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Talk on :
Interrogating the relationship between the religious and the secular: discourse, space and the 'sacred'
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17 September 2008 |
Location: |
Seminar Room B, Level 1, The Shaw Foundation Building, AS7,Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS
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Organized by Religion Research Cluster, FASS, NUS.
Speaker:
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Prof. Kim Knott, Leeds University
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About the Speaker: Kim Knott is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. Her recent research has focused on the development of a spatial methodology for locating religion, for examining its engagement with other social and cultural institutions, activities and issues, and for breaking open the 'secular'. In The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Equinox 2005), she considered the application of socio-spatial theory in the study of religious, secular and post-secular relations, and applied her methodology to the first of several case studies, the left hand. Other studies include an examination of the location of religion and secular values in a medical centre, in urban landscapes, in the disciplinary relationship between theology and religious studies, and in the British media. With Thomas A. Tweed, she is currently working on a sourcebook for the geography of religion. From 2005-2010 Professor Knott is also Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council programme on 'Diasporas, Migration and Identities', and is co-editing (with Sean McLoughlin) a forthcoming volume on Diasporas: Concepts, Identities, Intersections. She is General Secretary of the European Association for the Study of Religion..
Abstract:
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Various historical, political, ideological and theological relationships have been posited between the 'religious' and the 'secular' (and the 'post-secular), and between 'religion' and 'secularism' (e.g. Webster 1990; Jantzen 1998; Taylor 1998, 2007; Asad 2003; Fitzgerald 2007; Casanova 2006). I will illustrate their relationship dialectically, in terms of a field of knowledge-power relations. The main aim of my contribution will be to offer spatial and conceptual tools for examining their contemporary relationship, particularly in the context of public discourse and major media controversies. Although my own work has been on recent British examples, the tools I shall offer have the potential to be relevant in other locations and periods. I hope that other people will contribute local and regional cases for consideration.
Please email Rodney Sebastian at: fasrodn@nus.edu.sg if you are interested in attending .
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