Diversity, Fear and Religions

Cultural Accommodation in a Globalized World

Gennaro Gervasio, Maria Chiara Giorda, Paola Perucchini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Law
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040435441
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

This book investigates ways 'the Other' can be both a cause of and an answer to religious and cultural fears. The multi-layered question of cultural and religious diversity has received some attention recently both in academic and policy circles. The authors of this work address this issue by focusing on fears and phobias, and the ways they are historically and sociologically produced and reproduced in a Global Era. The volume presents examples of fears related to different cultures and religions from a multidisciplinary perspective. Some of these have been provoked or sublimated by religious fundamentalisms, and a double ignorance, that is, ignorance of and about fundamentalisms, which have helped feed these collective concerns. Through a sample of stereotypes, mystifications and simplifications, the authors look at Islam as a focal lens for showing the current power of globalized collective fears. The collection also explores possible cultural antidotes to these phobias, such as the need for awareness and familiarity with diversities, based on an education accepting of interculturality and plural citizenship. The book will be essential reading for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Intercultural Pedagogy, History, Anthropology and Sociology of Religions, Law and Religion, Contemporary Islam, Migration Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Ethnography.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Introduction
• 1. Fear in Western Societies? An Historical Approach to Occidental Construction of “Fear”
• 2. Religious Fear in Greek Antiquity: Plutarch's on Superstition
• 3. Fearful New World
• 4. From Lampedusa to Kassel: Migration, Art and the Ruins of Europe
• 5. White Mythologies in the Mediterranean: Mobility as a Tool for Dismantling Eurocentric Static Geographies
• 6. Migration, Islam, and Demographic Fears: The Narrative of Replacement in Italian Politics
• 7. Becoming a Refugee. Ethnographic Notes from a Church Asylum Case in Germany
• 8. Displaced Populations As Other: A Learning Approach to Contrast Fears and Promote Human Rights
• 9. Intercultural Education: Why It Is Necessary, Its Characteristics And Its Objectives
• 10. Shout Out/Shut Up!
• Index