have become far less negative and much more complex than earlier stereotypical depictions. Scientists are now more likely to be characterized as heroes rather than villains, and modern scientist characters exhibit a moral complexity not found in previous portrayals. But the historic depiction of scientists as white, privileged American males has not changed. Scholarly analyses demonstrate a shift away from fictional interpretations of scientific knowledge as inherently dangerous toward a representation of science as being threatening only when it is unregulated and freed from ethical constraints. Recent entertainment media renders science more accessible by demystifying the scientific process even if these texts still portray science as a domain for elites. Past representations of science as a secretive and mysterious practice have also been replaced by a new public image of science as a practice that has an almost preternatural certainty.
Countering False Beliefs
Authors: Chan Man-pui Sally , Jones Christopher , Albarracín Dolores
Published: June 2017

Although false beliefs about science are at the core of theory and practice in the field of scientific communication, correction and retraction of misinformation entail a complex and difficult process. This chapter first provides a review of trends in scientific retraction and correction notes failures in the fundamental communicative function of signaling that a published finding has been invalidated. It describes the recent practical communication developments that are increasing the transparency and visibility of retractions and corrections of fraudulent or incorrect scientific findings and examines the final barrier to correction of misbelief: the continued influence effect. The chapter reviews the results of a meta-analysis of the continued influence effect and present psychology-based recommendations in the form of decision trees to guide the work of scientists and practitioners and provides eight best practice recommendations for science communication scholars and practitioners as they continue their battle against misinformation.
Understanding and Overcoming Selective Exposure and Judgment When Communicating About Science
Authors: Stroud Natalie Jomini
Published: June 2017

Before turning to an evaluation of strategies to overcome selective exposure and judgment, this chapter demonstrates that these selectivity processes occur with respect to science but not in all circumstances. Strategies to curb the occurrence of selectivity are discussed based on the information conveyed and the motivational state of a person encountering scientific information. Theories and research on accountability to others, anxiety, self-affirmation, defensive confidence, and normative information are discussed as ways to reduce selectivity. No one strategy emerges as a cure-all, prompting the presentation of a future research agenda to examine strategies to overcome selective exposure and judgment.
Understanding and Overcoming Fear of the Unnatural in Discussion of GMOs
Authors: Lull Robert B. , Scheufele Dietram A.
Published: June 2017

Fear of the unnatural plays an important role when evaluating a powerful technology such as genetic engineering. Several factors contribute to fear of the unnatural, including heuristics and predispositions. This chapter examines the availability heuristic, affect heuristic, and naturalistic fallacy. It also discusses predispositions such as environmentalism, disgust sensitivity, morality, and anxiety and how fear of the unnatural—if inconsistent with the best available scientific evidence—is a problematic basis for public debate regarding genetic modification. Drawing on several case studies in which fear of the unnatural was overcome and public debate shifted from instinctive fear to substantive deliberation about responsible innovation, the chapter suggests that strategies to overcome fear of the unnatural can foster social accountability.
Overcoming the Challenges of Communicating Uncertainties Across National Contexts
Authors: Siegrist Michael , Hartmann Christina
Published: June 2017

The goal of risk communication is to provide information about risks and uncertainties in a way that enables people to make the best decisions, based on their own values. Various factors influence the success of risk communication. This chapter first highlights risk communication methods and formats that determine successful risk communication. For example, laypeople do not understand all presentation formats of numbers equally well, and risk comparisons help them improve their evaluation of risk information. It also introduces the influence of heuristics, trust, and cultural values for decisions under uncertainty conditions. In the case of controversial topics, heuristics and trust influence how people interpret uncertainties. Research suggests that most people depend on experts with whom they share salient values in a given context. Based on the available evidence, the chapter provides some recommendations for communicating uncertainties at the end of the chapter and further describe some avenues for research.
How Changing Media Structures Are Affecting Science News Coverage
Authors: Schäfer Mike S.
Published: June 2017

Many citizens and decision-makers obtain information about science mainly, or even exclusively, from news and online media. Accordingly, social science has devoted considerable attention to the analysis of science news coverage. A review of this literature reveals a number of ongoing, substantial transformations: In line with the crisis of legacy media, the rise of online communication, and the extension of PR by many societal stakeholders, science communication is changing. Science journalism has come under pressure in publishing houses, and science journalists’ working conditions have worsened. The amount of science news coverage is stagnating, albeit after a rise that lasted several decades, and seems to navigate toward either a more controversial reporting about politicized issues such as gene editing or a less critical “churnalism” that is more strongly influenced by PR efforts than before. The implications of these changes for science communication and societal decisions regarding science communication are considered.
A Recap
Authors: Hilgard Joseph , Li Nan
Published: June 2017

This synthesis chapter recapitulates the major themes of Part I. The chapter proposes that science communication is challenging because science is complex, because humans interpret evidence in biased ways, and because the science–media landscape is shifting. Consequently, the mere supply of scientific information alone is not likely to guide audiences to science-consistent beliefs. Instead, science communicators must learn to navigate both the cultural implications of their work and the heuristics audiences use when deciding whom to trust. Consideration must be given to scientific knowledge and the audience’s values alike. A science of science communication provides an understanding of these multiple considerations and promotes effective dialogue between scientists and the public.
Uranium-Thorium Dating of Cave Art
Authors: Pike Alistair W.G.
Published: June 2017

The uranium-thorium (U-Th) method can constrain the age of cave art by providing dates of formation of calcite deposits from on top of paintings or calcite layers on which paintings were done. It is particularly useful for art made without radiocarbon datable organic pigments or binders, or where contamination of radiocarbon samples is an issue. The U-Th method is outlined, including various sampling methods, checks for quality control, and a discussion of methods of correction for contaminating detritus. Recent applications of the method to the chronology of cave art are given, including a brief discussion of results that show cave paintings older than c. 40,000 years in both Spain and Sulawesi and their implication for the origins of cave painting.
Australia’s Rock Art Heritage
Authors: McDonald Jo
Published: June 2017

Australia has myriad rock art places that have special significance to their many Indigenous owners and a heritage resource of outstanding universal value to all humankind. The appropriate management of those places involves particular heritage considerations because of the multiple layers of significance at stake. The Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act of 1999, a federal instrument, defines the criteria for the recognition of national heritage values and forms the basis for identifying the most significant natural and cultural heritage places in Australia. This chapter provides a research-based management logic for including significant rock art places on Australia’s National Heritage List. This thematic approach, founded on current Australian rock art research, recognizes the thematic structure adopted by UNESCO in its assessment of World Heritage Outstanding Universal Values, since there are logical synergies for synchronizing Australia’s National Heritage List with World Heritage Listing.
Mediatized Disasters in the Global Age: On the Ritualization of Catastrophe
Authors: Cottle Simon
Published: June 2017

This article examines how disasters become extensively and intensively enacted and performed within the news media. It first considers contemporary forms of media ritualization evident across a range of “exceptional” media phenomena, including moral panics and mediated scandals. It then explores how some of these different forms of media ritualization enter into and shape the public elaboration of major disasters, including the South Asian tsunami (2004), Hurricane Katrina (2005), and Cyclone Nargis in Burma and the Sichuan earthquake in China (2008). It also explains how ideas of cultural performance and media ritualization can help elucidate the ways that disasters are culturally made to mean and, importantly, politically matter in a globalizing world. It argues that mediatized disasters not only become communicated across extensive geographical distances but are also culturally intensified and rendered available for wider appropriation by diverse discourses and political projects—nationally, internationally, and globally.
Media, Intellectuals, the Public Sphere, and the Story of Barack Obama in 2008
Authors: Townsely Eleanor
Published: June 2017

This article examines the epoch-making sense of Barack Obama’s historic election as U.S. president in 2008 and the heightened solidarity it produced, as well as the role of the mass media in creating such meanings. It first describes a sociological model of the public sphere by combining insights from field analysis and the Strong Program in cultural sociology, focusing on the theories advanced by Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jeffrey C. Alexander. It then considers how intellectuals, acting through media institutions, define and expand public spheres before discussing the interrelationships among autonomy, rationality, and democracy. It also explores how the autonomy of cultural production can influence the autonomy of the journalistic field and, therefore, the autonomy of the political public sphere. Finally, it explains how civil society, and its public sphere institutions more specifically, produces solidarity by making distinctions between civil and uncivil things.
Entertainment Media and the Aesthetic Public Sphere
Authors: Jacobs Ronald N.
Published: June 2017

This article introduces the concept of the “aesthetic public sphere” as a way for cultural sociologists to understand the civic impact of entertainment media. The idea of the aesthetic public sphere draws on Jürgen Habermas’s discussion of the literary public sphere from a more cultural and historically even-handed perspective. In his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas noted the important connection between entertainment media and the development of democratic communication norms. This article examines three components of the aesthetic public sphere. First, aesthetic publics work at the level of the social imaginary. Second, aesthetic publics provide a space for commentary about important matters of common concern. Third, aesthetic publics encourage debates about cultural policy in a way that increases the importance of cultural citizenship within civil society. The article concludes by considering how cultural globalization reinforces the importance of the aesthetic public sphere.
The Constitution of Religious Political Violence: Institution, Culture, and Power
Authors: Friedland Roger
Published: June 2017

This article examines politicized religion on institutional grounds, arguing that religious violence is both a corollary of attempted institutional transformation and, more specifically, of the institutional logic of religion itself. The institutionalism that this article proposes is a cultural sociological project; it seeks to encompass, not displace, prior institutional constitutions. The article contends that institutions are constituted by orderings of means-ends couplets, regimes of practice, the so-called “institutional logics.” It first considers religious violence as a political strategy and as a religious sentiment before discussing the institutional form of religious nationalism. It then explores institutional logic in relation to social movements, along with the political constitution of religious violence and the religious constitution of political violence. It also assesses the intersections of sex, violence, and divinity and concludes by explaining how institutional logic can help us better understand the violence of politicized religion.
Culture and the Economy
Authors: Tognato Carlo
Published: June 2017

This article examines the intellectual mission of a cultural sociology of the economy, its theoretical horizon, and its pragmatic relevance in times of economic crisis. It first considers classical sources of a cultural sociology of the economy before discussing the use of cultural analysis in contemporary economic sociology. It then outlines the central features of a cultural sociology of the economy and emphasizes the moral obligation of scholars to offer fresh insights into the mechanisms that sustain public confidence or help to repair it, and more specifically how a cultural sociology of the economy can contribute in this respect. It argues that a cultural sociology of the economy can help tackle three of the most pressing problems that loom on the horizon of the current world economic crisis: the general public’s loss of confidence for private corporations, the economic profession, and independent central banks.
Cultural Sociology and Civil Society in a World of Flows: Recapturing Ambiguity, Hybridity, and the Political
Authors: Baiocchi Gianpaolo
Published: June 2017

This article “provincializes” cultural sociology and more specifically, the cultural sociology of politics and civil society. It first traces the origins of what is distinctive about the cultural sociology of civil society before discussing its three unspoken assumptions: the assumption of minimal stateness in the lives and worlds of social movements and civil society, the relation between civil and civilized, and the notion that the social location of the political in nonliberal societies might be different than in established liberal societies. It then explains how loosening these assumptions might make cultural sociology travel “better” and cites examples referring to civil society in places in the Global South. Finally, it examines some of the implications of these arguments for the Global North.
Judith Butler,Gender Trouble
Authors: Chambers Clare
Published: June 2017

This chapter discusses Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (GT) and its legacy in political theory. It sets out five themes of GT: the claim that identity is always the result of power; the interplay between sex, gender, and desire; the critique of “identity politics,” including any feminism that posits a stable category of “women”; the concept of performativity; and the possibility of change via subversive performance. The chapter then goes on to discuss the major impact that GT has had on feminist theory, queer theory, trans theory, and intersectionality, along with the surprising lack of impact on theories of multiculturalism and identity theory more broadly. Finally the chapter discusses some main criticisms of the book.
Postcolonialism
Authors: Mandair Arvind
Published: June 2017

The chapter presents an overview of postcolonialism, outlining some of the key arguments, concepts, and contributing figures. It examines the major theoretical limitations of postcolonialism, in particular its overreliance on models of agency, difference, and secular models of social reality all of which are grounded in a causal negativity. Postcolonial studies has also largely missed the strategic importance of new developments in the study of religion due to the un-interrogated nature of ‘religion’ as an analytic category in postcolonial theory. This limitation is remedied to some extent by recent developments in the study of religion: e.g. (i) problematizion of religion as a cultural universal; and (ii) the critiques of ‘religion’ as a category manufactured by the modern state, and therefore intrinsically tied to notions of the secular. The chapter deploys a case study of Hinduism to show the continuing effects of postcolonialism and its importance for the study of religion.
Communication
Authors: Krech Volkhard
Published: June 2017

This chapter advocates applying a communication theoretical model to the study of religion. This proceeds by observing the procedure of religious communication, the ways in which this communication reflects upon and describes itself, and the means by which it sets itself apart from other kinds of communication. While there is no such thing as religion per se, the specific feature of religious communication consists in ultimately coping with contingency on the basis of the distinction between immanence and transcendence. Religious semantics and the institutional framework of religious communication should be analytically distinguished and synthetically related to each other. Inner and outer boundaries of religious communication should also be distinguished. Religious communication constitutes a self-referential societal system and also differentiates itself (and is distinguished) from other forms of communication such as politics, economics, science, and the arts. Differentiation is the basis for interaction between various forms of communication including religion.
Narrative
Authors: Jensen Jeppe Sinding
Published: June 2017

Historical knowledge as well as contemporary research point out how narratives are essential in human life, culture, and society. The same holds for the formation and maintenance of religious worlds. Narratives of many kinds play fundamental roles in religion and (other) social constructions and, accordingly, narratives are crucial in individual self-understanding and social integration. The human imagination and the capacities for meaning-making depend on the use of narrative. Narratives also have fundamental epistemic functions in the production of knowledge and the origins of narrative, phylogenesis, and ontogenesis are interrelated. Humanity has grown with language and narrative, both of which seem to be the prerequisites for the development of intelligence as it found in modern humans. The chapter also examines the special features of religious narrative as they create, express, and maintain religious worlds.
Performance
Authors: Michaels Axel , Sax William S.
Published: June 2017

This chapter reviews prominent theories of ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’ and compares them to theories of ritual. It begins with important theories of performativity in language, and moves on to discussions of the relation between performativity in theatre and in ritual. This chapter argues shows how a focus on performativity in religion and ritual emphasizes embodiment over cognition, situated communication over linguistic structure, and contextual meaning over propositional content. This chapter considers the example of Indian popular theatre and its relation to Indian theology. It also reviews important theories of performativity associated with Austin, Goffman, Schechner, Tambiah, and Turner, arguing that a performative approach to religion and ritual sees them as emergent, contingent, creative, dynamic, embodied, open-ended, and above all context-dependent.
Space
Authors: Chidester David
Published: June 2017

Theories of religious space can be divided between those that focus on poetic meaning, political power, or material production. Religious space can be based on structural oppositions, such as the indigenous opposition between home and wild space and the colonial opposition between land and sea. The production of religious space commonly establishes barriers, but instances of shared religious space can be found in Africa, India, and elsewhere. Competition over the ownership of a place is a recurring feature of the dynamics of religious space, as illustrated by the conflict between Hindus and Muslims over the site in Ayodhya in India. With the rise of modern nations, religious space is increasingly managed by state apparatuses, and at the same time dispersed through transnational social networks in diaspora. Religious space is also powerful as an arena for asserting claims to access, control, and ultimately ownership of the sacred.
Law
Authors: Schonthal Benjamin
Published: June 2017

This chapter examines some of the different considerations that one should bring to examining religion in contexts of state-legal institutions. It considers the complex political histories and motivations that inform the creation and interpretation of laws governing religion, including the laws protecting religious freedom. It argues that it is helpful to think of the law–religion nexus in terms of four aspects: the links between state law and religious law; the religious history of state laws; the religious presuppositions inherent in state law; and the politics associated with creating and litigating laws concerning religion. It also explores how legal and religious traditions adapt and respond to each other: religious traditions alter themselves to conform to the categories of state law, while judges and legislators periodically alter parameters of what counts as religion.
Nature
Authors: Ivakhiv Adrian
Published: June 2017

‘Nature,’ as cultural historian Raymond Williams asserted, is one of the most complex words in the English language. Just as its meanings have varied considerably over time, relations between religion belief/practice and the natural world have varied historically, geographically, and across multiple cultural contexts. ‘Nature’ and ‘religion’ have been co-articulated in different ways, and different interests and issues have been at stake in these changing constructions. Tropes of nature and the natural occur across a range of contexts: in Western study of non-Western religions, distinctions between ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’ cosmologies, and scholarly discourses of ‘religion and ecology,’ ‘nature religion,’ and debates over the ‘Lynn White thesis’; and in a series of popular religio-environmental developments including concepts and practices of Creation Care, eco-kosher livelihoods, sacred groves, the Green Pilgrims Cities network, the Earth Charter, and eco-paganism.
Medicine
Authors: Klassen Pamela E.
Published: June 2017

Beginning with focused definitions of medicine and religion, this chapter then turns to three themes at the center of the intersection of religion and medicine. It discusses the authority of biomedicine as a dominant frame for medicine (Western scientific medicine, which has drawn on the organizational effectiveness of religious groups in Europe and North America), as well as challenges to this frame from other healing traditions. The author also considers the significance of commodification for both biomedical and spiritual approaches to healing, and examines the significance of colonialism for contests between systems of healing. With the use of specific examples, the chapter focuses on issues of gender, racialization, and embodiment in the politics of the interchange between religion and medicine.
Politics
Authors: Seiwert Hubert
Published: June 2017

This chapter adopts a study-of-religion perspective in discussing key issues of the entanglement of religion and politics. The starting point is the modern Western idea of separation between religion and state, which provides the backdrop of the common view that religion and politics represent two distinct and disconnected spheres of social life. This normative understanding is in contradiction to empirical findings showing that politics and religion are in many ways interrelated. Relevant topics include the role of religion in legitimating and supporting the existing political order as well as opposing and devaluing it, the involvement of religious institutions in politics, the overlapping of religion and politics in the public sphere, possible conflicts between the power of the state and the power of religions, and the question of how religions are related to specific forms of government and to political ideologies is examined.
Tourism
Authors: Norman Alex
Published: June 2017

Tourism is a characteristic component of modern global life, and is thus intertwined with religion, a similarly central component. Scholars of religion seeking to understand phenomena in which acts of travel and religions are combined need ways to think about the interactions of these two major social and historical forces. While historically the study of acts of travel and the practice of religions tended to focus on dichotomies of pilgrim/tourist and sacred/profane, contemporary scholars recognize the problematic nature of such concepts in analysis. With the rise of secularization, tourists interact with religions for their own purposes, rather than solely institutional ones. This chapter sets out the theoretical and methodological problems of the study of religions and tourism, and discusses how the prominence of leisure in Western societies drives interactions between tourists and religions, giving scholars important access points for the study of religions and cross-cultural interaction.
Gift and Sacrifice
Authors: Auffarth Christoph
Published: June 2017

This chapter discusses sacrifice and gift exchange as perspectives on ritual relations between gods and humans. It begins by noting the role of Protestant theology in emphasizing the centrality of sacrifice to religion and the contributions of Victorian evolutionist scholars as well as twentieth-century thinkers to the conceptualization of sacrifice. Problems with these analyses—and with interpretations of mythic narratives of sacrifice more generally—suggest the value of a comprehensive religio-historical analysis of sacrifice. This suggests the value of considering sacrifice within a more general framework: as communicative gift in a gift economy. Sacrificial ritual establishes ritual commensality, thus constituting a performance of social order and power. Anthropological concepts and typologies of gifting facilitate comparing and contrasting exchange relations between humans with those between humans and gods. More generally, it allows us to characterize the roles of exchange relations in society, thus adding to our understanding of religion’s social roles.
Priests, Prophets, Sorcerers
Authors: Hutter Manfred
Published: June 2017

Definitions of ‘priest,’ ‘prophet,’ or ‘sorcerer’ must take account of the social setting of such religious specialists. Though most definitions are rooted in biblical traditions, ‘priest’ can serve as a useful umbrella term in a typology of terms of religious authorities, describing a person serving a community as the main specialist responsible for transmitting religious knowledge and establishing the relationship between individuals or the society as a whole and superhuman beings by performing rituals on behalf of the former and for the pleasure of the latter. This approach rejects a functional distinction between priests and sorcerers, given it embodies a contingent theological dichotomy between ‘religion’ and ‘magic.’ ‘Prophets’ are primarily performers of mantic techniques used to convey the gods’ messages to people, which in the Bible and the Qur’ān is mainly seen as conveying the ‘divine word.’ More generally, prophets also perform tasks similar to other priests and sorcerers.
Differentiation
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: June 2017

This chapter looks at the relevance of the concept of ‘differentiation’ for the study of religion. Differentiation plays a major part in most explanations of secularization, but it is important to distinguish two different senses of the term. Social differentiation—social division resulting primarily from the division of labor in modernizing nations—is normally secularizing due to the fragmentation of overarching religious institutions into competing sects and denominations. This is correlated with increased religious pluralism, which is generally secularizing, due to decreasing dogmatism. Functional (or structural) differentiation has important implication for religion: as religion becomes separated off as a discrete subsystem, it loses power and influence. The creation of secular alternatives leads to a decline in the popularity of religious services. The chapter argues that claims that modernization is characterized by de-differentiation—as advanced by rational choice theory/supply-side approaches—are unconvincing.
Individualization and Privatization
Authors: Rüpke Jörg
Published: June 2017

This chapter discusses the concepts of individualization and privatization as heuristic rather than explanatory tools for an analysis of contemporary and past religion. It takes Thomas Luckmann’s concept of invisible religion as its point of departure and locates ‘privatization’ within the history of sociological theories in the 1960s. ‘Individualization’ is analyzed as a part of sociological rather than historical theorizing about overarching social processes that were thought to be a defining part of ‘modernity.’ A critique of such views as part of auto-stereotypes of Western concepts of modernity and superiority leads to the suggestion to take up the potential of ‘individualization’ for comparative and historical analyses also for premodern and non-Western societies. It is suggested to distinguish different, and even contradictory, types of individuality. Finally, the problem of the paradoxical coupling of processes of individualization and de-individualization is discussed.
Objectification and Commodification
Authors: Carrette Jeremy
Published: June 2017

Objectification and commodification are challenging and disturbing processes. The chapter explores how these processes are transforming ‘religious’ ideas, persons, and practices into ‘things’ across a wide variety of Asian and Western traditions and contexts. Objectification and commodification reflect distinct cognitive and social processes that arise from desire, control, and power. The chapter argues that commoditization and commodification should be seen as two different processes, the former dealing with the legitimate process of objects becoming economic entities and the latter referring to the process of making non-objects, such as persons, into objects. Objects and commodities can be part of the material culture of religion, but there is a complex ethical concern when these processes extend to profit motivations or are applied to non-objects. Objectification and commodification are embedded deep within the psychological, social and political worlds.
Syncretism and Hybridization
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: June 2017

There exists a wide range of terms of religious mixture, featuring syncretism and hybridization most prominently, but also creolization, transculturation, and métissage. These competing terms of mixture possess different genealogies and impinge on ‘religion’ differently, such that they should not be simply interchanged or arbitrarily applied. Second, terms of religious mixture have been unevenly used. Brazil and Japan, for example, have often been studied as examples of syncretism while other sites have been elevated as examples of purity. In this sense theories of mixture are entwined with, and help to constitute, certain religious geographies, or ‘worlds.’ Despite repeated calls for the removal of ‘syncretism’ and other terms of mixture from the scholarly lexicon, they remain as widely used as ever, even enjoying a renaissance in fields like science and technology studies. The revivals of terms of mixture in adjacent fields offer potential new uses for the study of religion.
Segregation Dynamics
Authors: Mare Robert , Bruch Elizabeth
Published: June 2017

This article explores the dynamics of segregation, with particular emphasis on the relationship between identity-based individual choices and the constraints on those choices due to others’ identity-based choices. It begins with an overview of segregation and the key elements of segregation processes: the actors, dimensions of clustering, and universe in which clustering occurs. It then reviews measures, data, and models for investigating the dynamic interdependence of individual action and neighborhood characteristics, including queieing and matching. It also considers residential segregation and the problem of scale regarding the mechanisms that link individual action and aggregate segregation. Finally, it examines how multiple segregating processes may amplify or attenuate one another, such as residential segregation by race and income and overlapping social locations.