We are still looking for another paper or two for this session, so if you are interested, please let us know.
The secular nation-state is in many respects the normative political institution that structures the contemporary international system. Despite their stated secularism, however, many states nevertheless intervene in the religious sphere in a variety of ways, blurring the putative distinction between “church” and “state.” Beyond such interventions, moreover, other forms of identity, including gender, ethnic, national, and religious, are bound up with the state in collective memory, popular discourse, and everyday practice. Arguably, then, political-territorial institutions intersect with different formulations of identity in a dynamic process of mutual constitution. Making sense of the “significance and meaning” of the territorial state in the modern world therefore necessitates paying attention to such concerns, particularly vis-à-vis the question of religion.
The aim of this session is to explore issues related to the kinds spatialities, for example, that emerge out of the connections between religion, the state, ethno-national identity, gender, class, and/or other forms of subjectivity? What are the implications for theories of secularism? And how might recognition of the “hidden” imbrications of the state and the sacred shape the way we approach the problem of nationalism?
If you are interested, please contact Vincent Artman (artmanvm@miamioh.edu) with your abstract and AAG PIN.