Menue phone
all
14.11.2016

CfP: Religion and Science

The KFG's director Monika Wohlrab-Sahr will host the Spring Conference "Religion and Science. New Questions on an Old Topic" of the Section Sociology of Religion of the German Sociological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, DGS) together with Silke Gülker and Hubert Knoblauch. Proposals (max. 500 words) for contributions should be handed in to either of the three hosts by 30 November 2016. Papers dealing with one of the following three topics are welcome:


Theoretical approaches: The relation of science and religion is shaped by the relation between religious organisations and state policy, in public discourses and struggles for legitimacy, in religious and scientific practices and rituals, in individual references to belief or knowledge. Which theoretical approaches can help analysing these multifaceted and entangled set-ups?


Empirical findings: Empirically the relation of science and religion is of interest on the one hand from the perspective of the studies of science: Which impact does religion have on the scientific production of knowledge? On the other hand, the question is about science and religion as social forces, about belief and knowledge as resources and about who accepts which sources of truth in struggles for legitimacy. Empirical works dealing with these questions, especially comparative international surveys, are welcome.


Methodological approaches: The empirical questions are connected to specific methodical challenges. It is controversial how religiosity can be measured in an appropriate way. Debates about how the relation between belief and knowledge can be analysed are still in the early stages. Comparative surveys have to deal with the problem that religious as well as scientific communities are on the hand organised internationally, but on the other hand they are shaped nationally and locally. Which methodical approaches allow an (international, comparative) study of the relation between religion and science?


The conference will take place on 11 and 12 May 2017 at the Berlin Social Science Center (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, WZB), Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin.


Complete call (German)


picture: DGS