Researching Religion: mapping the politics of knowledge 22-23.1.2020 Rovaniemi
Katso tallenne paneelikeskustelusta Toksinen hengellisyys?
Katso tallenne seminaarista Researching religion: mapping the politics of knowledge
Lue Katsomukset.fi Kuinka lukemalla uskontoa voimme samalla lukea yhteiskuntaamme?
Seminaarin puhujat. Kuvat: Tapio Nykänen.
Paneeli kaupunginkirjastossa. Kuvat: Tapio Nykänen.
Full program:
Argumenta Seminar January 22, 2020, Rovaniemi
Researching religion: mapping the politics of knowledge
Religious phenomena are commonplace in contemporary societies. We can follow the news of various religions, religious movements and their members daily through the media. In addition to the media, religions and religious phenomena are inherently also of interest to various academic disciplines. Earlier, theology, church history, and comparative religion in particular have been the sources of knowledge related to the different religions and faith systems. Today, religions and religious phenomena are increasingly being studied in other disciplines, such as political science, international relations, sociology, literary studies and geography.
The knowledge produced by the research is multifaceted, distinctive and even contradictory. In some situations, the knowledge it provides is of particular significance to religious collectives or churches themselves; sometimes information is needed especially by non-members, former members of movements and society as a whole. Research perspectives can sometimes be sympathetic to religious groups, sometimes they can be critical, rejective or pejorative.
The seminar will discuss the nature and diversity of knowledge related to different religions and spiritualities, interdisciplinary approaches to the study of religions and the role of religious inquiry in society. In addition, the function, meaning and relevance of knowledge in different contexts are considered. In this way the seminar will explore what religious literacy means in the context of the academic research, i.e., how to be a religiously literate in research and societal knowledge production.
12.00–12.15 Professor Tuula Sakaranaho (University of Helsinki):
Opening remarks
12.15–13.00 Researcher Mariecke van der Berg (Utrecht University):
“Who do you say I am?” The production of religion in controversies over Elisabeth Ohlson’s Ecce Homo
13.00–13.45 Marie Curie Research Fellow Georgios Trantas (Aston University): Entopic Aesthetics within the Greek-Orthodox Migrant Heterotopias [huom. ei nähtävissä tallenteessa.]
13.45–14.00 Coffee break
14.00–14.45 Docent Markku Ruotsila (University of Helsinki):
Understanding Religion and Politics in the Age of Trump
14.45–15.30 Associate Professor Titus Hjelm (University of Helsinki):
Religion is What Passes for Religion: A Sociology of Knowledge Perspective on Religion in the Post-Lie Age
Comments: Dr. Nella van den Brandt (Utrecht University) & Dr. Mika Luoma-aho (University of Lapland)
Chair: Dr. Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo (University of Lapland)
Location: University of Lapland, Eelin Sali, ls19
FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2470573069848653/
Please find all abstracts at the end of the page!
Yleisötilaisuus: Paneelikeskustelu
Toksinen hengellisyys? Uskonto yhteiskunnassa ja politiikassa
Uskonnon rooli yhteiskunnassa ja politiikassa ei ole kadonnut maallistuneessa Suomessa, puhumattakaan muusta maailmasta. Uskontoon liittyvät ilmiöt ovat jokapäiväisiä, ja yleensä niihin liittyy jonkinlainen kielteinen ulottuvuus. Jotkut ilmiöt ovat kaikkien nähtävillä median välityksellä, kuten vaikkapa uskonnon nimissä tehdyt terroriteot. Toisenlaisista konflikteista kertovat suomalaisessa julkisuudessa käydyt keskustelut Suvivirrestä ja koulujen joulukirkoista. Jotkut uskontoon liittyvät ilmiöt ovat silmiemme edessä, mutta niitä ei välttämättä osata tulkita. Tällaisesta on esimerkkinä Yhdysvaltain presidentti Donald Trumpin kannatuksen eräs keskeinen tukipilari eli uskonnollinen oikeisto. Uskonnon vaikutukset yhteiskunnassa saattavat olla myös piiloisia, niin kuin esimerkiksi vanhoillislestadiolaisuuden vaikutukset politiikan ja talouden alueilla. Paneelissa keskustellaan uskonnon moninaisesta asemoitumisesta yhteiskuntaan: miten uskontoa pitää tulkita, miten sitä pitää ”lukea” yhteiskunnan ja politiikan alueilla. Millaista uskontolukutaitoa vaaditaan kansalaisilta uskontoon nivoutuvien ilmiöiden ymmärtämisen suhteen? Miten tutkijoiden pitäisi jäsentää ja tulkita uskontoa yhteiskunnassa ja politiikassa?
Panelistit: Dosentti Markku Ruotsila (Helsingin yliopisto)
Apulaisprofessori Titus Hjelm (Helsingin yliopisto)
Politiikantutkija Aini Linjakumpu (Lapin yliopisto)
Puheenjohtaja: Politiikantutkija Tapio Nykänen (Lapin yliopisto)
Paikka: Rovaniemen kaupunginkirjasto
Ajankohta: Keskiviikko 22.1.2020, klo 17.00–18.30
FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/609124369822381/
Panelistien esittely:
Markku Ruotsila on Pohjois-Amerikan kirkkohistorian dosentti Helsingin yliopiston teologisessa tiedekunnassa. Hän on yhdysvaltalaiseen aate-, kirkko- ja poliittiseen historiaan erikoistunut historioitsija, joka on julkaissut laajalti varsinkin angloamerikkalaisen antikommunismin, konservatismin ja fundamentalismin historiasta. Hän on tehnyt ymmärrettäväksi Donald Trumpin tietä presidentiksi teoksessaan ”Sydänmaiden kapina” (https://www.gaudeamus.fi/sydanmaidenkapina) ja kristillisen oikeiston merkitystä Yhdysvaltain politiikassa teoksessaan ”Yhdysvaltain kristillinen oikeisto” (http://ekirjasto.kirjastot.fi/ekirjat/yhdysvaltain-kristillinen-oikeisto).
Apulaisprofessori Titus Hjelm on toiminut laaja-alaisesti uskontojen tutkimuksen piirissä. Hänen väitöskirjansa käsitteli saatananpalvontaa, johon liittyvä julkinen kohu oli voimakkaimmillaan vuosituhannen vaihteen tienoilla (https://www.booky.fi/tuote/hjelm_titus/saatananpalvonta_media_ja_suomalainen_yhteiskunta_/9789515706195). Hän on tutkinut myös uskonnon näkyvyyttä eurooppalaisissa yhteiskunnissa, maallistumista sekä uskontojen sosiologisia ulottuvuuksia.
Politiikantutkija Aini Linjakumpu on erikoistunut uskonnollisten yhteisöjen tutkimiseen. Viimeisin kirja käsitteli vanhoillislestadiolaisuuden taloudellista toimintaa ja verkostoja (https://vastapaino.fi/sivu/tuote/vanhoillislestadiolaisuuden-taloudelliset-verkostot/2303826). Hän on tutkinut myös vanhoillislestadiolaisten hoitokokouksia sekä uskonnollisten liikeiden piirissä tapahtuvaa hengellistä väkivaltaa. Väitöskirja käsitteli poliittista islamia.
Politiikantutkija Tapio Nykänen on tutkinut muun muassa lestadiolaisuuden poliittisia ja yhteiskunnallisia merkityksiä ja ilmenemismuotoja. Hänen väitöskirjansa oli ” Kahden valtakunnan kansalaiset: vanhoillislestadiolaisuuden poliittinen teologia” (https://lauda.ulapland.fi/handle/10024/61772)
Abstracts
Researching religion: mapping the politics of knowledge
Postdoctoral Researcher Mariecke van den Berg (Utrecht University): “Who do you say I am?” The production of religion in controversies over Elisabeth Ohlson’s Ecce Homo
In 1998 and 1999, Sweden was confronted with the controversial art exhibition Ecce Homo. The exhibition, made by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin, consists of twelve photographs depicting Jesus Christ from a queer perspective, set in contemporary Sweden. It was especially controversial when shown in the Uppsala cathedral and again when it was on display in Parliament in Stockholm. In the controversy over Ecce Homo statements about Jesus were made by the artist, church officials, art critics, academics, and a host of ‘occasional theologians’ (e.g. journalists, regular believers, people interviewed in the street), producing different kinds of Jesuses. In my presentation I will discuss how both the exhibition itself as well as the responses in public debate bring together different, sometimes conflicting or competing, kinds of knowledges on religion in general and Swedish Lutheranism in particular.
BIO: Mariecke van den Berg studied Theology (BA) and Gender Studies (RMA) at Utrecht University. In 2014 she obtained a PhD in Public Administration at the University of Twente, where she wrote a dissertation on ethnicity and informal care. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the project “Contested Privates: The Oppositional Pairing of Religion and Homosexuality in Contemporary Public Discourse in the Netherlands” at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Theology. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University in the project ‘Beyond “Religion versus Emancipation”: Gender and Sexuality in Women’s Conversion to Judaism, Christianity and Islam in Contemporary Western Europe’. Both projects are funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Mariecke is assistant managing editor of the peer reviewed international journal Religion and Gender and a board member of the Dutch Society of Queer Theologians.
Marie Curie Research Fellow Georgios Trantas: Entopic Aesthetics within the Greek-Orthodox Migrant Heterotopias
The Greek-Orthodox migrant communities of Germany and Great Britain, the establishment of which dates back to the mid-twentieth century, gave rise to coterminous religioscapes. Their formation was co-shaped by their ancestral cultural particularities and memory – different between case studies – and the gradual endorsement and appropriation of spatial and cultural elements found in their host countries. Those amalgamations, together with the corresponding collective social experiences, constitute collective migration and integration narratives with reference to a sense of belonging. This is traceable in the corresponding places of worship as containers of symbolic constellations permeated by hybrid architecture, iconographical aesthetics, themes and tendencies.
BIO: Georgios E. Trantas is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. He has been a Predoctoral, Doctoral and Postodoctoral Fellow at the University of Erfurt and the research programme ‘DFG-
Graduiertenkolleg 1412, Cultural Orientations and Social Structures in South-Eastern Europe’. His main research interests comprise thematically the Politics of Religion and Cultural Diplomacy, Religioscapes, Migration, European Integration, self-perception, nationhood, citizenship and cultural-political identity, while geographically he focuses on Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Docent Markku Ruotsila (University of Helsinki): Understanding Religion and Politics in the Age of Trump
Almost four years into the Trump presidency, media bafflement remains unabated over the exceptional levels of support consistently given to Donald Trump by members of the evangelical Christian faith community. Theological, political science and economic narrations of the long history of the US Christian Right can explain all of this relatively easily, yet much of popular media refuses to listen. Here is a glaring case of religious illiteracy born of rampant secularist assumptions that steer inevitably astray in a world actually awash with faith.
BIO: Markku Ruotsila, PhD, is Docent (Adjunct Professor) of US Church History at the University of Helsinki, as well as Docent of US and British History at University of Tampere, and Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at LCC International University in Lithuania. Previously he has worked as a visiting fellow at Oxford, Stanford and New York University. The author of nine academic books, including Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism (Oxford University Press 2016), he is currently writing a book on the global history of Christian fundamentalism during the Cold War and on the origins of the contemporary global Christian Right.
Associate Professor Titus Hjelm (University of Helsinki): Religion is What Passes for Religion: A Sociology of Knowledge Perspective on Religion in the Post-Lie Age
Religion has become increasingly visible in the new millennium. It is seen either as controversial (‘radical’ religion) or as useful (faith-based organisations). Scholarship has responded to this image in two ways: Many have interpreted this as a sign of resurgent religion, enabling them to read the last rites for secularisation theory. Others have attempted to generate more and better knowledge about religion and religions—‘religious literacy’ being one such buzz concept—in order to foster social harmony. In this talk, I will first outline a sociology of knowledge perspective on religion. Following the ideas of Peter L. Berger especially, I argue that the remit of the study of religion should be whatever passes for religion in society. Second, I will discuss how in the current cultural climate it is insufficient to focus on lack of knowledge, but rather to focus on the cultural production of ignorance.
BIO: Titus Hjelm is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Helsinki. Finland. Until the end of 2018 he was Reader in Sociology at University College London, UK. His publications include Peter Berger and the Sociology of Religion: 50 Years after The Sacred Canopy (ed., Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) in addition to many journal articles. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Religion in Europe and the founding chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Sociology of Religion Group.
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