Recensie: Religion, Gender and Citizenship

Abstract

In this review essay, I discuss interdisciplinary and comparative research that is taking place in the fields of religious, gender, and sexuality studies. I make a case for the academic and political relevance of research projects that are interdisciplinary – and that therefore generate multi-layered knowledge by starting from various points of view – as well as projects that are comparative of nature in the sense that they do not isolate a specific social group or trend but reveal certain specificities through comparison. As a religious studies scholar interested in the construction of differences (religious, ethnic, gender, sexuality), I believe it is increasingly important to study and compare different identities and communities in contemporary diverse West-European contexts. Such comparative research provides insights in the many commonalities, but also variances, between various groups of people, not as essential differences, but as differences-being-made-and-in-the-making. To give an example: How and why are the identities and experiences of Christian, Muslim and secular women (or youth, men, or LGBTQ’s) similar or divergent? Interdisciplinary comparative research may yield insights into unexpected complexities but also possibilities for political solidarity. Thinking through the above questions, I will start this essay with a review of the 2016 book by Line Nyhagen and Beatrice Halsaa, Religion, Gender and Citizenship: Women of Faith, Gender Equality and Feminism. I then point at some other research examples on religion, gender and sexuality across different European contexts that are exemplifying the type of interdisciplinary and comparative research that I find to be so crucial.