The edited volume ‘Material Perspectives on Religion, Conflict, and Violence. Things of Conflict’, which is edited by Lucien van Liere and Erik Meinema, has just been published open access by Brill in their Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion series. Click here to download the book.

The book was envisioned after Lucien van Liere and Erik Meinema organized a seminar on religion, conflict, and materiality at Utrecht University in November 2019, which was supported by the ‘Religious Matters in an Entangled World’ program. The book contains chapters written by Younes Saramifar, Daan Oostveen, Tammy Wilks, Lucien van Liere and Joram Tarusarira, as well as ‘Religious Matters’ members Christoph Baumgartner, Margreet van Es, and Erik Meinema. The book also features an afterword written by Birgit Meyer.

Abstract

How do objects become contested in settings characterized by (violent) conflict? Why are some things contested by religious actors? How do religious actors mobilize things in conflict situations and how are conflict and violence experienced by religious groups? This volume explores relations between materiality, religion, and violence by drawing upon two fields of scholarship that have rarely engaged with one another: research on religion and (violent) conflict and the material turn within religious studies. This way, this volume sets the stage for the development of new conceptual and methodological directions in the study of religion-related violent conflict that takes materiality seriously.

Thumbnail: Section of the book cover of van Liere, L. & Meinema, E. Material Perspectives on Religion, Conflict, and Violence. Things of Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 2022).