SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion
Faith in the public realm
Controversies, policies and practices
"Faith in the public realm" takes an explicitly multi-faith perspective, exploring the controversies, policies and practices of 'public faith'. It questions perceptions of a fixed divide between religious and secular participants in public life and challenges prevailing concepts of a monolithic 'neutral' public realm.
Injustice and Prophecy in the Age of Mass Incarceration
The Politics of Sanity
Why do the UK and US disproportionately incarcerate the mentally ill? Via multiple re-framings of the question—theological, socioeconomic, and psychological— Andrew Skotnicki diagnoses a "persecution of the prophetic" at the heart of the contemporary penal system and society more broadly.
Interpreting Religion
Making Sense of Religious Lives
This collection brings together a diverse range of interpretivist perspectives to find fresh takes on the meanings of religion. Cutting across paradigms and traditions, experts from the UK, US, and India apply different approaches to engagement with beliefs and themes, including identity, ritual, and emotion.
Muslims and Humour
Essays on Comedy, Joking, and Mirth in Contemporary Islamic Contexts
In this thought-provoking collection, Muslim and non-Muslim academics take a multi-disciplinary approach to humour in Islam. They draw on examples of comedy practices and styles to scope sociological, cultural, theological and political themes, consider humour’s role in fundamentalism, and correct misconceptions about laughter in the religion.
Poverty and Prejudice
Religious Inequality and the Struggle for Sustainable Development
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book offers a comprehensive overview of how efforts to achieve SDGs can be enhanced by paying greater attention to freedom of religion and belief.
Re-imagining Religion and Belief
21st Century Policy and Practice
With growing diversity of religion and belief in every sector comes the potential for new dialogues across previously impermeable policy and disciplinary silos. This volume critically challenges policy makers to re-imagine religion and belief as an integral part of public life that contains resources, practices, forms of knowledge and experience.
Reimagining Faith and Abortion
A Global Perspective
Providing perspectives from the global North and South, faith leaders, scholars and activists demonstrate the complex connections between faith and abortion, how women and pregnant people are positioned in society and how morality is claimed and challenged.
Religion and Belief Literacy
Reconnecting a Chain of Learning
This book presents a crisis of religion and belief literacy to which education at every level is challenged to respond. It provides a clear pathway for engaging well with religion and belief diversity in public and shared settings.
Religion and Welfare in Europe
Gendered and Minority Perspectives
Compares regional conceptions and variations of welfare in relation to national religious traditions across key parts of Europe. Using comparative case studies, the book examines the transition from research to practical policy recommendations, highlighting the similarities and differences between selected European countries.
Religion, spirituality and the social sciences
Challenging marginalisation
This edited collection brings together an international panel of contributors to explore ways of engaging with issues of religion and spirituality when carrying out social science research.
A Science of Otherness?
Rereading the History of Western and US Criminological Thought
This book presents a critical history of criminological thought from the Enlightenment to the present day. Mehozay contends that Western criminological approaches are based upon ‘otherness’ which validate projects of control and exclusion, modernization and care, and even eugenics.