Forum on Religion: next seminars

Dear all,

Please join us next Thursday, 4 February, for the Forum on Religion Seminar on


'Live and Let Buy? Consumerism, Secularization and Liberalism'
-- Guy Ben-Porat, Department of Public Policy and Administration, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Israel serves in this paper as a case study for examining the relationship between secularism based on "practices of everyday life" and "ideological" or "principled" secularism associated with, on the one hand, church-state separation and, on the other hand, liberal values of tolerance and equality. Given the monopoly of Orthodoxy over Jewish religious life, entrenched anti-liberal and ethnocentric attitudes in society, and various discriminatory practices towards minorities, Israel has been described as a "non-liberal democracy". In the last two decades, religion seems to lose some of its hold over public life, often interpreted as a liberalization of state and society. The proliferation of non-kosher restaurants and food shops, an annual crowd-drawing gay parade and rapidly growing commercial activity on Saturdays are all evidence of the secularization of the Israeli public sphere. However, while these developments are hard to ignore, it remains questionable, first, how deep the secularization of Israeli society really is, and, second, whether Israel is indeed moving away from its non-liberal character towards a liberal democracy, more committed to liberal values of tolerance and equality.


'Spiritualized Work, Recession and Self?'

-- John Cullen, Department of Business & Law at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth

What form of management is suggested by the increased interest in organizational spirituality and what genre of manager does spiritual learning attempt to construct? The growth of ‘organizational spirituality’ and its implications for management learning and development are considered in the context of Burgoyne’s (2002) outline of fourteen different styles of learning approaches and the types of ‘Self’ they seek to construct. Various approaches for understanding the self are explored, and a model for organizing these approaches, and the ‘Selves’ they imply, are presented. The increased spiritualization of organizational life and management are discussed. Spiritual management learning approaches are reviewed with the aim of clarifying a new, spiritualized form (or genre) of managerial self, which the discourse of organizational spirituality appears to seek.


The seminar will take place from 5:30-7pm in the Cañada Blanch Room (J116), Cowdray House, Portugal Street, London WC2A 2AE (Find the ‘J’ building on this map: http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/findingYourWayAroundLSE.htm)


NEXT FORUM ON RELIGION SEMINARS:


4 March -- 'Intolerance and Persecution of Religious Deviance Within Islam: The Case of the Ahmadiyya Community in Indonesia'

-- John Sidel, Department of Government, LSE

The study of religion includes a rich literature on intolerance and persecution of religious deviance in Christianity, but very little in the context of Islam. This lacuna is especially striking and unfortunate, given the prevalent perceptions in the West of Islam as a faith which is particularly strict in its interpretation and application of religious doctrine. Against this backdrop, Professor Sidel's lecture is intended to subject patterns of religious intolerance and persecution within Islam to comparative analysis and theoretical illumination, situating the case of attacks on Ahmadiyya communities and 'deviant sects' (aliran sesat) in Indonesia since 2005 against a broader history of religious violence in the country and beyond.


6 May -- Seminar on Muslim identities:

Muslim identity in the British educational landscape (tentative title) -- Malik Ajani, Royal Holloway, University of London
Integration patterns and Bosnian Muslim identity in New England (tentative title) -- Kristen Lucken, Boston University

3 June -- Seminar on religion, immigration and the far right:

'Home-grown terror, anti-Muslimism and the politics of fear: the rise of the British National Party' -- Christopher Allen, University of Birmingham

'Religion, securitization and anti-immigration attitudes: the case of Greece' -- Georgios Karyotis and Stratos Patrikios, University of Strathclyde


Call for Papers


PRESENT your RESEARCH in the Forum on Religion Seminar Series:

The Forum on Religion hosts a seminar series for the work in progress on religion: submissions welcome from all disciplines and any geographical foci.

Send an email with your proposed presentation topic to religionforum@lse.ac.uk.

For more information, see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/religionForum/seminarSeries.htm

For more information on the Forum on Religion, visit www.lse.ac.uk/religionforum