“Religious Assemblages” — The Society for the Anthropology of Religion 2023 Biennial Conference

The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) is a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). We seek to facilitate the research and teaching of the anthropology of religion.

Religious Assemblages
A signature contribution of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, and the anthropology of religion more generally, has been to reveal both the overt and covert ways in which religious practice both informs and can be conjoined to myriad other domains of social life. From James Frazer’s interrogation of the pagan roots of Christianity to Saba Mahmood’s insights about the implicit Christianity of liberalism, the anthropology of religion has revealed assemblages of religious forms and practices with other forms and practices that superficially appear to be devoid of religious influence.

The 2023 SAR Spring Conference highlights this enduring contribution and build on it by emphasizing this critical perspective in the study of religion at-large. We seek to showcase disciplinary and interdisciplinary work to highlight and develop understanding of religion both as a lived practice and a category. The conference will be held in person.

Call for Papers
Focusing on religious assemblages, the Society for the Anthropology of Religion calls for papers that underscore how, although religion is sometimes marginalized from other aspects of modernity, religious discourses and practices can be dissociated from older historical formations and re-combined with new elements. Among the questions we seek to address are: How are religious practices conjoined to
practices that appear on the surface to be irreligious? How is religion evident in domains that claim to be secular or irreligious? How do religious traditions amalgamate influences from other traditions that appear to be discrete? How do actual experiences of lived religion depart from orthodox religious traditions? How are modern institutions and forms invested with spiritual significance? How can greater attention to the ways in which religion infuses myriad aspects of contemporary social life facilitate initiatives of decolonization and indigenization?

In addition to research on religion broadly conceived, we seek papers focused on secularism and liberalism, religion at the boundaries of other domains of social life, the relationship between religion and race/ethnicity, indigeneity, class, gender, colonialism, decolonization, and religious formations of white supremacy and ethno-nationalism. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2023.

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