Call for Papers: Bruno Latour and the Study of Religion

Special Issue of Implicit Religion

Edited by David G. Robertson and Theo Wildcroft

 

Bruno Latour (1947-2022) has been recognised as contributing significantly to fields as diverse as anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, philosophy, sociology and climate activism. Latour was Professor at Sciences Po Paris and was previously Professor at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris and visiting Professor at University of California (San Diego), at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. After field studies in Africa and California he specialized in the analysis of scientists and engineers at work, collaborating on many studies in science policy and research management, and producing significant works such as Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (1979, with Steve Woolgar) and most recently Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005). He has also made a valuable contribution to the political philosophy of the environment with books including Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (2018).

This Gaian theme was the basis of his 2013 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, later published as Facing Gaia (2017). Established in 1888 to “promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term”, previous presenters have included such luminaries as William James, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and E. B. Tylor. But while he is best known for his work in STS, Latour’s first degree was in Biblical Studies, and has maintained an interest in religion throughout, most obviously in Rejoicing: or the Torments of Religious Speech (2013), an unusually personal work, confessional, almost sermon-like. Ostensibly, it concerns not “religion”, nor “religions” but the adverb “religiously”; what does it mean to talk religiously? This model challenges many of the common assumptions of the “Protestant” study of religion, with its stress on belief, texts and individual experiences.

Religious Studies has been often slow to pick up on the work of European sociologists, with their books appearing in English sometimes twenty years after their native publication. while Foucault and Bourdieu are now familiar names, the work of Hervieu-Leger, Beyart and Latour are only now influencing Anglophone academia. This special issue of Implicit Religion sets out to address this, by considering the relevance, legacy and future potential of Latour’s work for the critical, social-scientific study of religion. We seek contributions of 4-8000 words, on topics potentially including:

• Latour’s “Catholic” approach to religion in general;
• Religion in specific works (e.g. Rejoicing (2013), Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (2010), An Enquiry into the Modes of Existence (2013));
• Dissolving religious/secular, faith/knowledge, object/subject, fact/fetish, invented/real and Nature/Society binaries in the study of religion;
• Actor-Network Theory in the study of religion;
• Gaia, Natural Religion and the New Climatic Regime;
• The relationship between Latour’s approach and the critical study of religion (“Why has critique run out of steam?” (2004));

 

We particularly welcome collaborative contributions and innovative formats. We want this cfp to be cascaded—whether or not you decide to contribute, please forward to colleagues who you think would have a valuable contribution to make. We must reluctantly restrict this network of contributors to human actors, as we have found objects to be poor at meeting deadlines.

 

Formalities and tentative schedule

The issue will consist of papers of 4-8,000 words, the transcript of Latour’s 2013 Religious Studies Project interview, and an introduction by the editors. If you would like to contribute, please email [email protected] to express your interest, ask for further information or submit a short abstract.

Deadline for expressions of interest: 31 December 2023
Deadline for the submission of complete drafts: 31 May 2024

Full submission and formatting guidelines can be found at: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IR/about/submissions.

 

About the journal

Implicit Religion is edited by Carmen Becker and David G. Robertson, and is published by Equinox. The journal offers a platform for scholarship that challenges the traditional boundary between religion and non-religion and the tacit assumptions underlying this distinction. It invites contributions from a critical perspective on various cultural formations that are usually excluded from religion by the gatekeeping practices of the general public, practitioners, the law, and even some scholars of religion. Taking a broad scope, Implicit Religion showcases analyses of material from the mundane to the extraordinary, but always with critical questions in mind such as: why is this data boundary-challenging? What do such marginal cases tell us about boundary management and category formation with respect to religion? And what interests are being served through acts of inclusion and exclusion?