Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion

Editors:
,
Luigi Berzano
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Giuseppe Giordan
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Enzo Pace
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The purpose of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion is to investigate the "new" role of religion in the contemporary world, which is characterized by cultural pluralism and religious individualism.

It is the aim of the series to combine different methods within the social scientific study of religion. Contributions to the series employ an interdisciplinary and comparative approach at an international level, to describe and interpret the complexity of religious phenomena within different geopolitical situations, highlighting similarities and discontinuities. Dealing with a single theme in each volume, the series intends to tackle the relationship between the practices and the dynamics of everyday life and the different religions and spiritualities, within the framework of post-secular society. All contributions are welcome, both those studying organizational aspects and those exploring individual religiosity.

The series has published an average of one volume per year over the last five years.
ISSN:
1877-5233
Cover Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion
Editors
Enzo Pace, Luigi Berzano and Giuseppe Giordan

Editorial Board
Peter Beyer, University of Ottawa, Canada
Anthony Blasi, Tennessee State University, USA
Olga Breskaya, University of Padova, Italy
Roberto Cipriani, Università di Roma Tre, Italy
Xavier Costa, Universidad de Valencia, Spain
Franco Garelli, Università di Torino, Italy
Gustavo Guizzardi, Università di Padova, Italy
Dick Houtman, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Solange Lefebvre, Université de Montréal, Canada
Patrick Michel, CNRS, Paris, France
Ari Pedro Oro, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Adam Possamai, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Ole Riis, Agder University, Norway
Susumu Shimazono, University of Tokyo, Japan
Jean-Paul Willaime, EPHE, Sorbonne, France
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, University of Leipzig, Germany
Linda Woodhead, Lancaster University, UK
Fenggang Yang, Purdue University, USA
Sinisa Zrinscak, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion

Volume 16 (Forthcoming 2025)

From Cases To Scandals: Sexual Abuse In The Catholic Church
Edited by Céline Béraud, EHESS-Paris, and Giuseppe Giordan, University of Padova

The sexual abuse crisis is often described as the greatest threat that the Catholic Church has had to face since the Reformation. The tremendous number of cases reported and the huge public attention they have attracted present a novelty within historical, socio-political, and ecclesiastical perspectives. In United States, several waves of cases have occured since the 1980s, and since the mid-1990s, the phenomenon has been reported continiously in other nations in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as other religious traditions. Nevertheless, in some countries, the Catholic Church still manages to avoid and cover-up the scandals even though the cases involving Catholic clergy are often proliferating.

Recent analysis of the sexual abuse crisis has highlighted that the sexual misconduct of the clergy can be understood as a problem not only of isolated deviant individuals but as a structural and organizational issue of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the experience of different national churches suggests that socio-cultural, legal and political factors are implicated in the circumstances under which cases become scandals in the first place, as well as the strategies and mechanisms of public denunciation able to raise collective awareness, engagement and mobilization.

Against this background, we invite contributions leveraging a broad range of disciplinary approaches, theories and methods in analyzing this topic, and in particular, contributions which provide a comparative analysis of different national churches by contrasting the Catholic example with scandals with other religious groups or scandals in secular institutions. In particular, we invite papers dealing with the following issues:
• sociocultural, legal and religious conditions under which a case becomes a scandal
• frameworks for denounciation/interpretation of sexual abuse crisis in parishes and media
• consequences of scandals on religious life (disaffiliation, practice, Church's moral authority, etc.)
• Vatican policy and sexual abuse crisis at local, national and global level
• role of social media, TV documentaries and press in the political, moral and ecclesial mobilization concerning sexual abuses
• reporting of sexual abuse and role of experts (therapists, social scientists, victims’ support organizations, etc.)
• strategies of recognition of sexual abuses: change/innovation/resistance/exit strategies

Please send proposals (400 words) and a brief bio to Olga Breskaya

• Deadline Submission of proposals: July 31, 2023
• Deadline Notification of acceptance: September 30, 2023
• Deadline completed manuscripts (7,000 words): March 30, 2024
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