Full Description
Using welfare as a prism, Religion and Welfare in Europe explores regional conceptions and variations in welfare and religion across Europe.
Methodological approaches to research and practice draw thematic comparisons on these issues using case studies focused on gendered and minority perspectives as they relate to the varied provision of social welfare in selected European countries.
Contributors offer comparative insights on majority-minority relations concerning practices, patterns and mechanisms of social welfare provision, explaining how these lead to conflict, cohesion or - as is so often the case - the grey area in between.
The book will be of interest not only to religion and social policy researchers, but to welfare practitioners and policy advisors with a particular interest in the interaction between religion, social welfare, minorities and gender.
Contents
Introduction ‾ Anders Bäckström
Part one: Thinking methodologically: approaches to research and practice;
Between contextuality and comparability: a dilemma in qualitative comparative case studies ‾ Pål Repstad
Using case studies in religion, values and welfare research ‾ Olav Helge Angell and Lina Molokotos-Liederman
Social cohesion: from research to practice ‾ Olav Helge Angell, Marjukka Laiho, Anne Birgitta Pessi and Siniša Zrinščak
Part two: Thinking regionally: key case studies in welfare and religion in Europe
The WaVE project as a record of religious and social transformations in northern Europe ‾ Anders Bäckström
The intersections of state, family and Church in Italy and Greece ‾ Margarita Markoviti and Lina Molokotos-Liederman
Religion, welfare and gender: the post-communist experience ‾ Siniša Zrinščak
Part three: Gendered and minority perspectives
Understanding religious minority communities as civil society actors ‾ Annette Leis-Peters
Striving to live the good life: the tension between self-fulfilment and family obligations for women in northern England ‾ Martha Middlemiss Lé Mon
Religion as a resource or as a source of exclusion?: The case of Muslim women's shelters ‾ Pia Karlsson Minganti
The moral and gendered crisis of the Italian welfare system seen through the prism of migrant women's reproductive health ‾ Annalisa Frisina
Part four: Drawing the threads together
Welfare and values in Europe: insights drawn from a comparative cross-country analysis ‾ Effie Fokas
Afterword ‾ Grace Davie
