Full Description
This book is about new forms of religiosity and religious activity emerging in the context of their dialectic relations with contemporary multicultural realities. World religions are effectively a major agent of the multiculturalization of contemporary societies. However, multiculturalism pushes them not only toward change and reforms, but also toward new conflicts between and within them. This process should remind us of the Jewish legend of the Golem - an animated being created by man which finally challenges the latter's control over it - a dialectic relation, indeed. World religions today greatly contribute to a world (dis)order that is multicultural both when viewed as a whole, and from within most societies that compose it. It is a development that contrasts both with the assumption that globalization implies one-way homogenization and convergence to Western modernity, and the expectation that globalization would be bound to polarize homogeneous civilizations.
Contents
Preface
List of Contributors
Tables and Figure
Introduction: A Dialectic Relation, Eliezer Ben-Rafael
PART ONE: NEW PERSPECTIVES
1. The New Religious Constellations in the Frameworks of Contemporary Globalization and Civilizational Transformation, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
2. Chapter Two Religious America, Secular Europe: Framing the Debate, Grace Davie
3. Globalization, Nationalism and Religion: A Multiple Modernities Perspective on Imperial and Peripheral Nations in Post-Communist Europe, Willfried Spohn
PART TWO: CHRISTIAN FAITHS
4. Dynamics of Ultramodern Religiosity and New Forms of Religious Spatiality, Danièle Hervieu-Léger
5. Pentecostalism: A Christian Revival Sweeping the Developing World, David Martin
6. Trans-national Pentecostalism and Secular Modernity, Bernice Martin
PART THREE: ISLAM
7. Transnational Islam in a Post-Westphalian World: Connectedness vs. Sovereignty?, Armando Salvatore
8. Autoritarian Persistence and Barriers to Democracy in the Muslim Middle East: Beyond Cultural Essentialism, Mehdi P. Amineh
9. From Medina to the Ummah: Muslim Globalization in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, Peter Mandaville
PART FOUR: ASIAN RELGIONS
10. Establishment of Buddhist Sacred Space in Contemporary India: The Ambedkarite Buddhism, Dalit Civil Religion and the Struggle Against Social Exclusion, Knut A. Jacobsenv
11. Hindu Traditions in Diaspora: Shifting Spaces and Places, Martin Baumann
12. Religions in India and China Today, Peter van der Veer
PART FIVE: JUDAISM
13. One People? Contemporary Jewish Identities, Eliezer Ben-Rafael
14. Judaism and Global Religious Trends: Some Contemporary Developments, Shlomo Fischer
PART SIX: THE COMPARATIVE DIMENSION
15. Religion, Territory and Multiculturalism, Yitzhak Sternberg
Bibliography
Index
