With apologies for cross-posting
Symposium: Religion, Normativity and the Spirit of Critical Geography
The Royal Geographical Society, London, Monday 5 September 2011
This one-day symposium, coordinated by the Geography of Religion, Spirituality and Faith Working Group of the RGS, seeks to hone and articulate an incipient debate currently taking shape around the intersection of 'critical' and 'radical' geography with the geographical study of religion. Key questions that the symposium will address include:
* To what extent does geographical engagement with religion entail taking up particular value positions, articulated or not, in relation to religious subject matter?;
* To what extent is there an implicit normative commitment carried over into the selection, as well as the treatment, of religious subject matter by human geographers/scholars of religion?
* Can religion be approached as a category of identity or demography without invoking the theological precepts and value orientations that religious commitment entails?
* Is there necessarily a contradiction, as some suggest, between a researcher’s ‘sympathetic’ treatment of religious subject matter and their assuming a position as a critical or radical geographer?
* To what degree do geographers and/or other scholars of religion also identifying themselves with a critical social science tradition confront the regressive as well as progressive potentialities of religious commitment, practice and revival?
* What might be the specific points of convergence and divergence in how critical geographers both sympathetic and unsympathetic to religious claims and world-views configure fact-value distinctions in their research, and in how they evaluate the normative claims of their respective research participants?
The symposium takes the form of a round table discussion comprising position-pieces presentations and responses from a variety of scholars both within and beyond the discipline of geography. Spaces are limited, but if you are interested in participating, please contact either Richard Gale ([log in to unmask]) or Justin Beaumont ([log in to unmask]), the Working Group co-Chairs. We are particularly keen to encourage the involvement of postgraduate researchers.
(The GRSFWG gratefully acknowledge the RGS, as well as Cardiff and Groningen Universities, who are supporting this event).
Richard Gale
School of City and Regional Planning
Cardiff University
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