Social Science Research Council
Jason C. Bivins is an Associate Professor and is Associate Head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2008) and The Fracture of Good Order: Christian Antiliberalism and the Challenge to American Politics (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). He is currently working on two monographs. The first is "Spirits Rejoice!": Jazz and American Religion, and the second is Embattled Majority, a genealogy of the rhetoric of "religious bigotry" in conservative Christian politics since the 1960s.
Politics is not reducible to elections, of course. Yet these contests—particularly the quadrennial spectacle that is a Presidential race—usually conclude with opportunities for political reflection. Nowhere is this more evident than in the blogosphere, now crowded with academics’ reflections mere days following the tallying of votes. [...]
Read the rest of The cooling embers.Clifford Geertz said it first (riffing on Ryle): the difference between twitches and winks could only be accomplished by “sorting out the structures of signification” through “thick” descriptions. So there she is, winking at all of us, giving a “shout out” to third graders (no spousal dap that could be misconstrued as a “terrorist fist jab”). What, then, is the “speck of behavior” and “fleck of culture” that gives rise to Governor Palin’s winks? And what “webs of significance” have academics made from the lines spooled out in this nasty season, from the often moribund dyad “religion and politics”? [...]
Read the rest of A speck, a fleck, and—voila!—a governor.
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