CfC: Lived Religion and Participatory Democracy: Beyond Identity Politics (original) (raw)

The Amsterdam Centre for the Study of Lived Religion invites chapter-essay proposals for an edited volume Lived Religion and Participatory Democracy: Beyond Identity Politics. In the past decade or so, an observation that 'religion has returned into politics has become commonplace. The emphasis has normally been on the influence of religiously informed moralities, political ideas and parties, as well as religious identity politics, on contemporary politics around the world. There are, however, other angles from which the relation of religion and politics can be studied, and some of those angles have been underexplored. For example, very few careful studies have been done of either actual or potential ways in which lived religion contributes to, mixes with, or obstructs participatory democracy. This volume will bring together original essays which will explore – either theoretical or empirical or both – exactly this: the intersection between the above-mentioned research themes, the lived religion and participatory democracy. The focus on 'lived religion' means an ethnographic and hermeneutical framework for understanding the performative dimensions of religion as it functions in people's ordinary lives. The theme of participatory democracy, on the other hand, stands for political theories and arrangements which make a broad inclusion into the democratic process a top priority and include the commitment and/or policies that enable or even ensure broad participation, often not only in the political but also economic and social-communal decision-making. Areas of interest include, but are not strictly limited to, the following topics: • Different aspects of participatory democracy and the ways they intersect with the study of lived religion, that is: o Lived religion and direct democracy o Lived religion and economic democracy o Lived religion and environmental democracy o Lived religion and political activism • Lived religion form the perspectives of epistemology of democracy (e.g. Dewey, Foucault, Medina) and various political theories of participatory democracy (B. Kaufmann, T. Schiller, J. Fishkin)