Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit
CARV invites papers that critically examine any aspect of the nexus between religion and violence. In particular, our unit encourages work that explores how religion and violence mediate this year’s presidential theme of freedom.
Potential areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:
- How religion shapes shifting boundaries between the categories of “terrorist” and “freedom fighter” across the globe.
- How media, political, and social elites weaponize religious narratives, themes, and cultural capital to invite and/or justify violence against free democratic institutions (e.g., the Capitol), texts (e.g., the Constitution), processes (e.g., voting, presidential debates), data reception (e.g., acceptance of election results), and representatives of democracy (e.g., state attorney generals, volunteer election workers, etc.).
- How religion shapes popular ideas about the legitimacy of violent acts that occur during, or co-occur during or shortly after, protests executed in the name of freedom.
- For example, conservative commentators frequently celebrate the perpetrators of the January 6th insurrection as “patriots” and “political prisoners” who were engaged in viable forms of “protest,” while they frame progressive activists as divisive “social justice warriors” and “rioters” (even if, as is true in most cases, progressive activists commit no violence).
Since the end of the Cold War, acts of religiously motivated violence have all too often become part of our quotidian existence. Scholars from various disciplines have attempted to account for these incidents, noting such issues as a resurgence of anti-colonialism, poverty and economic injustice, the failures of secular nationalism, uprooted-ness, and the loss of a homeland, and the pervasive features of globalization in its economic, political, social, and cultural forms. What are the religious narratives that help animate these violent actors? This Unit contends that the theories, methodologies, and frameworks for studying the expanding field of religion and violence remain under-explored and require interdisciplinary work and collaboration to provide greater insights into the complex issues involved. The sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, economics, and political science of religion all have provided great insights into the nature of religion and violence over the last few decades and all are arguably interdisciplinary by nature. This Unit provides a venue devoted specifically to interdisciplinary discussions of the subject. We hope to channel and enhance contributions from the historically delineated (albeit constructed) humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. In that vein, we hope to hear papers presenting cross-disciplinary dialogue and research on the topic of religion and violence.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chase L. Way, Other | chase.laurelle.way@gmail… | - | View |
| W Miller | fmiller@ucdavis.edu | - | View |