Religion and Power: Observing Catholicisms from the Global South, julio 2010

2010 ISA World Congress of Sociology

Gothenburg, Sweden, 12-17 July 2010

Research Committee on Sociology of Religion – RC22

Call for Papers for Session 2: Religion and Power: Observing Catholicisms from the Global South

Organizer: Eloísa Martín, University of Brasilia, Brazil eloisamartin@hotmail.com

This session proposes to discuss power relationships within Catholicism (specially State-Church, but also catholics-Church) in the Global South (Latin America, South Africa, and South and Southeast Asia). The comprehension that Europe –and the USA ultimately – could offer universal paradigms to understand religion (and its relationship with Modernity), left durable effects. The very existence of something as an international globalized academy is largely based on the prevalence of a Europhilic model of knowledge organization and production, that has, as a consequence, the almost impossible contact between scholars and researchs from the Global South. It is more evident within studies on Catholicism, because of its European power centralization, tends to be mediated by and compared to European perspectives.

This session aims to link and compare empirical and theorical discussions focused on Catholicisms, connecting and constrasting different post-colonial contexts. The mechanical comparison between issues that present some kind of similarity may not be the most appropriate way to approach Global South contexts. However, the connection and confrontation of their idiosyncratic experiences may offer interesting solutions to rethinking them.

Please send your proposed paper for this session to the session chair by the 31st of October 2009. Please include with your proposal, a title, a 100-200 words abstract, your name (family name first), your affiliation and your e-mail address. Do not send the same paper to more than one session.

Any individual may participate on up two sessions. Once your presentation is approved by the session chair, you must then submit an abstract of your paper on-line (instructions will be made available in due course). Abstracts are only accepted by the system from those who are already registered for the Congress. The deadline for submission of approved abstracts is May 4, 2010.

More information: http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010/rc/rc22.htm