Call for Papers:  Religion, Spirituality& Social Science: a reader Abstracts due: 31st October, 2006 (500words)

Basia Spalek(University of Birmingham) and Alia Imtoual (Flinders
University) are co-editing a book that seeks to explore ways of engaging with issues of religion and spirituality when carrying out social science research and when working with faith communities.  The book seeks to offer social science students, educators, researchers and practitioners a clearer understanding of the importance of religion and spirituality in contemporary western societies, which, despite dominant understandings of the impact of ŒEnlightenment¹, continue to be used as cultural resources.

A critical gaze will be placed upon the notion of Œsecularism¹, which remains a powerful, if largely invisible, framework of understanding. Although scholars working within the critical traditions of Marxism, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory and gender studies have analysed norms relating to capitalism, whiteness, patriarchy and heteronormativity, critical perspectives have largely overlooked secularism as a norm that works to impose borders on knowledge and understandings about the social world.  Whilst early sociologists like Durkheim, Marx, Weber and Simmel engaged with religion in the social sciences, religion has not retained its central place within social theory.  Religion, Spirituality & Social Science: a reader thereby seeks to highlight the ways in which secularism can marginalise and silence religion and spirituality in the social sciences, and seeks to find contemporary ways of engaging with these notions.

The aims of this edited collection include:
… To explore the current, theoretical underpinnings of Social Science disciplines, the linkages of these to the development of research approaches, and to look at the ways in which religion and spirituality have been marginalised by discourses of secularisation. … To present a collection of writers who engage with issues of religion and spirituality in the course of their research or informed practice and who accommodate this within the framework of existing social science research methodologies. 
… To explore possibilities for the development of new research methodologies which acknowledge and respect the importance of religion and spirituality. … To explore how religion and spirituality can influence the research methods and methodologies that researchers and practitioners take into the field. … To explore what it really means to include the voices of faith communities in a social science research framework.

We are seeking contributions from those researchers and practitioners who have engaged with issues relating to religion and/or spirituality in the course of their research or informed practice.  We have international and well-respected publishers who are interested in publishing this work.  If you are interested in submitting a 6,000 word article for this book, please send an abstract of approximately 500 words by October 31st 2006.

Please send queries or abstracts to:

Dr Basia Spalek, Senior Lecturer in Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Birmingham, England.  Email:  [log in to unmask]

Or:

Dr Alia Imtoual, Lecturer in the School of Education, Flinders University, Australia. Email: [log in to unmask]

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