Offers a new framework for understanding how religion and nationalism interact across diverse countries and religious traditions.

This book tackles the assumptions behind common understandings of religious nationalism, exploring the complex connections between religion, nationalism, conflict, and conflict transformation. Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook challenges dominant scholarly works on religious nationalism by identifying the preconceptions that skew analysis of the phenomenon dubbed "religious nationalism." The book utilizes a multidisciplinary approach that draws insight from theories of nationalism, religious studies, peace research, and political theory, and reframes the questions of religious nationalism within the perspectives of secularism, modernity, and Orientalism. In doing so, the author enables readers to uncover their own presumptions regarding the role of religion in public life. Unlike other works on this subject, the work outlines connections between the analysis of the role of religion in conflict to thoughts regarding how religion may relate to processes of peacebuilding and conflict transformation, and further connects the discussion of religious nationalism to broader conversations on the so-called resurgence of religion. The book will serve advanced high school and college students studying religion, international relations, and related subjects while also appealing to a wide audience of readers with an interest in questions of religion and politics.

This book provides a distinctive account of Edward Said's critique of modern culture by highlighting the religion-secularism distinction on which it is predicated. It refers to religious and secular traditions and to tropes that extend the meaning and reference of religion and secularism in indeterminate ways. It covers Said's heterogeneous corpus--from Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, his first book, to Orientalism, his most influential book, to his recent writings on the Palestinian question. The religion-secularism distinction lies behind Said's cultural criticism, and his notion of intellectual responsibility.

This book re-examines the relationship between religion and nationalism in a contemporary Asian context, with a focus on East, South and South East Asia. Addressing empirical, analytical, and normative questions, it analyses selected case studies from across Asia, including China, India, Iraq, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka and compares the differences and commonalities between the diverse configurations of nationalism and religion across the continent. It then goes on to explain reasons for the regional religious resurgence and asks, is the nation-state model, aligned with secularism, suitable for the region? Exploring the two interrelated issues of legacies and possibilities, this book also examines the relationship between nationalism and modernity, identifying possible and desirable trajectories which go beyond existing configurations of nationalism and religion. Bringing together a stellar line up of contributors in the field, Religion and Nationalism in Asia will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Asian religion and politics as well as sociology, ethnicity, nationalism and comparative politics.

For the majority of cultures around the world, religion permeates and informs everyday rituals of survival and hope. But religion also has served as the foundation for national differences, racial conflicts, class exploitation, and gender discrimination. Indeed, religious spirituality, having been transformed by contemporary economic and political events, remains both empowering and controversial. Religions/Globalizations examines the extent to which globalization and religion are inseparable terms, bound up with each other in a number of critical and mutually revealing ways. As the contributors to this work suggest, a crucial component of globalization—the breakdown of familiar boundaries and power balances—may open a space in which religion can be deployed to help refabricate new communities. Examples of such deployments can be found in the workings of liberation theology in Latin America. In other cases, however, the operations of globalization have provided a space for strident religious nationalism and identity disputes to flourish. Is there in fact a dialectical tension between religion and globalization, a codependence and codeterminism? While religion can be seen as a globalizing force, it has also been transformed and even victimized by globalization. A provocative assessment of a contemporary phenomenon with both cultural and political dimensions, Religions/Globalizations will interest not only scholars in religious studies but also those studying Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Contributors. David Batstone, Berit Bretthauer, Enrique Dussel, Dwight N. Hopkins, Mark Juergensmeyer, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta, Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan, Kathryn Poethig, Lamin Sanneh, Linda E. Thomas

This timely and significant study explores the reasons behind the rise in Sikh militancy over the 1970s and 1980s. It also evaluates the violent response of the Indian State in fuelling and suppressing the Sikh separatist movement, resulting in a tragic sequence of events which has included the raiding of the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The book reveals the role in this movement of a section of young semi-literate Sikh peasantry who were disaffected by the Green Revolution and the commercialisation of agriculture in Punjab. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Deol examines the role of popular mass media in the revitalisation of religion during this period, and the subsequent emergence of sharper religious boundaries.

Examines the conditions in which religious nationalism develops and explores why several countries; including Ireland, England, Poland, and Greece stand in clear contrast to the broader trend of religious decline.

Examines the ways in which religion and nationalism have interacted to provide a powerful impetus for mobilization in Southeast Asia.

There has been a deliberative, but as yet unsuccessful, attempt by scholars and policy makers to articulate a more meaningful idea of Europe, which would enhance the legitimacy of the European Union and provide the basis for a European identity. Using a detailed analysis of the writings of Nietzsche, Elbe seeks to address this problem and argues that Nietzsche's thinking about Europe can significantly illuminate our understanding. He demonstrates how Nietzsche's critique of nationalism and the notion of the 'good European' can assist contemporary scholars in the quest for a vision of Europe and a definition of what it means to be a European citizen.

The Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism is the third volume of the acclaimed Religion & Society series. The Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism follows a broad definition of fundamentalism and covers fundamentalism across time and place, although the emphasis remains on its primary manifestation: Protestant fundamentalism in the United States. It draws upon the work of historians, sociologists, religious scholars, anthropologists, political scientists, and others.