[ecrea] CFP 'Media and Religion' in Bern/Switzerland

Call for Participation

Media and Religion: Interdisciplinary Takes on Four Aspects of a Complex Relationship

14. September 2012, University of Bern/Switzerland, Haus der Universität (“House of the University”)



This one-day workshop wants to bring together young social scientists and media scholars in the effort to locate, through the discussion of four selected key aspects – (In-)Visibility, Practise, Secularism and Democracy –, underexplored areas and non-reflected premises in researching the relationship between media and religion.

‘Media’ and ‘Religion’ represented for many decades each other’s ‘blind spot’. The research of religion took place largely outside the sphere of the media, if not in conscious or subconscious demarcation to them, at least as far as institutionalised, commercial or state organised communication media were concerned. Media epitomised a modernity which was considered implicitly, i.e. largely without much theorising, as incompatible with religion, if not as adverse to it.

Particularly in the context of the electronic mass media’s often declared ‘revolution’ since the 1980s, meanwhile, a steadily growing group of anthropologists, sociologists and religious scholars (here grouped as social scientists) has turned to emerging different forms, practises and frameworks of the religious and increasingly understands and analyses them as being medially constructed, produced and disseminated. Media sciences, however, (incl. mass communication research and media studies) rather appear to be confirming the former presumption of the social sciences that the media inherently represent a sphere of secular political modernity. There are considerably less media scholars, even though working increasingly empirically and despite the early, path-breaking thrust by Stewart M. Hoover, who deal with religion and religionising. Put differently: social sciences meanwhile often take the significance of the media for religious practise for granted whilst media scholars
 recognise religion at the most as something marginal.

The planned workshop wants to approach the obvious question “Why is that?” by means of an intensive interdisciplinary discussion of the relationship between media and religion itself and explore whether the ‘blind spot’ has possibly only shifted in terms of different disciplines blanking or simply assuming particular aspects in their approaches whose reflection – and this is the hypothesis of the workshop – could lead to a further understanding of the context.

The four aspects we want to concentrate on have repeatedly shown to be key points in related literature and debate: (In-)Visibility, Practise, Secularism and Democracy. These aspects will be discussed in four successive sessions, which should not be dominated by individual presentations but – on the basis of four concise input-talks - by the discussion of our work and questions.

To this avail, we invite interested participants from the fields of social sciences and media studies to send us a very brief summary (up to 250 words) of their current (or also previous or planned) research that is explicitly or implicitly concerned with the relationship between media and religion and one question/hypothesis or a set of questions that they are working on or quarelling with and that they want to discuss. The question(s) can relate to one or more of the four chosen aspects.



Please send your summaries/questions/hypotheses by 15 August 2012 to Britta Ohm ((britta.ohm /at/ anthro.unibe.ch)) and contact her for further information.



Input-speakers:

(In-)Visibility: Recommended scholar from the École des hautes études et sciences sociales (EHESS; team Prof. Nilüfer Göle – pending)  or

Marietta Kesting, PhD Program "Gender as a Category of Knowledge", Research Group “Visual Culture”, Humboldt University Berlin (pending)

Practise: Dr. Lotte Hoek, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh (confirmed)

Secularism:  Dr. Nanna Heidenreich, Institute for Media Research, Academy of Fine Arts, Braunschweig (confirmed)   supported by                                                                                                                                      Antje Glück (PhD candidate), Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld (confirmed)

Democracy: Dr. Shakuntala Banaji, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics (confirmed)


_________________________

Dr. Britta Ohm

Institute of Social Anthropology
University of Bern
Laenggassstr. 49a
3012 Bern
Switzerland
+41-(0)31-631 8995 (main office)
+41-(0)31-631 5373 (direct line)
(britta.ohm /at/ anthro.unibe.ch)


Solmsstr. 36
10961 Berlin
Germany
+49-(0)30-69507155
(ohm /at/ zedat.fu-berlin.de)



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