New Book!

Religion and Progressive Activism About: New Stories Faith and Politics
(New York University Press, 2017)
Edited by Ruth Braunstein, Todd Nicholas Fuist, and Rhys H. Williams

nyupress.org/books/9781479852901

To many mainstream-media saturated Americans, the terms “progressive” and “religious” may not seem to go hand-in-hand. As religion is usually tied to conservatism, an important way in which religion and politics intersect is being overlooked. Religion and Progressive Activism focuses on this significant intersection, revealing that progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life, involved in almost every political issue or area of public concern.

This volume brings together leading experts who dissect and analyze the inner worlds and public strategies of progressive religious activists from the local to the transnational level. It provides insight into documented trends, reviews overlooked case studies, and assesses the varied ways in which progressive religion forces us to deconstruct common political binaries such as right/left and progress/tradition.

In a coherent and accessible way, this book engages and rethinks long accepted theories of religion, of social movements, and of the role of faith in democratic politics and civic life. Moreover, by challenging common perceptions of religiously motivated activism, it offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of religion and the American political landscape.

Reviews

“Social scientists have invested a great deal of energy in trying to understand the religious right, but not nearly enough time and effort has been devoted to the crucial role, in our past and present, of the religious left. This book is thus an enormous contribution and a groundbreaking work. This timely volume shatters the myth of the religious right’s monopoly on faith-based political activism. While acknowledging the difficulties confronted by religious liberals in organizing for social justice, the authors provide a wealth of new evidence-based insights about how to strengthen the progressive religious movement at a time when its witness is badly needed.”

—E.J. Dionne Jr., Author of Why the Right Went Wrong

“Much of our current understanding of religion and politics is based on studies of the activism of conservative, even extremist forms of religious practice. But historically that is not necessarily the most important connection. In the 19th Century progressive religious groups were instrumental to abolitionist and woman’s suffrage movements. And in the current context religious groups have a leading role in many struggles for justice. Braunstein, Fuist, and Williams’ volume brings together some leading scholars of religion to look at some of the most important cases and theorize what they mean for our understanding of religion and social activism.”

—David Smilde, Charles A and Leo M Favrot Professor of Social Relations, Tulane University

New Book: Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism

Kauffman, L.A. 2017. Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. Verso.

Direct Action coverWhat happened to the American left after the sixties? Kauffman traces the evolution of disruptive protest over the last forty years to tell a larger story about the reshaping of American radicalism. It examines how movements from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have catalyzed change against long odds, winning victories in times of crisis and backlash while creating a distinctive new kind of radical politics in the process. Based on decades of in-depth interviews, archival research, and firsthand experience.

Upcoming Webinar: The Problem of Autonomy

Part of the Critical Realism Network Webinar Series, the upcoming webinar is hosted by Professor Philip Gorski (Department of Sociology, Yale University) and Timothy Rutzou (Post-Doctoral Associate, Yale University) and addresses The Problem of Autonomy.

Wednesday, May 17th, 12:00-1:30 pm EST. Click here to register.

Brief Description: At the recent Values and Human Flourishing conference, a single issue continually emerged: how should we understand autonomy, and what place does it serve within ethical and political projects? Questions about autonomy, social solidarity, human dependency, and interdependency in many ways serve as the bridge between empirical research, social theory, ethics, and politics. Like the topic of structure and agency, the complex relationship between autonomy, dependency, and interdependency is a key problematic of social philosophy and sociology. The long tradition of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber were all concerned with unpacking this problematic, often without shying away from addressing its moral, ethical, and political implications. Our modern understanding of autonomy is animated by this intellectual history and the many antimonies this tradition has generated.

How might critical realism help us to address or contribute to this contested history? The answer is not clear. In this webinar Gorski and Rutzou will discuss the manner in which critical realism might be able to help us navigate this problematic by providing an ontologically stratified view of self and society, and a complex account of causation. Where Gorski argues for a more Durkheimian turn, Rutzou argues for a more poststructuralist turn. Are such accounts compatible? Incompatible? Does the ontology advocated by critical realism necessarily entail certain ethical and political positions? Do certain positions become incoherent when one adopts a critical realist ontology? Or is critical realism morally, ethically, and politically promiscuous? The webinar will explore these issues.

New Book Series: Princeton Series in Global and Comparative Sociology

Over the past several decades, “globalization” and “internationalization” have become new areas of focus in the social sciences. Many sociologists are no longer content with focusing on a single society as if it were an autonomous social unit, but are keen to explore processes that affect societies across the globe or that can only be understood through systematic comparisons across them. The Princeton Series in Global and Comparative Sociology aims to create a home for books that dare to compare across countries and continents. It welcomes projects written in all macro-comparative traditions in sociology and neighboring disciplines. The series is edited by Andreas Wimmer (Columbia) and curated by Meagan Levinson at Princeton University Press. Members of the advisory board are Julia Adams (Yale), Nitsan Chorev (Brown), Matthias König (Göttingen), Jim Mahoney (Northwestern), John Meyer (Stanford), Gisele Sapiro (EHESS), Saskia Sassen (Columbia), Evan Schofer (UC Irvine), and Lawrence King (Cambridge). Please submit proposals to Meagan_Levinson@press.princeton.edu.