Today, in an age of globalization, religion represents a potent force in the lives of billions of people worldwide. Yet when social theorists examine the impact of globalization on contemporary religious movements, they tend to focus on issues such as Islamic fundamentalism and threats to US or global security. This collection of essays takes a different approach, analyzing - with special reference to Asia - religion through lived experience. The key issues covered in the volume include: how religious impulses contribute to globalization; how religious groups and organizations repackage traditional beliefs for transcultural appeal; how religious adherents cope with external threats to identity; how new technologies are reshaping the nature of religious beliefs and images; and how local and global religious influences blend and/or clash. Far from religion being a subject of peripheral concern to globalization, the contributors demonstrate that from the most basic level of our interactions with the natural environment to the socio-political behavior of the "great religions" - and even to the profusion of folk and pop culture phenomena - the influence of religion upon globalization, and vice versa, is apparent at all levels.
Preface; Chapter 1: Introduction - Bei Dawei, Evangelos Voulgarakis and Derrick M. Nault; PART ONE: RELIGION IN GLOBAL AND TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: Chapter 2: Adam Smith and the Neo-Calvinist Foundations of Globalization - Christian Etzrodt; Chapter 3: Daniel Quinn on Religion: Saving the World through Anti-globalism? - Bei Dawei; Chapter 4: Globalized Religion: The Vedic Sacrifice ("Yajña") in Transcultural Public Spheres - Silke Bechler; PART TWO: COMPARATIVE AND PLURALISTIC APPROACHES: Chapter 5: Mary, Athena and Guanyin: What the Church, the Demos and the Sangha Can Teach Us about Religious Pluralism and Doctrinal Conformity to Socio-cultural Standards - Evangelos Voulgarakis; Chapter 6: The Globalization of the New Spirituality and its Expression in Japan: The Case of Mt Ikoma - Girardo Rodriguez Plasencia; Chapter 7: Globalization and Religious Resurgence: A Comparative Study of Bahrain and Poland - Magdalena Karolak and Nikodem Karolak; PART THREE: RELIGION IN TAIWAN: Chapter 8: Religion in the Media Age: A Case Study of Da Ai Dramas from the Tzu Chi Organization - Pei-Ru Liao; Chapter 9: "Techno Dancing Gods": Comicized Deity Images as Expressions of Taiwanese Cultural Identity - Thzeng Chi Hsiung and Tsai Chin Chia; Chapter 10: Rituals of Identity in "Alid" Belief: Siraya Religion in Taiwan since 1945 - Tiaukhai Iunn; List of Contributors
