Lori G. Beaman - Böcker

While religious conflict receives plenty of attention, the everyday negotiation of religious diversity does not. Questions of how to accommodate religious minorities and of the limits of tolerance resonate in a variety of contexts and have become central preoccupations for many Western democracies. What might we see if we turned our attention to the positive narratives and success stories of the everyday working out of religious difference? Rather than 'tolerance' and 'accommodation', and through the stories of ordinary people, this book traces deep equality, which is found in the respect, humour, and friendship of seemingly mundane interactions. Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity shows that the telling of such stories can create an alternative narrative to that of diversity as a problem to be solved. It explores the non-event, or micro-processes of interaction that constitute the foundation for deep equality and the conditions under which deep equality emerges, exists, and sometimes flourishes.Through a systematic search for and examination of such narratives, Lori G. Beaman demonstrates the possibility of uncovering, revealing, and recovering deep equality--a recovery that is vital to living in an increasingly diverse society. In achieving deep equality, identities are fluid, shifting in importance and structure as social interaction unfolds. Rigid identity imaginings, especially religious identities, block our vision to the complexities of social life and press us into corners that trap us in identities that we often ourselves do not recognize, want, or know how to escape. Although the focus of this study is deep equality and its existence and persistence in relation to religious difference, deep equality is located beyond the realm of religion. Beaman draws from the work of those whose primary focus is not in fact religion, and who are doing their own 'deep equality' work in other domains, illustrating especially why equality matters. By retelling and exploring stories of negotiation it is possible to reshape our social imaginary to better facilitate what works, which varies from place to place and time to time.

In the past several years religion has increasingly become an integral component of discussions about diversity and multiculturalism in Canada. Of particular concern has been the formulation of limits on religious freedom. Defining Harm explores the ways in which religion and religious freedom are conceptualized and regulated in a cultural context of fear of the "other" and religious "extremism."Drawing from literature on risk society, governance, feminist legal theory, and religious rights, Lori Beaman looks at the case of Jehovah's Witness Bethany Hughes who was denied her right to refuse treatment on the basis of her religious conviction. The B.H. case, as it was known in the courts, reflects a particular moment in the socio-legal treatment of religious freedom and reveals the specific intersection of religious, medical, legal, and other discourses in the governance of the religious citizen.A powerful examination of the governance of a religious citizen and of the limits of religious freedom, this book demonstrates that the stakes in debates on religious freedom are not just about beliefs and practices but also have implications for the construction of citizenship in a diverse nation.

In the past several years religion has increasingly become an integral component of discussions about diversity and multiculturalism in Canada. Of particular concern has been the formulation of limits on religious freedom. Defining Harm explores the ways in which religion and religious freedom are conceptualized and regulated in a cultural context of fear of the "other" and religious "extremism."Drawing from literature on risk society, governance, feminist legal theory, and religious rights, Lori Beaman looks at the case of Jehovah's Witness Bethany Hughes who was denied her right to refuse treatment on the basis of her religious conviction. The B.H. case, as it was known in the courts, reflects a particular moment in the socio-legal treatment of religious freedom and reveals the specific intersection of religious, medical, legal, and other discourses in the governance of the religious citizen.A powerful examination of the governance of a religious citizen and of the limits of religious freedom, this book demonstrates that the stakes in debates on religious freedom are not just about beliefs and practices but also have implications for the construction of citizenship in a diverse nation.

Reasonable Accommodation is a collection of essays examining the meaning of reasonable accommodation of religious diversity through law and public discourse in Canada and abroad.

Often when a religious minority challenges mainstream customs, the phrase "reasonable accommodation" is at the centre of the ensuing debate. But what exactly is reasonable accommodation? Does it achieve its goal of integrating the rights of religious minorities with those of mainstream society – or does it emphasize inequality?Reasonable Accommodation features eight essays that seek to define the meaning of reasonable accommodation within Canada and abroad. These probing explorations touch on current hot-button topics such as women's right to wear the niqab in public, religious diversity in prisons, and accommodating sexual diversity. Woven throughout are questions and commentary about whether there really is a religious majority in Canada, how the idea of "shared values" obscures debate, and how tolerating religious differences simply isn't enough to guarantee equality. Reasonable Accommodation provides a much-needed critical assessment of this phrase and theorizes religious diversity and freedom of religion beyond the meaning of "tolerance" as it sometimes implies.

Assumptions about the harmful nature of polygamy have left little room for debate, with monogamy coming to represent a hallmark of civil society, and polygamy the immoral alternative. Opponents have argued that polygamy is harmful to women, children, personal freedom, and even national values, and press for prosecution.Yet in this volume, eleven scholars ask whether this response is justified by examining, among other perspectives, the lived experiences of polygamous families. In essays that fearlessly explore difficult questions of love, choice, and dignity, these historians, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars, some of whom are personally connected to polygamous families, seek to complicate a conversation that is more often simplified.Thoughtful and persuasive, Polygamy's Rights and Wrongs is both a close consideration of polygamy -- its historical place and its presence in contemporary society -- and a challenging reflection on the ways in which we value family and intimacy.

Problems – of integration, failed political participation, and requests for various kinds of accommodation – seem to dominate the research on minority Muslims in Western nations. Beyond Accommodation offers a different perspective, showing how Muslim Canadians successfully navigate and negotiate their religiosity in the more mundane moments of their lives.Drawing on interviews with Muslims in Montreal and St. John's, Selby, Barras, and Beaman examine moments in which religiosity is worked out. They critique the model of reasonable accommodation, which has been lauded internationally for acknowledging and accommodating religious and cultural differences. The authors suggest that it disempowers religious minorities by implicitly privileging Christianity and by placing the onus on minorities to make requests for accommodation. The interviewees show that informal negotiation occurs all the time; scholars, however, have not been paying attention. This book advances a new model for studying the navigation and negotiation of religion in the public sphere and presents an alternative picture of how religious difference is woven into the fabric of Canadian society.

Problems – of integration, failed political participation, and requests for various kinds of accommodation – seem to dominate the research on minority Muslims in Western nations. Beyond Accommodation offers a different perspective, showing how Muslim Canadians successfully navigate and negotiate their religiosity in the more mundane moments of their lives.Drawing on interviews with Muslims in Montreal and St. John's, Selby, Barras, and Beaman examine moments in which religiosity is worked out. They critique the model of reasonable accommodation, which has been lauded internationally for acknowledging and accommodating religious and cultural differences. The authors suggest that it disempowers religious minorities by implicitly privileging Christianity and by placing the onus on minorities to make requests for accommodation. The interviewees show that informal negotiation occurs all the time; scholars, however, have not been paying attention. This book advances a new model for studying the navigation and negotiation of religion in the public sphere and presents an alternative picture of how religious difference is woven into the fabric of Canadian society.

Looking beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, this book explores ways of fostering respectful, non-violent and welcoming social relations among religious communities. It examines the question of how to balance religious diversity, individual rights and freedoms with a common national identity and moral consensus. The essays discuss the interface between state and civil society in ‘secular’ countries and look at case studies from the the West and India. They study themes such as religious education, religious diversity, pluralism, inter-religious relations and exchanges, dalits and religion, and issues arising from the lived experience of religious diversity in various countries. The volume asserts that if religious violence crosses borders, so do ideas about how to live together peacefully, theological reflection on pluralism, and lived practices of friendship across the boundaries of religious identity-groupings. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship from across the world, the book will interest scholars and students of philosophy, religious studies, political science, sociology and history.

Advocacy for religious freedom has become a global project while religion, and the management of religion, has become of increasing interest to scholars across a wider range of disciplines. Rather than adopting the common assumption that religious freedom is simply incompletely realized, the authors in this book suggest that the starting point for understanding religion in public life today should be religious establishment. In the hyper-globalized world of the politics of religious freedom today, a focus on establishments brings into view the cultural assumptions, cosmologies, anthropologies, and institutions which structure religion and religious diversity. Leading international scholars from a diverse range of disciplines explore how countries today live with religious difference and consider how considering establishments reveals the limitations of universal, multicultural, and interfaith models of religious freedom. Examining the various forms religion takes in Tunisia, Canada, Taiwan, South Africa, and the USA, amongst others, this book argues that legal protections for religious freedom can only be understood in a context of socially and culturally specific constraints.

Looking beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, this book explores ways of fostering respectful, non-violent and welcoming social relations among religious communities. It examines the question of how to balance religious diversity, individual rights and freedoms with a common national identity and moral consensus. The essays discuss the interface between state and civil society in ‘secular’ countries and look at case studies from the the West and India. They study themes such as religious education, religious diversity, pluralism, inter-religious relations and exchanges, dalits and religion, and issues arising from the lived experience of religious diversity in various countries. The volume asserts that if religious violence crosses borders, so do ideas about how to live together peacefully, theological reflection on pluralism, and lived practices of friendship across the boundaries of religious identity-groupings. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship from across the world, the book will interest scholars and students of philosophy, religious studies, political science, sociology and history.

Advocacy for religious freedom has become a global project while religion, and the management of religion, has become of increasing interest to scholars across a wider range of disciplines. Rather than adopting the common assumption that religious freedom is simply incompletely realized, the authors in this book suggest that the starting point for understanding religion in public life today should be religious establishment. In the hyper-globalized world of the politics of religious freedom today, a focus on establishments brings into view the cultural assumptions, cosmologies, anthropologies, and institutions which structure religion and religious diversity. Leading international scholars from a diverse range of disciplines explore how countries today live with religious difference and consider how considering establishments reveals the limitations of universal, multicultural, and interfaith models of religious freedom. Examining the various forms religion takes in Tunisia, Canada, Taiwan, South Africa, and the USA, amongst others, this book argues that legal protections for religious freedom can only be understood in a context of socially and culturally specific constraints.

The place of religion in the public realm is the subject of frequent and lively debate in the media, among academics and policymakers, and within communities. With this edited collection, Solange Lefebvre and Lori G. Beaman bring together a series of case studies of religious groups and practices from all across Canada that re-examine and question the classic distinction between the public and private spheres.Religion in the Public Sphere explores the public image of religious groups, legal issues relating to “reasonable accommodations,” and the role of religion in public services and institutions like health care and education. Offering a wide range of contributions from religious studies, political science, theology, and law, Religion in the Public Sphere presents emerging new models to explain contemporary relations between religion, civil society, the private sector, family, and the state.

The place of religion in the public realm is the subject of frequent and lively debate in the media, among academics and policymakers, and within communities. With this edited collection, Solange Lefebvre and Lori G. Beaman bring together a series of case studies of religious groups and practices from all across Canada that re-examine and question the classic distinction between the public and private spheres.Religion in the Public Sphere explores the public image of religious groups, legal issues relating to “reasonable accommodations,” and the role of religion in public services and institutions like health care and education. Offering a wide range of contributions from religious studies, political science, theology, and law, Religion in the Public Sphere presents emerging new models to explain contemporary relations between religion, civil society, the private sector, family, and the state.

This book seeks to answer these questions through a series of short essays exploring the nonreligious imaginaries that emerge in a range of world-repairing practices, including ethical consumption, community organizing, eating habits, and environmental activism.

A growing number of people across the western world are identifying as nonreligious. This book examines this shift through the lens of community gardens. We do not ask people what they believe in ways that are abstracted from their everyday lives. Rather, by focusing on gardening we enter the world of action—what people do, the practices of their everyday lives. Drawing on interviews from community gardeners in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Finland, Norway, Northern Ireland, and the United States, the book explores themes of community-building, ritual, ethics, and relationships with humans, non-humans, and the natural world, arguing for their conceptualization as ‘lifestances’. The book reveals a shifting sensibility about the relationship between humans and the world around them. That relationship is shifting from a vertical relationship to a horizontal one; from a relationship of human dominance to a relationship of shared responsibility and equality. This is possible because there is an increasing recognition that the current hierarchical model, based in religious teachings and human exceptionalism, is untenable. Community gardens offer an ideal vantage point from which to explore these changes.

In recent decades, questions about who makes up a family, the role of biology in defining sex, and the origins of human life have been the source of deep social, moral, and legal controversies. This book focuses on the debates around same-sex marriage in seven countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United States) and uses these debates to examine the demarcations and zones of transition between the religious and the nonreligious. Specifically, in a context of moral and religious diversification resulting from, among other things, the decentering of Christianity, the book analyzes the narratives, languages, and meanings constructed in the debate over marriage as a legal institution. What imaginaries emerge in relation to sexuality or the family when the Christian foundation of marriage is put under scrutiny? One of the novelties of this book is the use of legal controversies as a lens to observe the work of religious and nonreligious narratives and the materialities they produce. Rather than prioritizing the description of the values or worldviews of the nonreligious, the proposal is to understand "nonreligion" as a product of discursive disputes and the narration of alternative imaginaries about marriage configurations.

The essays in this book not only examine the variety of atheist expression and experience in the Western context, they also explore how local, national and international settings may contribute to the shaping of atheist identities.

This volume considers the phenomenon of yoga travel as an instance of a broader genre of ‘spiritual travel’ involving journeys to places ‘elsewhere’, which are imagined to offer the possibility of profound personal transformation. These imaginings are tied up in a continued exoticization of the East, but they are not limited to that. Contributors identify various themes such as authenticity, suffering, space, material markers, and the idea of the ‘spiritual’, tracing how these ideas manifest in conceptions and fetishizations of ‘elsewhere.’  To deepen its analysis of this phenomenon, the book incorporates a wide range of disciplines including architecture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, women’s studies, religious studies, and history. While the book’s primary focus is yoga and yoga travel, contributors offer up an array of other case studies. Chapters delve into the complex questions of agency and authenticity that accompany the concept of ‘spiritual travel’ and ideas of ‘elsewhere.’

The essays in this book not only examine the variety of atheist expression and experience in the Western context, they also explore how local, national and international settings may contribute to the shaping of atheist identities.

This volume considers the phenomenon of yoga travel as an instance of a broader genre of ‘spiritual travel’ involving journeys to places ‘elsewhere’, which are imagined to offer the possibility of profound personal transformation. These imaginings are tied up in a continued exoticization of the East, but they are not limited to that. Contributors identify various themes such as authenticity, suffering, space, material markers, and the idea of the ‘spiritual’, tracing how these ideas manifest in conceptions and fetishizations of ‘elsewhere.’  To deepen its analysis of this phenomenon, the book incorporates a wide range of disciplines including architecture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, women’s studies, religious studies, and history. While the book’s primary focus is yoga and yoga travel, contributors offer up an array of other case studies. Chapters delve into the complex questions of agency and authenticity that accompany the concept of ‘spiritual travel’ and ideas of ‘elsewhere.’

This volume brings together over 25 articles by many of the most important authors who have worked on issues directly related to the theme of religion and globalization. An additional emphasis on culture flags the inclusion of the relation of religion to its wider social context and also permits questioning the boundaries of religion so as to avoid a strong bias in favour of the analysis of institutionalized religion. The key emphasis of the book, however, is the focus specifically on religion, a topic that is still largely ignored in the burgeoning literature on globalization. The articles are divided into five subthemes: theoretical issues; historical approaches to religion and globalization; forms and boundaries of religion; key issues (such as ecology and gender); and regional perspectives.Contributors: Afe Adogame, Elisabeth Arweck, Lori Beaman, Peter Beyer, John Boli, Gary Bouma, Dave Brewington, George Van Campbell, José Casanova, Paul Freston, Nobutaka Inoue, Laurel Kearns, Otto Maduro, Vasilios Makrides, Meredith McGuire, Vincenzo Pace, Rubina Ramji, James T. Richardson, Ole Riis, Roland Robertson, Marie-Andrée Roy, Shandip Saha, John H. Simpson, James V. Spickard, William Stahl, George Thomas, Bryan Turner, Margit Warburg, and Michael Wilkinson.