Law, Religion and Homosexuality: book launch and talk

Wednesday 18 June 2014, 7.00pm to 8:30pm

Speaker: Dr Paul Johnson, University of York, Dr Robert Vanderbeck, University of Leeds and Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society

Location: Conway Hall, London

Admission: Free with wine reception

• Why can organised religions lawfully discriminate against people in employment on the grounds of their sexual orientation?
• Why can religious organisations legally refuse to provide gay men and lesbians with goods and services that are available to other people?
• How have religious groups contributed to shaping the National Curriculum to exclude explicit reference to homosexuality and same-sex relationships?
• Why do state-funded schools continue to have a right to teach about same-sex relationships according to their particular ‘religious ethos’?
• How have anti-gay religious groups helped shape the criminal offence of ‘incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation’ to make it narrower than the offence outlawing racial hatred?
• Why are same-sex couples excluded by default from solemnising marriage according to religious rites or in places of worship?

These are some of the questions explored in Law, Religion and Homosexuality, a new book by Paul Johnson and Robert Vanderbeck, which examines the ways that religion continues to shape law relating to sexual orientation in the UK.

The book argues that, despite claims to the contrary, religion continues to exert considerable authority in the legislative processes of the UK and, as a result, frequently limits sexual orientation equality.

Review of the York International Social Sciences Post-Graduate Conference 2014: Access and Opportunity

The annual York Social Sciences Post-Graduate Conference was held in the Innovation Centre on the University of York campus, 28th April 2014. As Prof. Ellen Annandale indicated in her opening address, the 2014 edition of the Post-Graduate conference was truly international. With universities across Europe (Poland, Finland, Netherlands and Russia) represented by their graduate researchers, as well as many UK institutions including Sheffield, Leeds, Goldsmiths, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leicester and Cambridge. In addition, the event was truly multidisciplinary with researchers in politics, sociology, history and anthropology participating. The organisers would like to extend their thanks to all those that travelled to York for the day.

The day began with a fascinating keynote from Dr. Mark Elliot entitled Big Data, Whose Data? Followed by the first panel comprising David Honeywell, Catherine Atkinson and Kathleen Bassett considering discourses on education and gender in the context of prisons, schools and correctional facilities. Our second panel, Elsa Saarikkomaki, Robert Rydzewski and Joanna Resiak, covered topics of social exclusion, private/public spaces and ethnic gentrification in Finland, Macedonia and Poland.

After lunch Nils Klowait, Sam Burgum and Mark Johnson presented papers on the politics of research practise, including issues around translation for academics in Russia, gaining access to documents in high-tech industries, and the importance of acknowledging one's epistemological and ontological framework when undertaking empirical research. Our final panel, Ingrida Kerusaukaite, Retna Hanani and Saumya Saxena, covered the political and legal status of refugees, access to universal healthcare in Indonesia, and the intersection of religious politics and cultural identities in India. This was followed our second keynote speaker, Prof. John Urry discussing his latest book: Offshoring.

The decision of best post-graduate paper was an extremely tough call, and many congratulations are in order for Saumya Saxena, who won with the final paper of the day entitled: Cultural Identities and Social Justice: the Politics of Personal Law in Post-Independence India.

Finally, the organisers would like to thank Keynote Speakers Dr. Mark Elliot and Prof. John Urry for travelling from Manchester and Lancaster to share their insights into Big Data and Offshoring respectively, as well as our twelve postgraduate panellists. We are also grateful to the York post-graduate community who worked hard to make the event a huge success. 360-odd days until the 2015 event!

Jack Denham, Will Paterson and Piotr Maron.

Report on the annual conference of the Association for Ethnicity and Nationalism

Gonul Bozoglu, a PhD student in the sociology department recently participated in the annual conference of the Association for Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) on ‘Nationalism and Belonging’ at the London School of Economics on 1-3 April. This was a great opportunity to get to grips with the ways in which political theorists, economists and others think about nationalism and to become familiar with some of the latest ideas about belonging as a London School of Economics, LSE new way of thinking about identity. She particularly enjoyed sessions about the politics of national days (in Scandinavia) and theories of belonging.

A number of the sessions related to new ideas about the complexities of belonging and provided really interesting ways of thinking. There were also many sessions focusing on particular areas of the world, such as a session on the Middle East and Gonul’s own session on Turkey, where she co-presented ideas from a forthcoming publication about historical nostalgias and contemporary politics in relation to museum representations in Istanbul and Ankara.

Museum Narratives event report

Gonul Bozoglu, a PhD student in the sociology department reflects on the ‘Museum Narratives’ event held on 7th March.

There were two key speakers Dr. Sheila Watson from the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and Dr. Geoff Cubitt from the Department of History at the University of York. Both of them brought different perspectives to bear on the question of how museums create narratives about history. 

Dr. Watson talked about how museums in different countries create stories about national origins. She focused on a number of case studies drawn from the Eunamus research programme (http://www.ep.liu.se/eunamus/), for example the Harbiye Military Museum in Istanbul. Dr Watson explained how museums create implicit narratives that relate to contemporary identities: ethnic, political and historical, and how this plays into questions of global politics. Dr. Cubitt discussed his work on the Bi-centenary of the Abolition of Slavery in Britain and showed how the abolition and slavery itself was turned into narrative through techniques of museum display.

In the discussion afterwards, in response to questions, the speakers reflected on some of the histories that they explored, and reflected on the ways in which ‘narrative’ works as an analytical framework for understanding the ways in which museums represent history and identity.

Withholding and Withdrawing Treatment from Patients in a Vegetative or Minimally Conscious State

Friday 9 May 2014, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Speaker: 

We are pleased to welcome as our Keynote Speaker Mr Justice (Sir Jonathan) Baker of the High Court Family Division who has presided over a number of highly influential cases in the Court of Protection

Speakers will include:

• Mr Justice (Sir Jonathan) Baker (Keynote Speaker) 
• Professor Penney Lewis, Centre for Medical Law and Ethics, Dickson Poon School of Law, Kings College London 
• Professor Derick Wade, Consultant in Neurological Rehabilitation, Oxford Centre for Enablement 
• Professor Celia Kitzinger, Director of the York Chronic Disorders of Consciousness (CDoC) Research Centre, Sociology Department, 
• University of York 
• Dr Stephen Holland, CDoC Research Centre, Philosophy Department, University of York 
• Professor Simon Halliday, CDoC Research Centre, Law School, University of York 
• Professor Jenny Kitzinger, Director of the Cardiff Chronic Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre, University of Cardiff 

Full information and a registration form is online at http://www.york.ac.uk/sociology/about/news-and-events/department/2014/withdrawing-treatment/

Prof Wooffitt's PhD Graduates published

Two of Prof Robin Wooffitt's PhD graduates have had chapters published in a new book.  Talking with the Spirits is edited by Jack Hunter and David Luke and includes chapters by both Dr Hannah Gilbert and Dr Tamlyn Ryan.

Talking With the Spirits is a cross-cultural survey of contemporary spirit mediumship. The diverse contributions cover a wide-range of ethnographic contexts, from Spiritualist séances in the United Kingdom to self-mortification rituals in Singapore and Taiwan, from psychedelic spirit incorporation in the Amazonian rainforest, to psychic readings in online social spaces

The book is available for purchase on Amazon.co.uk

PhD Success

We are pleased to announce that three of our PhD students have met the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and the awards have been approved by the University Standing Committee on Assessment:

• Dr Triona Fitton (The quiet economy: an ethnographic study of the contemporary UK charity shop)
• Dr Graham Geddes (Keyboard warriors: the production of Islamophobic identity and an extreme world view within an online political community)
• Dr Melahat Sahin-Dikman (A Bourdieusian lens onto professions: a case study of architecture)