“The greatest strengths of [<i>Secualarisms</i>] are its thoughtful, incisive theoretical grounding and its inclusion of multiple minority reports which taken together challenge conventional secularism theorizing as it has developed.” - <b>Jonathan Seitz</b>, <i>Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory</i> “Do you think you already know what <i>secularism</i> means? One virtue of this book is that the authors examine several modes and dimensions of secularism in different places, always closely attentive to the specific religious practices with which it is imbricated. Another is that the essays, taken together, loosen up the political imagination, allowing us to think outside the two-slot system-‘either secularism or theocracy’-which has such debilitating effects on political thought. An admirable collection of essays.”-<b>William E. Connolly</b>, author of <i>Capitalism and Christianity, American Style</i> “The greatest strengths of <i>Secualarisms</i> are its thoughtful, incisive theoretical grounding and its inclusion of multiple minority reports which taken together challenge conventional secularism theorizing as it has developed.” - Jonathan Seitz (Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory)

At a time when secularism is put forward as the answer to religious fundamentalism and violence, Secularisms offers a powerful, multivoiced critique of the narrative equating secularism with modernity, reason, freedom, peace, and progress. Bringing together essays by scholars based in religious studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, science studies, anthropology, and political science, this volume challenges the binary conception of “conservative” religion versus “progressive” secularism.

With essays addressing secularism in India, Iran, Turkey, Great Britain, China, and the United States, this collection crucially complicates the dominant narrative by showing that secularism is multifaceted. How secularism is lived and experienced varies with its national, regional, and religious context. The essays explore local secularisms in relation to religious traditions ranging from Islam to Judaism, Hinduism to Christianity. Several contributors explicitly take up the way feminism has been implicated in the dominant secularization story. Ultimately, by dislodging secularism’s connection to the single (and singular) progress narrative, this volume seeks to open spaces for other possible narratives about both secularism and religion-as well as for other possible ways of inhabiting the contemporary world.

Contributors: Robert J. Baird, Andrew Davison, Tracy Fessenden, Janet R. Jakobsen, Laura Levitt,
Molly McGarry, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Taha Parla, Geeta Patel, Ann Pellegrini, Tyler Roberts,
Ranu Samantrai, Banu Subramaniam, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Angela Zito

Les mer
A collection that challenges the binary conception of conservative religion versus progressive secularism by highlighting the existence of multiple secularisms.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Times Like These / Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini 1
Part 1. Secular Interventions
1. (Un)Veiling Feminism / Afsaneh Najmabadi 39
2. Secularism and Laicism in Turkey / Taha Parla and Andrew Davison 58
3. Women Between Community and State: Some Implications of the Uniform Civil Code Debates / Rajeswari Sunder Rajan 76
4. Other Moderns, Other Jews: Revisiting Jewish Secularism in America / Laura Levitt 107
5. Disappearances: Race, Religion, and the Progress Narrative of U.S. Feminism / Tracy Fessenden 139
6. Late Secularism / Robert J. Baird 162
7. What Tangled Webs We Weave: Science, Secularism, and Religion in Contemporary India / Banu Subramaniam 178
Part 2. Secular Relations: Micronarratives
8. Secularizing the Pain of Footbinding in China: Missionary and Medical Stagings of the Universal Body / Angela Zito 205
9. Ghostly Appearances / Geeta Patel 226
10. "The Quick, the Dead, and the Yet Unborn": Untimely Sexualities and Secular Hauntings / Molly McGarry 247
Part 3. Public Alternatives
11. Toward Secular Diaspora: Relocating Religion and Politics / Tyler Roberts 283
12. Feminisms and Secularisms / Kathleen Sands 308
13. Continuity or Rupture? An Argument for Secular Britain / Ranu Samantrai 330
Bibliography 353
Contributors 387
Index 391
Les mer
Shows how secularism is not always a progressive force, and does not always manifest itself as it does in the west

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822341499
Publisert
2008-03-11
Utgiver
Duke University Press; Duke University Press
Vekt
572 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
277

Om bidragsyterne

Janet R. Jakobsen is Director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College. She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics and a coeditor of Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence.

Ann Pellegrini is Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Religious Studies at New York University. She is the author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race and a coeditor of Queer Theory and the Jewish Question. Jakobsen and Pellegrini are coauthors of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance.