Abstract

During the last decades, the world has been facing tremendous political transformations and new risks: epidemics such as HIV/Aids have had destabilizing effect on the caretaking role of kin; in post-socialist countries political reforms have made unemployment a new source of insecurity. Furthermore, the state’s withdrawal from providing social security is taking place throughout the world. One response to these developments has been increased migration, which poses further challenges to kinship-based social support systems. This innovative volume focuses on the ambiguous role of religious networks in social security and traces the interrelatedness of religious networks and state and family support systems. Particularly timely, it describes these challenges as well as social security arrangements in the context of globalization and migration. The wide range of case studies from various parts of the world that examine various religious groups offers an important comparative contribution to the understanding of religious networks as providers of social security.

Carolin Leutloff-Grandits is currently a research associate at the Center for Southeastern European History at the University of Graz and a lecturer at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna. She has conducted research in Croatia and Serbia and has published on forced migration, social security, confl ict and reconciliation.

Tatjana Thelen is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and directs the research project “Local state and social security in rural Hungary, Romania and Serbia” funded by the Volkswagen foundation in Halle/Saale (Germany). She has conducted research in Hungary, Romania and Germany and has published on social security, social networks and inequality.

Anja Peleikis is a researcher at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany where she co-leads the project “After the Survivors. Performing the Holocaust and the Jewish Past in the New Yad Vashem Museum and in the Jewish Museum, Berlin.” She has conducted research in Lebanon, Lithuania and Berlin/Jerusalem and has published on transnational migration, roots tourism, collective memory and social security.

“The editors of this book give exceptional added value to its eleven essays.”  ·  JRAI

“This volume offers a wide range of topics and methodological approaches…[and] gives an excellent insight into the manifold interconnectedness of religious networks in the (trans)national context.”  ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale

"[A] coherent set of theoretically interesting discussions based on sound empirical work … [to] contribute to some of the major issues of social anthropology."  ·  Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Max-Planck-Institute, Halle

"... a good range of ethnographic material and theoretical debate. The Introduction does a good job of binding the chapters together."  ·  Frances Pine, Goldsmiths College