TY - JOUR
T1 - 2021 SSSR Presidential Address
T2 - Religion as Social Location—Global and Comparative Perspectives
AU - Kurien, Prema
N1 - Funding Information:
This article is a revised version of the SSSR Presidential Address I delivered on October 23, 2021, at Portland, Oregon. I started as a scholar of international development in graduate school and became a scholar of migration after my PhD. A postdoctoral fellowship from the New Ethnic and Immigrant Congregations Project (1994-1996) directed by R. Stephen Warner began the process of turning me into a sociologist of religion, in addition to a scholar of migration. Stephen Warner introduced me to SSSR, and I was his SSSR Program chair in 2007. I began with a study of Hindu Indian American groups, and a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Religion under the tutelage of Robert Wuthnow to work on that project completed my transition to a sociologist of religion. Without the support and mentorship of both these scholars, I would not be the sociologist of religion that I am today. I am deeply grateful to them. I also gratefully acknowledge the work of Ivy Raines who coded the JSSR articles between 2010 and 2020 for me and developed the charts for this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - I argue that scholarship in the social scientific study of religion and its paradigms continue to be focused on the United States and Christianity, particularly on white U.S. Christians. This means that theoretical frameworks in the field tend to be limited and “parochial,” largely ignoring non-U.S., non-white, and non-Christian contexts. I call for scholars to develop a global and comparative perspective on religion and to also examine its impacts on other dimensions of social life. To show how this can be done, I outline an argument about religion as social location, drawing from my research on five religious traditions (Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Buddhism) in three countries (India, the United States, and Canada). I demonstrate how religious background can shape social and structural location within societies and globally, in turn, affecting the manifestations of religion and how religion is imbricated with other dimensions of social life.
AB - I argue that scholarship in the social scientific study of religion and its paradigms continue to be focused on the United States and Christianity, particularly on white U.S. Christians. This means that theoretical frameworks in the field tend to be limited and “parochial,” largely ignoring non-U.S., non-white, and non-Christian contexts. I call for scholars to develop a global and comparative perspective on religion and to also examine its impacts on other dimensions of social life. To show how this can be done, I outline an argument about religion as social location, drawing from my research on five religious traditions (Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Buddhism) in three countries (India, the United States, and Canada). I demonstrate how religious background can shape social and structural location within societies and globally, in turn, affecting the manifestations of religion and how religion is imbricated with other dimensions of social life.
KW - perspectives
KW - presidential address
KW - social location
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U2 - 10.1111/jssr.12782
DO - 10.1111/jssr.12782
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85123470431
SN - 0021-8294
VL - 61
SP - 5
EP - 20
JO - Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
JF - Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
IS - 1
ER -