Aktuelles aus Theologie und Religionsforschung

CIRRuS was represented by Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer and some members of his research team: Leif Seibert, Jens Köhrsen and Adrián Tovar.
Seibert presented a paper on "Religious supremacy and jurisdiction in pluralistic societies: Bourdieu's model of the religious field revised according to the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina", introducing into a new model of the religious field he developed in discussion with our team.
Köhrsen distributed a paper on "How disparities of power shape religious practice: the impact of social stratification on the practice of religion in Argentinean Pentecostalism". The paper is based on findings of his field research in Buenos Aires and forwards a centric theme of a sociology of religion based in Bourdieu's general theory. Tovar's paper on "Transnational religion and the field of identity politics" was accepted for presentation, but for financial reasons he was not able to come to Gothenburg from Mexico where he presently is realizing field studies.

Schäfer presented two papers:
"Social power and religion - creative potentials of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology" anchored in the central question of the congress: to combine structure, actor and imagination in theoretical approaches to presently relevant sociological problems. He developed the structure/actor problem as one of identities and strategies and the so called ?turns? (interpretative, iconic, postcolonial etc.) as challenges to the sociology in terms of capturing social imagination. Then he developed the basic strands of the specific adaptation of Bourdieu's sociology to religion as a theoretical frame capable to link structures, action and imagination.
"Uncertainty management by risk specific religious habitus construction" applied core elements of risk oriented habitus analysis to low intensity conflict scenarios, showing that the religious coping with such conflicts depends very much on class specific capacitie opportunities and constraints.

Some of the papers will appear on the website of the congress. But most of the theoretical and methodological program will be published in the following book: Schäfer et al.: Habitus-Analysis. Identities and Strategies, Fields and Social Space According to Pierre Bourdieu ? Models for Research on Religion and Culture. Approx. 2011 (ISBN: 978-3-531-17511-9 )