18,490 research outputs found
Faith and the public realm
No full textThe chapter introduces the sociological and political themes of participation, power, democracy, secularism, liberalism and the public sphere in terms of the controversies raised in relation to them associated with the de-privatisation of religion
Faith in the Public Realm
No full textThe public presence of religious faith in the UK and other Western nations is persistently and increasingly evident, despite the belief that it would retreat into insignificance and private obscurity. Policy makers now actively seek to engage with faiths in the provision of public services, local governance and the search for community cohesion. Faith in the public realm takes an explicitly multi-faith perspective, exploring the controversies, policies and practices of 'public faith'. It questions perceptions of a fixed divide between religious and secular participants in public life and challenges prevailing concepts of a monolithic 'neutral' public realm.Based on primary research, the book takes an in-depth look at the distinctiveness of faith groups' contribution, but also probes the conflicts and dilemmas that arise. It assesses the role and capacity of faith groups within specific public policy contexts - including education, regeneration, housing and community cohesion - and pays particular attention to the activities of young people and of women. "Faith in the Public Realm" addresses a new and increasingly important topic and so will be of interest to students, academics, policy-makers and practitioners in the public and voluntary sectors, and in faith communities themselves
ADAM SMITH'S OPTIMISTIC TELEOLOGICAL VIEW OF HISTORY
No full textAdam Smith's four-stage theory provides the framework for his writings on history. The fourth stage is the commercial epoch; the culmination of history in this stage is a key component in the conventional interpretation of Adam Smith as a prophet of commercialism. In two historical case studies Smith shows the capacity of commercial society to regenerate itself. This potent capacity suggests that commercial society is inevitable. At a certain point in time it also overcomes the major obstacles to its permanence. Smith's philosophy of history anticipates the end of history views of Kant and Hegel.Political Economy,
Re-imagining Religion and Belief: 21st Century Policy and Practice
No full textThe need to reimagine religion and belief is precipitated by their greater visibility in public life. Meanwhile, social policy responses often see them from a problem-based, rather than an asset-based, approach. However, with growing diversity of religion and belief in every sector comes the potential for new dialogues across previously impermeable policy and disciplinary silos.
This volume brings together leading international authors to critically consider these challenges within legal and policy frameworks, including security and cohesion, welfare, law, health and social care, inequality, cohesion, extremism, migration and abuse. It challenges policy makers to re-imagine religion and belief as an integral part of public life that contains resources, practices, forms of knowledge and experience that are essential to a coherent policy approach to diversity, enhanced democracy and participation
How Might Adam Smith Pay Professors Today?
No full textAdam Smith’s proposal for paying professors was intended to induce increased faculty knowledge. If students have imperfect information about what they learn, and universities can only imperfectly measure the input of faculty time in student learning, publications may be used to measure faculty knowledge. If professors’ ability to publish is positively related to their ability to produce student learning, which universities can imperfectly measure, publications may be necessary to attract more able professors. Since research signals faculty knowledge, schools that do not value publications per se could require higher publication standards and pay higher wages than schools that value only publications.
ADAM SMITH'S VIEW OF HISTORY: CONSISTENT OR PARADOXICAL?
No full textThe conventional interpretation of Adam Smith is that he is a prophet of commercialism. The liberal capitalist reading of Smith is consistent with the view that history culminates in commercial society. The first part of the article develops this optimistic interpretation of Smith's view of history. Smith implies that commercial society is the end of history because 1) it supplies the ends of nature that he identifies; 2) it is inevitable; and 3) it is permanent. The second part of the article shows that Smith has some dark moments in his writings where he seems to reject completely such teleological notions. In this more civic humanist mood he confesses that commercial society does not supply the ends of nature, nor is it inevitable, nor is it permanent. Both views exist in Smith and the commentator is forced to choose between passages in Smith's work in order to support a particular interpretation of the former's view of history.Political Economy,
What is a ‘faith community’?
No full textThis article asks ‘what is a faith community?’ This is important because of a re-emergence of faith and the ‘faith community’ as a public category in many Western countries. This is reflected in the United Kingdom in a public policy interest in faiths as repositories of resources for ‘strengthened community’. Thus faiths are understood as ‘containers’ of staff, buildings, volunteers, networks, values and skills which can be ‘harnessed’ in key community domains, especially the provision of welfare and social services, extended forms of participative neighbourhood governance, and initiatives for community cohesion. Resources in each of these areas are understood to reside in ‘faith communities’ and faiths are frequently seen as ‘good at community’ in these terms. But do we know what a ‘faith community’ is? Using communitarian ideas of community, this article explores the notion of the faith community and the implications of policies about them for faith-based practices in community settings. It argues for the application of community development values to understanding ‘faith communities’
Religion and Belief Literacy: Reconnecting a Chain of Learning
No full textThis book picks up on Hervieu-Leger’s ‘chain of memory’ to consider a different sort of chain in relation to religion and belief – a chain of learning - which might also be needed as the secular or post-secular wrestle with the reality of a religiously pervaded world. This addresses horizontal connections in the here and now, as well as vertical ones, to past and future. What we know about religion and belief is based on what we learn about them, and we do that learning in a variety of spaces and settings which are contested, and which compete. In formal educational spaces, like schools, colleges and universities this takes place in ‘subjects’ or disciplines, like Religious Studies, Theology, Philosophy and Citizenship. These present a muddled mix of Christian socialisation, personal and spiritual formation, empirical study of religion and belief phenomena, and preoccupations with public policy anxieties about cohesion and extremism. The content, structure and purposes are unclear. More recently we might add subjects with little sense of a direct or past connection to religion or belief, like Geography and Law (see Baker and Dinham 2017) which focus on how diverse publics mix, and how this plays out in debates or disputes. Outside of them are mid-formal learning spaces, especially professions and workplaces, which emphasise religion and belief in relation to service provision and employment practices. Likewise learning takes place in informal spaces which we often call ‘communities’. These emphasise faith-based volunteering and cohesive citizenship. They each reflect varying perspectives on religion and belief from which we learn to think about what, if anything, to do about them.
Each learning space is itself shaped by what policy is seeking. Welfare might frame religion and belief in terms of their contributions to care (Dinham 2015; Putnam 2000). Security and foreign affairs might emphasise religion in terms of extremism and sectarianism (Francis and Eck Duymaer, 2015). Education might think of the importance of socialising young people in schools for a Christian and multi-faith society (Dinham and Shaw, 2017; Clarke and Woodhead, 2016), while University and jobs policy might emphasise workplace readiness for religion and belief diversity and inclusion (Aune et al, 2017; Crisp, 2016). Each of these framings has its own inner logic, including normativities, which variously construct religion and belief broadly as both positive (contributing to society) and negative (a threat to it). But do these ‘logics’ line up? Are they sufficiently in touch with each other as at least to be capable of coherent disagreement? As individuals pass through these spaces of learning, what messages are they taking in at different times and places, and are they cogent?
At the core of this book is the suggestion that publics struggle with religion and belief, and that this is at least in part because of the competing, sometimes conflicting, messages we get about them. Why should we know about religion and belief, and where? How should we think about them, and who are the religious and believers anyway? Is there a chain of learning about religion and belief which could give an overall sense of the religion and belief landscape and how to think about it - a series of links, each of which makes sense in relation to the others, even where they contest? Can this be bought in to focus, or are the messages inherent in each destined to remain a muddle, at odds with the others, breaking the chain and leaving us bewildered and confused
The Multi-faith Paradigm in Policy and Practice: Problems, Challenges, Directions
No full textA significant infrastructure of multi-faith engagement grew and consolidated throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century in England, called forth, at least in part, by government policy. This arose in response to three narratives of religious faith: a policy narrative which constructs faith groups as repositories of resources; a faith narrative which is concerned with the lived experiences of faith; and a partnership narrative which reflects the growing role of faith groups in the mixed economy of welfare (see Dinham and Lowndes, 2008). It is inflected, too, by a fourth narrative located in the bundle of ‘Prevent’ policies which sought to address the risks of religious radicalisation and extremism. This article examines multi-faith policy in England, and the issues driving it, and explores its relationship to the faith-based practices which are imagined by it. It asks the question whether the multi-faith paradigm, as crystallised in the policy document ‘Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in Our Multi Faith Society’ (CLG, 2008), engages with a real and lived experience or remains a policy chimera and a parallel world
Religion and Belief in Health and Social Care: the case for Religious Literacy
No full textThe relationship between religion and belief and health and social care practice has been scarcely addressed, despite the important work of Furness and Gilligan in the UK and Canda in the US. Their work appears as exceptional within a wider context of professions which have been forged in a predominantly secular milieu, despite having their roots in Christian social services in the US, Canada and the UK. New research in the sociology of religion shows that religion and belief themselves vary in form, number and mix around the world, and that the religious landscape itself has changed enormously in the period during which secular social work has been operating within state stystems. It has been observed that in the UK secular assumptions reached a peak of confidence in the 1960s, when social work was most rapidly consolidating as a public profession (Dinham 2015). The inheritance has been generations of health and social care practitioners and educators who are ill-equipped to address the religion and belief identities which they encounter. In recent years this has become a pressing issue as societies across the West come to terms with the persistent – and in some ways growing – presence of religion or belief.. 84% of the global population declares a religious affiliation (Pew 2012); globalisation and migration put us all in to daily encounter with religious plurality as citizens, neighbours, service users and professionals; and internationally, mixed economies of welfare increasingly involve faith groups in service provision, including in social work and welfare settings across Europe and North America. Yet the 20th Century – the secular century – leaves behind a lamentable quality of conversation about religion and belief. Public professionals find themselves precarious on the subject, and largely unable to engage systematically and informedly with religion and belief as they encounter them. Religion and belief have been bracketed off in education in departments of Theology and Religious Studies. Social Work education has largely neglected them, and professional standards, benchmarks, values and toolkits, have tended to use proxies for religion and belief, such as ‘spirituality’, which are often ill-defined and vague. In a context of the reemergence of public faith, and a widespread acknowledgement that religion and belief did not go away after all, health and social care face the pressing challenge of engaging skilfully. This article draws on an action research programme in the UK to address this through the notion of religious literacy. Reflecting on original research and analysis in UK higher education settings, the article will argue that health and social care educators, policy makers and practitioners need to develop their religious literacy in order to engage fully and competently with the religion and belief identities of their service users in a religiously diverse and complex world
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