We are happy to announce that our special issue Material Secularities (ed by Magnus Echtler, Birgit Meyer & Yasemin Nur Ural) appeared with Secular Studies (Brill).

It includes contributions by the editors (next to a joint introduction, three essays each focusing on the material, affective and atmospheric dimensions of secularity).

Here is a link to the introduction: https://brill.com/view/journals/secu/7/2/article-p175_1.xml. Its aim is as follows:

This introduction to the special issue Material Secularities introduces our conceptualization of secularity as a principle of drawing boundaries through which the distinction between religious and non-religious becomes manifested. It calls detailed attention to the actual ways in which objects on the religion–secular boundary are re-signified and shifted into new spatial configurations, and the tensions and uncertainties that are entailed by these processes. We argue that such processes cannot be fully understood by returning to theories of social differentiation which tend to reify categorizations on a once and for all basis. What is needed is a material approach acknowledging that differentiation and signification are not merely abstract and unidirectional processes, but always work on and with tangible materials that constitute worlds of lived experience. This is what we seek to convey through the concept of material secularities.

The issue includes the following articles:

Donovan Schaefer: Our Westminster: Race and the Material Secular at Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery

Peter Bräunlein: Affective Spaces, a Piece of Furniture and the Transformation of Bourgeois Culture in the 19th CenturyThe Piano as a Boundary Object

Sana Chavoshian: Secular Atmosphere: Dust-Winds in Iran’s Landscapes of War

Gökçen Dinc: From Common Religious Media to Materialities of Superstition: How Folk Books Conveyed Reverence for Ali and Its Consequences in Turkey

Ernst van den Hemel: Magnifying Heritagized Religion in Miniature Parks: The Mosques and Churches of Madurodam and Miniatürk

Marian Burchardt offers an epilogue. Here you can find the issue and read a number of articles open access.

The issue is based on a workshop held by the editors on June 2023 at the Centre for Advanced Study on Multiple Secularities: https://religiousmatters.nl/religious_event/workshop-material-secularities/.

We plan to an online launch in the Fall.