Control, Coercion, and Constraint

Description

"from publisher: About this book Open Access\r\n\r\nThis volume is based on a lecture series that was held during the academic year 2021–2022 at the University of Bonn. Its contributors explore the role of religion in overcoming and creating structures of dependency from different disciplines and academic backgrounds.\r\n\r\nThe question of the role of religion in justifying, perpetuating, modifying, and abolishing slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependency is still a much-debated topic within historical and social sciences. The equality of all human beings before God, gods, or the divine is deeply rooted in religious thought. Conversion to one or another religion has, therefore, often led to critique, transformation, and even abolition of existing social structures, institutions, and their corresponding dependencies.\r\n\r\nYet religious discourse has also been used to justify the subjection of individuals and whole peoples. In addition, throughout history, religious institutions themselves have often mirrored the social hierarchies and inequalities of the surrounding societies. Concomitantly, practitioners of these religious traditions have created systems of dependency within their own institutional, social, legal, and spiritual structures. This volume makes clear that not even the metaphysical world is free of dependencies: influential strands of almost all major religious traditions envisage hierarchies of gods, angels, demons, and other metaphysical beings.\r\n\r\nAuthor / Editor information\r\n\r\nWolfram Kinzig and Barbara Loose, University of Bonn, Germany."

First Sentence

"The ongoing debate about postcolonialism and recent events like the toppling of the statues of enslavers in England, the restitution of art looted by France during the colonial era, and the founding of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin have increased awareness in the West and especially in Europe of how historical and contemporary formsof coercion and oppression have impacted societies all over the world."

Subjects

Series Statement

• Dependency and Slavery Studies 14

Other Editions

• Control, Coercion, and Constraint: The Role of Religion in Creating and Overcoming Structures of DependencyOA, ebook, hardcoverde Gruyter GmbH, Walter2024-01-01
• Control, Coercion, and Constraintde Gruyter GmbH, Walter2024-01-01
• Control, Coercion, and Constraintde Gruyter GmbH, Walter2024-01-01