Religious Indifference
Description
This book provides a conceptually and empirically rich introduction to religious indifference on the basis of original anthropological, historical and sociological research.
Religious indifference is a central category for understanding contemporary societies, and a controversial one. For some scholars, a growing religious indifference indicates a dramatic decline in religiosity and epitomizes the endpoint of secularization processes. Others view it as an indicator of moral apathy and philosophical nihilism, whilst yet others see it as paving the way for new forms of political tolerance and solidarity.
This volume describes and analyses the symbolic power of religious indifference and the conceptual contestations surrounding it. Detailed case studies cover anthropological and qualitative data from the UK, Germany, Estonia, the USA, Canada, and India analyse large quantitative data sets, and provide philosophical-literary inquiries into the phenomenon. They highlight how, for different actors and agendas, religious indifference can constitute an objective or a challenge. Pursuing a relational approach to non-religion, the book conceptualizes religious indifference in its interrelatedness with religion as well as more avowed forms of non-religion.
Reviews / Votes
"Examines the complex and contextualised realities of individuals who are indifferent to religion and the various approaches used to study this population. . This volume will attract a multidisciplinary academic audience. Any scholar or researcher of religion and secularity should find this book of value. Additionally, this book is essential to anyone who is engaged in the scholarly discussion of contemporary secularisation. . this volume makes an important contribution to the growing body of literature on secularity and nonreligion." (Isabella Kasselstrand, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 33 (1), January, 2018)"This book provides rigorous, path-breaking analyses of secularity, non-religion, secularization, irreligion, and most importantly, social identities, positions, and postures that are neither anti-religious nor pro-religious, but hovering in a realm characterized by detachment, disengagement, irrelevance, inconsequence, unimportance, and insignificance. . Religious Indifference is a path-breaking contribution to the study of secularism and nonreligion, no doubt." (Phil Zuckerman, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, September, 2017)
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Persons
Johannes Quack is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Zurich. His (ethnographic) research interests include popular Hinduism, secularism and nonreligion, therapeutic pluralism, and knowledge (trans)formations in general. He is the author of Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India (OUP, 2012) and co-edits the book series Religion and Its Others: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion, and Secularity (De Gruyter).
Cora Schuh was a research associate in the Emmy Noether Project "The Diversity of Nonreligion", headed by Johannes Quack. She graduated from Cultural Studies at the University of Leipzig, where she was also part of the project "Multiple Secularities", headed by Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. She is currently working on her PhD thesis on "Nonreligion, Secularity and Politics: Social Liberalism in the Netherlands" (working title).
Content
Chapter 1. Conceptualizing Religious Indifferences in Relation to Religion and Nonreligion (Johannes Quack).- Chapter 2. Genealogies of Indifference? New theoretical thoughts on the history and creation of narratives surrounding Christianity, Secularism and Indifference (David Nash).- Chapter 3. A Discursive Approach to 'Religious Indifference': Critical Reflections from Edinburgh's Southside (Christopher Cotter).- Chapter 4. Interfaith Dialogue and the Challenge of Indifference: Reflections from Fieldwork in the City of Peace and Reconciliation (Rebecca Catto).- Chapter 5. Collective Memory and Religious Indifference in Immigration Societies: Secular Resurrections of Catholicism in Quebec (Marian Burchardt).- Chapter 6. Religion, Difference and Indifference (Lois Lee).- Chapter 7. Religion, interrupted? Observations on religious indifference in Estonia (Atko Remmel).- Chapter 8. Measuring religious indifference in international sociological quantitative surveys (EVS and ISSP) (Pierre Bréchon).- Chapter 9. Religious indifference and religious rites of passage (Pascal Siegers).- Chapter 10. Bio- and ethnographic approaches to indifference, detachment, and disengagement in the study of religion (in India and Germany) (Johannes Quack).- Chapter 11. Varieties of Nonreligion: Why some people criticize religion, while others just don't care (Petra Klug).- Chapter 12. The Limits of Religious Indifference (Joseph Blankholm). Chapter 13.- Embedded Indifference and Ways to Research it (Cora Schuh).