Control, Coercion, and Constraint - The Role of Religion in Overcoming and Creating Structures of Dependency

This volume is based on a lecture series that was held during the academic year 2021-2022 at the University of Bonn. Its contributors explore the role of religion in overcoming and creating structures of dependency from different disciplines and academic backgrounds.
The question of the role of religion in justifying, perpetuating, modifying, and abolishing slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependency is still a much-debated topic within historical and social sciences. The equality of all human beings before God, gods, or the divine is deeply rooted in religious thought. Conversion to one or another religion has, therefore, often led to critique, transformation, and even abolition of existing social structures, institutions, and their corresponding dependencies.
Yet religious discourse has also been used to justify the subjection of individuals and whole peoples. In addition, throughout history, religious institutions themselves have often mirrored the social hierarchies and inequalities of the surrounding societies. Concomitantly, practitioners of these religious traditions have created systems of dependency within their own institutional, social, legal, and spiritual structures. This volume makes clear that not even the metaphysical world is free of dependencies: influential strands of almost all major religious traditions envisage hierarchies of gods, angels, demons, and other metaphysical beings.

About the author

Wolfram Kinzig and Barbara Loose, University of Bonn, Germany.

Product details

• Assisted by: Wolfram Kinzig (Editor), Loose (Editor), Barbara Loose (Editor)
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.12.2024
• EAN: 9783111380438
• ISBN: 978-3-11-138043-8
• No. of pages: 333
• Weight: 697 g
• Illustrations: 32 b/w and 10 col. ill.
• Series: Dependency and Slavery Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Emanzipation, Religion, Verfolgung, History, Emancipation, European History, Sklaverei, Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft, comparative religion, Social & cultural history, Religion: general, General & world history, History of Religion, auseinandersetzen, HIS000000 HISTORY / General, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, Slavery, Persecution, HIS037030 HISTORY / Modern / General, REL000000 RELIGION / General, REL017000 RELIGION / Comparative Religion, REL033000 RELIGION / History