This open access book explores the role of religion in England's overseas companies and the formation of English governmental identity abroad in the seventeenth century. Drawing on research into the Virginia, East India, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New England and Levant Companies, it offers a comparative global assessment of the inextricable links between the formation of English overseas gov…
This open access book argues that contrary to dominant approaches that view nationalism as unaffected by globalization or globalization undermining the nation-state, the contemporary world is actually marked by globalization of the nation form. Based on fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East and drawing, among others, on Peter van der Veer’s comparative work on religion and nat…
In this open-access monograph, Paul Weller explores how the movement known as Hizmet (meaning “service”) is undergoing a period of transitions in Europe. Inspired by the teaching and practice of the Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gülen, Hizmet has been active in Europe (and other continents) for several decades. It has always been subject to some degree of contestation, which has inten…
Why are historically Catholic countries and regions generally more corrupt and less competitive than historically Protestant ones? How has institutionalization of religion influenced the prosperity of countries in Europe and the Americas? This open access book addresses these critical questions by elucidating the hegemonic and emancipatory religious factors leading to these dissimilarities b…
"This book is a collection of essays on Bob Dylan and religion. The eight scientific essays present new perspectives on the subject, aiming to elucidate the role played by religion in Bob Dylan’s artistic output and in the reception history of some of his songs. Few would dispute the fact that religion or religious traditions and the use of religious imagery have always played an important ro…
This book is a translation of a text based on my doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology in 2010 under the title Kindai Nihon no shūkyō gensetsu to sono keifu: Shūkyō, kokka, shintō (The Genealogy of Religious Discourse in Modern Japan: Religion, State, Shintō); some revi-sions have been added.…
The chapter proceeds from the sense of mutual dependence that existed between rudimentary warrior-elites and specialized supp-liers of prestige in archaic Greek and Indo-Iranian societies. While this tension was fraught with the danger of bankruptcy and disloy-alty, it also fostered new modes of antinomian religiosity. The Greek and Vedic comparanda revolve around the notion of sacrif…
How are digital humanists drawing on libraries and archives to advance research in the field of religious studies and theology? How can librarians and archivists make their collections accessible in return? This volume showcases the perspectives of faculty, librarians, archivists, and allied cultural heritage professionals who are drawing on primary and secondary sources in innovative ways to c…
The introduction to this volume describes the contribution that it makes to scholarship on ancient divinatory practices. It analyses previous and current research, arguing that while this predominantly functionalist work reveals important socio-political dimensions of divination, it also runs the risk of obscuring from view the very people, ideologies, and experiences that scholars seek to unde…
This "Open Access" book investigates the legal reality of the church through a sociological lens and from the perspective of canon law studies, the discipline which researches the law and the legal structure of the Catholic Church. It introduces readers from various backgrounds to the sociology of canon law, which is both a legal and a theological field of study, and is the first step towards i…
Vietnam as if… follows five young people who have moved from the countryside to the city. Their dramatic everyday lives illuminate some of the most pressing issues in Vietnam today: ‘The Sticky Rice Seller’ explores gender roles; ‘The Ball Boy’ is all about the struggles of sexual and ethnic minorities; ‘The Professional’ examines relations between rich and poor; ‘The Goalkeeper…
This book covers the missionary activity in Australia conducted by non-English speaking missionaries from Catholic and Protestant mission societies from its beginnings to the end of the mission era. It looks through the eyes of the missionaries and their helpers, as well as incorporating Indigenous perspectives and offering a balanced assessment of missionary endeavour in Australia, attuned to …
Why is social media in southeast Italy so predictable when it is used by such a range of different people? This book describes the impact of social media on the population of a town in the southern region of Puglia, Italy. Razvan Nicolescu spent 15 months living among the town’s residents, exploring what it means to be an individual on social media. Why do people from this region conform on p…
"Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor in many of the violent conflicts in the present day. Reflecting on Islam in Indonesia, the wo…
This open access volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing research on hope theory by combining insights from both its long history and its increasing multi-disciplinarity. In the first part, it recognizes the importance of the centuries-old reflection on hope by offering historical perspectives and tracing it back to ancient Greek philosophy. At the same time, it provides novel per…
This open access book introduces research on migration and religion with the focus on migration to western European countries from the 1950s and onwards. The book is an in-depth presentation of the main research trends as to methods, theories and empirical zones on migration and religion. In a unique way, the book brings together research about the topic aligning it with the experiences and urg…
The contributions to the present volume show that the countries that are often presented in the literature as forming part of a stereotypical and seemingly monolithic “Islamic world” in fact represent considerable diversity. From Iran to Senegal, we encounter a vast array of social and religious structures, historical trajectories, political regimes and relative positions of societies and i…