Bryan Turner

The Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia provides a contemporary and comprehensive overview of religion in contemporary Asia. Compiled and introduced by Bryan S. Turner and Oscar Salemink, the Handbook contains specially written chapters by experts in their respective fields. The wide-ranging introduction covers issues of Orientalism and the historical development of the discipline of religious studies. It discusses the centuries of interaction among religious traditions in Asia and concepts such as high and low traditions, folk and formal religions, and popular and orthodox developments. Offering basic information about religious cultures in Asia while also addressing the complexity of employing a Western terminology in societies with radically different traditions, this advanced-level reference work is essential reading for students, researchers, and scholars of Asian religions, sociology, anthropology, Asian studies, and religious studies.

BRYAN S. TURNER AND KAMALUDEEN MOHAMED NASR, EDS.

Taking a thematic approach, Turner draws together his writings that explore the relationship between Islam and the ideas of Western social thinkers. He engages with the broad categories of capitalism, orientalism, modernity, gender, and citizenship, among others, as he examines how Muslims adapt to changing times and how Islam has come to be managed by those in power. 

HELENA ONNUDOTTIR, ADAM POSSAMAI, AND BRYAN S. TURNER

This book explores religious and spiritual changes that have been taking place among Indigenous populations in Australia, New Zealand, and some Pacific Islands over the last fifteen years. Drawing on local social and political debates, while contextualizing the discussion in a wider global discourse on changing religious affiliation, especially the growth of Islam, the authors present a critical analysis of the persistent images and discourses on Aboriginal religions and spirituality. This book takes a comparative approach to other Indigenous and minority groups to explore contemporary changes in religious affiliation that have raised questions about resistance to modernity, challenges to the nation state, and/or rejection of Christianity or Islam. It also offers a major contribution to the growing debate on conversion to Islam among Indigenous peoples. 

Religion and politics are fundamental dimensions of human society, yet they are often at loggerheads. The apparent differences are deceptive, because the two are inevitably entwined-both deeply concerned with control or regulation of everyday affairs. Following in the tradition of Max Weber's historical and comparative study of religions, this book explores the many ways in which religion and politics are both combined and separated across different societies. Through a variety of case studies, Turner explores different manifestations of secularization and how the separation of church and state is either compromised or abandoned. He considers how different states manage religion in culturally and religiously diverse societies and concludes with a discussion of the contemporary problems facing the liberal theory of freedom of religion. 

Religion is now high on the public agenda, and recent events have focused the world's attention on Islam in particular. In this book, Turner provides a unique historical and comparative analysis of the place of religion in the emergence of modern secular society. He considers the problems of multicultural, multifaith societies and legal pluralism in terms of citizenship and the state, placing special emphasis on the problems of defining religion and the sacred in the secularization debate. Other issues he explores are the communications revolution, the rise of youth spirituality, feminism, piety, religious revival, cosmopolitanism, religion, and globalization. Turner concludes with a pessimistic analysis of the erosion of social values in modern society and a gloomy outlook on whether new religions are able to provide 'social repair.' 

The collection explores the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in contemporary social theory from the standpoint of classical European sociology and from the broader perspective of transatlantic social science. To this end, the volume brings together contributions from prominent scholars in the field, providing a range of perspectives on the continuing relevance of Bourdieu's thought to substantive problems in both social and political analysis, and pays special attention to Bourdieu's roots in classical sociology by closely examining his intellectual connections with Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. By presenting an introduction to Bourdieu's fundamental concepts (field, habitus, capital, and practice), this volume also serves as an introduction to modern sociology. The text includes an interview with Bourdieu which was not previously translated into English.

Over the last three decades Turner's essays and other contributions have led to a fundamental reconsideration of the debate about individual and social rights in social theory. Here he explores the virtues and duties that could be associated with human rights through a discussion of cosmopolitanism. In particular, he addresses the debate about modern citizenship inspired by T. H. Marshall; the globalization of human rights; national sovereignty; the relationship between religion and conceptions of rights; participation and exclusion; and the concept of social virtue. Turner's work compares in its breadth and scope with that of his classical forebears, Weber and Durkheim, and offers a contemporary pertinence to questions of citizenship and human rights in a globalized and post-Cold War world.