Part 2 - Marginalisation of religious and spiritual issues

Summary

This Part considers the emergence of social scientific disciplines within the context of modernity, and the ways in which values underpinning these disciplines might serve to marginalise issues in relation to religion and spirituality. Given discussions among researchers in a number of fields about the importance of religion and spirituality in the lives of individuals and for communities, it is pertinent to ask questions about the theoretical underpinnings of social science disciplines and the challenges that are posed by religious and spiritual questions.

This Part begins with a contribution from Maria Frahm-Arp, who argues that religion is a crucial but often ignored aspect of social research in African contexts (Chapter Six). She argues that social research usually focuses on the impact of race and gender without taking into consideration the effect of religion and religious discourses. Lareen Newman has a similar focus in Chapter Seven insofar as she argues that social demographic research around fertility in Australia has largely ignored the role and influence of religion. Her chapter critiques this omission. Caroline Humphrey's chapter (Chapter Eight) considers how the secular and scientific underpinnings to the social sciences can play a limiting role, in that religious or spiritual experiences and world-views are overlooked. Humphrey argues that secular, scientific and spiritual and religious world-views can co-exist, particularly in the context of globalisation and multicultural societies. According to Ursula King, women's studies and gender studies in the West have largely operated within a dominant secular framework. Nonetheless this blindness to religion is being increasingly recognised and critiqued. Furthermore, not only has religion been a contributing factor in the rise of the women's movement, for King, but also she argues that a wide range of religious ideas has impacted on gender and feminist thinking and practice. King highlights that a large body of literature on women's spirituality, feminist spirituality, and spirituality and gender has emerged. Natassja Smiljanic explores legal study and theorisation, highlighting that often these have been devoid of human emotion. For Smiljanic, engaging spiritually with law means engaging emotionally, so that academic work might be informed by personal experiences and feelings, part of a personal and political spiritual journey, where reading ‘shamanically’ means accessing other states of consciousness, to see the worlds in different ways.