The constantly growing scholarship on urban energy transitions needs a framework to analyze these transitions. This article proposes the Field Perspective (FP) as an approach for the study of urban ...energy transitions. FP analyses how the interplay of actors, who are dedicated to a similar purpose, and the structures guiding this interplay, co-evolve. By applying FP to the energy transition in the German city Emden, the article shows how the transition evolves through (a) alterations in the exogenous context of the city (e.g. national feed-in-tariffs for renewables), (b) the social skill and changing interplay of local actors engaged in the transition, and (c) the emergence of power-constellations and rules.
•Field perspective (FP) as a framework for the study of urban energy transitions.•FP regards urban energy transition as evolving social fields.•Case-study of urban energy transition in Northern Germany based on FP.•Case highlights the need of social skill for creation of energy transition fields.•FP shows that the evolution of social order are crucial for energy transitions.
This volume explores how religious and spiritual actors engage for environmental protection and fight against climate change. Climate change and sustainability are increasingly prominent topics among ...religious and spiritual groups. Different faith traditions have developed ""green"" theologies, launched environmental protection projects and issued public statements on climate change. Against this background, academic scholarship has raised optimistic claims about the strong potentials of religions to address environmental challenges. Taking a critical stance with regard to these claims, the chapters in this volume show that religious environmentalism is an embattled terrain. Tensions are an inherent part of religious environmentalism. These do not necessarily manifest themselves in open clashes between different parties but in different actions, views, theologies, ambivalences, misunderstandings, and sometimes mistrust. Keeping below the surface, these tensions can create effective barriers for religious environmentalism. The chapters examine how tensions are manifested and dealt with through a range of empirical case studies in various world regions. Covering different religious and spiritual traditions, they reflect on intradenominational, interdenominational, interreligious, and religious-societal tensions. Thereby, this volume sheds new light on the problems that religions face when they seek to take an active role in today’s societal challenges. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Today, there are new approaches in academic debates about religion which enjoy high popularity and engage concepts such as post-secularity, public religion and desecularization. These approaches ...suppose that religion has an increasing presence in and impact on the public sphere of modern societies, including Western Europe. This article questions these assumptions by arguing that the public presence and impact of religion is widely overstated. An excessively vast definition of religion allows these approaches to identify religion in a wide variety of phenomena in the public sphere. Applying, instead, a more precise definition of religion, it appears that religious actors participate mainly in a non-religious way in the public sphere. Therefore, this article argues that religious actors adapt their public communication to the requirements of a secularized public sphere in which religion assumes a public role only in very exceptional occasions and specific contexts. Finally, the author supposes that the current debates about public religion create a myth of past secularity. This myth wrongly suggests that there was a secular past in which religious actors were banned from the public sphere of modern societies.
This volume explores how religious and spiritual actors engage for environmental protection and fight against climate change. Climate change and sustainability are increasingly prominent topics among ...religious and spiritual groups. Different faith traditions have developed "green" theologies, launched environmental protection projects and issued public statements on climate change. Against this background, academic scholarship has raised optimistic claims about the strong potentials of religions to address environmental challenges. Taking a critical stance with regard to these claims, the chapters in this volume show that religious environmentalism is an embattled terrain. Tensions are an inherent part of religious environmentalism. These do not necessarily manifest themselves in open clashes between different parties but in different actions, views, theologies, ambivalences, misunderstandings, and sometimes mistrust. Keeping below the surface, these tensions can create effective barriers for religious environmentalism. The chapters examine how tensions are manifested and dealt with through a range of empirical case studies in various world regions. Covering different religious and spiritual traditions, they reflect on intradenominational, interdenominational, interreligious, and religious-societal tensions. Thereby, this volume sheds new light on the problems that religions face when they seek to take an active role in today’s societal challenges. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
A growing body of research stresses the importance of religion in understanding and addressing climate change. However, so far, little is known about the relationship between Muslim communities and ...climate change. Globally, Muslims constitute the second largest faith group, and there is a strong concentration of Muslims in regions that are particularly affected by global warming. This review synthesizes existing research about climate change and Muslim communities. It addresses (a) Islamic environmentalism, (b) Muslim perceptions of climate change, and (c) mitigation strategies of Muslim communities. The analysis shows that there is no uniform interpretation of climate change among Muslims. Based on their interpretations of Islam, Muslims have generated different approaches to climate change. A small section of Muslim environmentalists engages in public campaigning to raise greater concern about climate change, seeks to reduce carbon emissions through sociotechnological transition efforts, and disseminates proenvironmental interpretations of Islam. However, it remains unclear to what extent these activities generate broader changes in the daily activities of Muslim communities and organizations. Contributions to this research field are often theoretical and stress theological and normative aspects of Islam. Empirical studies have particularly addressed Indonesia and the United Kingdom, whereas knowledge about Muslim climate activism in other world regions is fragmented. Against this backdrop, there is a need for comparative studies that consider regional and religious differences among Muslims and address the role of Muslim environmentalism in climate change mitigation and adaptation at the international, national, and local scales.
This article is categorized under:
Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge
Muslim pilgrims surrounding the sacred site Kaaba in the Great Mosque of Mecca
Nachhaltigkeit ist eines der gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprojekte unserer Zeit. Dennoch sind soziologische Analysen im Diskurs der damit verknüpften Grundfragen bislang wenig präsent. Die ...»Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit« betrachtet daher konkrete Themen nachhaltiger Gesellschaftsentwicklung - Arbeit, Mobilität, Politik(en), Diskurse, Praktiken, Ungleichheit, Macht - aus spezifisch soziologischen Blickwinkeln. Hierbei sind drei Leitmotive zentral: Nachhaltigkeit und Normativität, sozialer Wandel und Gestaltung sowie Reflexivität zweiter Ordnung. Die Beiträger*innen des Bandes geben zentrale Einsichten und Orientierungshilfen für das Verstehen, Erklären und Gestalten von Nachhaltigkeit.
Wir sprechen uns in unserer Replik dafür aus, die Pluralität soziologischer Perspektiven auch und gerade für den Gegenstandsbereich Nachhaltigkeit als Vorteil zu sehen und den Diskurs entsprechend zu ...gestalten.
This comment proposes to take the plurality of sociology as an advantage, especially for the field of sustainability and organize the discourse accordingly.
Middle-Class Pentecostalism in Argentina: Inappropriate Spirits offers an intriguing account of how the middle class relates to Latin America´s most vibrant religious movement. The study posits that ...middle class Pentecostalism forges a milder, more socially acceptable form of the movement. Readership: All interested in religion in Latin-America, social class and religion, Pentecostalism and anyone concerned with sociology of religion and religious studies.
•forwards a field theory on sustainability transitions.•explains transition activities through power positions and institutional field logics.•explores how religious organizations contribute to ...sustainability transitions.•compares organizations from different faith backgrounds and scales.•shows differences between local and supra-local scales.
This article proposes the field perspective as an approach to explain organizational activities in sustainability transitions. It applies this framework to analyze environmental activities of religious organizations in Germany and Switzerland. Religious organizations can become important actors in transitions by drawing on their extensive membership, material resources, and public visibility. However, to date, research is dearth about the conditions that facilitate transition activities of religious organizations. The empirical insights of this study show differences in the activities (a) between religious incumbents and challengers and (b) between the supra-local and local scale. The field perspective allows for explaining these differences as outcomes of the organizations’ power positions and diverging institutional logics on the supra-local and local scale. Rather than religious beliefs, the interplay of power and scale-specific logics shapes activities of religious organizations.
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