"Chapter 3 has been revised and expanded from a previously published article by Nicolas Howe, "Thou Shalt Not Misinterpret: Landscape as Legal Performance," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, April 15, 2008."
"What does it mean to see the American landscape in a secular way?" asks Nicolas Howe at the outset of this innovative, ambitious, and wide-ranging book. It's a surprising question because of what it implies: we usually aren't seeing American landscapes through a non-religious lens, but rather as inflected by complicated, little-examined concepts of the sacred. Fusing geography, legal scholarship, and religion in a potent analysis, Howe shows how seemingly routine questions about how to look at a sunrise or a plateau or how to assess what a mountain is both physically and ideologically, lead to complex arguments about the nature of religious experience and its implications for our lives as citizens. In American society-nominally secular but committed to permitting a diversity of religious beliefs and expressions-such questions become all the more fraught and can lead to difficult, often unsatisfying compromises regarding how to interpret and inhabit our public lands and spaces. A serious commitment to secularism, Howe shows, forces us to confront the profound challenges of true religious diversity in ways that often will have their ultimate expression in our built environment. This provocative exploration of some of the fundamental aspects of American life will help us see the land, law, and society anew.
This book proposes a comprehensive theory of the loss of religion in human societies, with a specific and substantive focus on the contemporary United States. Kevin McCaffree draws on a range of disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, and history to explore topics such as the origin of religion, the role of religion in recent American history, the loss of religion, and how Americans are dealing with this loss. The book is not only richly theoretical but also empirical. Hundreds of scientific studies are cited, and new statistical analyses enhance its core arguments. What emerges is an integrative and illuminating theory of secularization.
How to accommodate diverse religious practices and laws within a secular framework is one of the most pressing and controversial problems facing contemporary European public order. In this provocative contribution to the subject, Lorenzo Zucca argues that traditional models of secularism, focusing on the relationship of state and church, are out-dated and that only by embracing a new picture of what secularism means can Europe move forward in the public reconciliation of its religious diversity. The book develops a new model of secularism suitable for Europe as a whole. The new model of secularism is concerned with the way in which modern secular states deal with the presence of diversity in the society. This new conception of secularism is more suited to the European Union whose overall aim is to promote a stable, peaceful and unified economic and political space starting from a wide range of different national experiences and perspectives. The new conception of secularism is also more suited for the Council of Europe at large, and in particular the European Court of Human Rights which faces growing demands for the recognition of freedom of religion in European states. The new model does not defend secularism as an ideological position, but aims to present secularism as our common constitutional tradition as well as the basis for our common constitutional future.
Taking a multidisciplinary approach this addresses the academic and practical issues concerning the present and future of the built environment, arguing for its enlightened management in the future of our present-day environment.
Exploring sacred mountains around the world, this book examines whether bonding and reverence to a mountain is intrinsic to the mountain, constructed by people, or a mutual encounter. Chapters explore mountains in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, the Himalaya, Japan, Greece, USA, Asia and South America, and embrace the union of sky, landscape and people to examine the religious dynamics between human and non-human entities. This book takes as its starting point the fact that mountains physically mediate between land and sky and act as metaphors for bridges from one realm to another, recognising that mountains are relational and that landscapes form personal and group cosmologies. The book fuses ideas of space, place and material religion with cultural environmentalism and takes an interconnected approach to material religio-landscapes. In this way it fills the gap between lived religious traditions, personal reflection, phenomenology, historical context, environmental philosophy, myths and performativity. In defining material religion as active engagement with mountain-forming and humanshaping landscapes, the research and ideas presented here provide theories that are widely applicable to other forms of material religion.
This book examines the literary politics of Orhan Pamuk's novels within the framework of contestations over "Turkishness," Islam, and secularization. Moving beyond a traditional study of literature, this book turns to literature to ask larger questions about Turkish history, identity, collective memory, and cultural practice. It concludes with an interview with Orhan Pamuk.
Written by 19 scholars of history, archaeology, and ethnology, this book takes a multidisciplinary approach to European spaces of the past and the human agents within them. Prior to the Industrial Era, the geography of Europe posed problems but also offered possibilities for its people. Distances created obstacles to communication and state formation, but at the same time, inhabitants and officials in peripheral areas gained room to pursue more independent action, allowing unique customs to flourish. Focusing on northern Europe, this history answers how early modern Europeans - rulers, officials, aristocrats, scholars, priests, and commoners - perceived, utilized, and organized the space around them.
This book analyses the social, political and religious life of the Hyolmo people of Nepal. Highlighting patterns of change and adaptation, it addresses the Shamanic-Buddhist interface that exists in the animated landscape of the Himalayas. Opening with an analysis of the ethnic revival of Nepal, the book first considers the Himalayan religious landscape and its people. Specific attention is then given to Helambu, home of the Hyolmo people, within the framework of Tibetan Buddhism. The discussion then turns to the persisting shamanic tradition of the region and the ritual dynamics of Hyolmo culture. The book concludes by considering broader questions of Hyolmo identity in the Nepalese context, as well as reflecting on the interconnection of landscape, ritual and identity. Offering a unique insight into a fascinating Himalayan culture and its formation, this book will be of great interest to scholars of indigenous peoples and religion across religious studies, Buddhist studies, cultural anthropology and South Asian studies.
The accommodation of diverse religious practices and laws within a secular framework is one of the most pressing and controversial problems facing contemporary European public order. In this provocative contribution to the subject, Lorenzo Zucca develops a new picture of what secularism means and how Europe can reconcile its religious diversity.
