Dru Gladney (University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA)
Istvan Kamaras (University of Veszprém, Hungary)
Ina Merdjanova (Veliko Târnovo University, Bulgaria)
Rober Weller (Boston University, USA)
Galina Yemelianova (University of Birmingham, UK)
Peter van der Veer (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Short biographies

Pál Nyíri is Senior Fellow at the Humanities Center, Central European University. His interest is in contemporary cultural construction in the process of physical movement of individuals and along ethnic interfaces, particularly in Chinese migration and in the Chinese diaspora. He is the author of New Chinese Migrants in Europe (Ashgate, 1999) and co-editor of Globalising Chinese Migration (Ashgate, 2002). He has recently been working on transnational Christian proselytism among migrants from China.

Galina Yemelianova is Research Fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. She is the author of Islam and Russia: A Historical Survey (Palrgave, 2002) and co-editor of Islam in post-Soviet Russia: Public and Private Faces (RoutledgeCurzon, 2002). Her research interests focus on the relationship of Islam to ethnicity, politics, identity, and transnationalism in Russia and Eurasia.

Peter van der Veer is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director, Research Centre Religion and Society, University of Amsterdam. His most recent book in English is Imperial Encounters: Religion, Nation, and Empire (Princeton University Press). On of the leading scholars of contemporary Islam and Hinduism, he has published on the sociology and politics of these religions across continents (from Indonesia to Suriname), disciplinary approaches (from postcolonial theory to aesthetics), and thematic focuses (from gender to transnationalism and violence).

While world events continuously remind us of the significance of the social context and politics of religion, relatively little serious attention is paid to the place of religion in globalisation and in the interplay between religion and the late nation-state. This course intends to call the attention of young researchers to the complex and often contradictory role of religion in shaping identities and advancing or resisting elite agendas in contemporary society. Upon completion of the course, participants are expected to be equipped with an interdisciplinary toolbox of social science research of religion and be able to apply the methods and concepts to their own research.

Advanced graduate students and beginning post-PhD researchers in anthropology, political science, international relations, religious studies/theology, sociology, and area studies.

The course is built around the following interconnected themes:

Despite the trends toward secularisation of states and transnational forms of organising religion, relations between states and religious establishments continue to be important in many places around the world. The forms of those relations, however, change. Elites of certain secular states appropriate and reify particular religions as parts of the cultural or moral essence of their nations. This has been the case, in different ways and at different times in recent history of Russia, Greece, Georgia, and Serbia with Orthodoxy, of India with Hinduism, of Armenia with the Armenian church, of Thailand and Burma with Buddhism, of many Arab states with Islam, and finally of China and Indonesia with a number of religions. On the other hand, elites and grassroots movements turning against the state appropriate religion in the same fashion, and sometimes in the same countries, to subvert the regime and question the legitimacy of the powerholders. This has been the case with Christians and syncretic groups in China and Vietnam, Muslims in Indonesia and the Middle East, Buddhists in Thailand, Korea, and Vietnam, and Christians in the US.

 

A particular variation on the above theme is when a state uses its purported cultural or moral affiliation with religion to create international ties with other states in which that religion is prominent. Thus Greece has used Orthodoxy, Malaysia and Egypt Islam, and China Buddhism to further their influence beyond their regions.

 

Ethnic nationalist movements and ethnic conflicts – such as in Bosnia, Chechnya, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan, or Xinjiang – are often believed to be tied to religious conflicts in a one-to-one fashion. Such views are often encouraged by elites on all sides. These assumptions need to be examined critically as the relationship between religion and ethnicity is always complex.

 

Cross-border religious networks of all denominations have always existed. Some, including seemingly global, non-ethnic denominations, retain an ethnic character and are part of transnational politics in that they enable migrants to maintain affective ties with their sending countries (Irish Catholicism, Senegalese Sufism, Hinduism, Chinese and Latin American Evangelicalism). Others, including seemingly ethnic and territorially tied religions, promote cosmopolitan identities with varying degrees of anti-secularism (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Krishna Consciousness, Satya Sai Baba, Tibetan Buddhism). Certain religious networks rely on mobilising of well-organised, well-wired global constituencies to impact their regions of birth that may still have a sacral significance (Tibetan Buddhism, Falungong). The transnational and cosmopolitan dimensions within religious networks often conflict.

 

With increasing migration, receiving countries face the growth not only of religions migrants bring but also of religions not strongly present in the receiving society that successfully proselytise among migrants. Policy issues for states are no longer simply related to incorporation and conflict management as a country’s religious landscape changes but also to the management of religious transnationalism.

 

Religious organisations hardly fit the Western concept of civil society, informed as it is by Enlightenment thinking. But in the recent history of both non-Western and Western societies, they have played important roles in grassroots democratisation movements (Catholics in the Philippines, Buddhists in Korea and Thailand, even unorganised "folk religion" in Taiwan). Should the notion of civil society be recast with greater attention to religion?

 

Goals/Expectations (Introduction by Nyíri)

Approaches to the study of religion and society (van der Veer, Weller)

Japan, India, Britain and the Netherlands (van der Veer)

Central Asia and the "Muslim world" (Gladney)

Russia and the Caucasus (Yemelianova)

Eastern Europe (Merdjanova)

Religious violence and the nation-state (van der Veer, Weller)

Ethnic and religious dimensions of coexistence and conflict in post-Communist society (Merdjanova)

Religion and ethnicity in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus (Yemelianova)

Discussion: The role of religion in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, ex-Yugoslavia (Gladney, van der Veer, Yemelianova, Merdjanova)

Hindus and Muslims (van der Veer)

Ethnic Islam versus transnational Islam in Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia: power, networks, and the media (Yemelianova)

Islam in the Balkans (Merdjanova)

6th Day – India

India: Religious nationalism and transnationalism (van der Veer)

Case studies: evangelicalism/Pentecostalism (van der Veer), Sufism (Yemelianova)

Discussion: Evangelical networks in Hungary (Kamarás, ministers from evangelical churches)

Public sphere, civil society, and religious movements (Weller, van der Veer, Kamarás, Yemelianova, Merdjanova)

Religious responses to socio-political change in Eastern Europe and the state’s response to religious change (Merdjanova, Kamarás)

Central European University does not discriminate on the basis of – including, but not limited to – race, color, national and ethnic origin, religion, gender or sexual orientation in administering its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.