Contesting Authorities over Body Politics: The Religious/Secular Tension in Germany, Israel, and Turkey
This research is concerned with how conflicts between religion and secularity (i.e., secular and religious discourses, norms, actors, and institutions) are shaped differently in differing socio-legal contexts in the Middle East and Europe. Specifically, we will examine the way religion and secularity shape disputes and are shaped by disputes over “body politics,” that is, the laws governing what is permissible to do to the body and who has the authority to decide. Our study focuses on Germany, Israel, and Turkey. All three countries are allegedly secular states with monotheistic religious traditions, but each has its own understanding of the relationship between secularity, religion, and state law. Specifically, the proposed research will focus on current legal controversies that have erupted around the practice of male circumcision, posthumous organ donation, and abortion in Israel, Germany, and Turkey.
In contrast to more conventional studies of the relationship between state and religion, which privilege top-down constitutional analysis, our socio-legal micro-case study of body politics is based on a bottom-up approach. It demonstrates how the tension between secularity and religion rarely maps onto familiar distinctions such as between “passive” and “assertive” secularism (Kuru, 2009) and that secularity in different countries (no less than religion) presupposes a complex set of taken for granted assumptions about the physical body and about bodily authority. Understanding these complex relationships is especially important given significant changes in the role of religion in the public sphere in Germany, Turkey, and Israel and new geo-political dynamics between the Middle East and Europe.
Grant funding agency: German-Israeli Foundation (GIF)
Team
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Prof. Dr. Gökce Yurdakul, PhD
Gökce Yurdakul is Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict at the Humboldt University.
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Prof. Dr. Shai Lavi
Shai Lavi, the director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, is a professor in the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University.
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Gala Rexer, M.A.
Gala Rexer is the project’s research coordinator. She is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin
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Shvat Eilat
Since spring 2016, Shvat Eilat has been research assistant of Prof. Shai Lavi in the project.
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Morgana Karch
Morgana Karch is currently finishing her M.A. in European media studies. In the research project, she transcribes and translates interview material.
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Burcu Halaç
Burcu Halaç completed her undergraduate studies in the Translation and Interpreting Department at Bogazici University and was involved in compiling the project’s literature database.
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David Schulz
David conducted interviews on abortion in Germany and was involved in compiling the project’s literature database.
Publications
Yurdakul, Gökce, Gala Rexer, Shvat Eilat and Nil Mutler (2019) "Contested Authorities over Life Politics: Religious-Secular Tensions in Abortion Debates in Germany, Turkey, and Israel" Comparative Sociology, 18 (5) 706-734
Yurdakul, Gökçe (2019): Jews, Muslims and Self-representations: The Headscarf and Ritual Male Circumcision Debates. In: Meltem Kulaçatan und Harry Harun Behr (Hg.): Migration, Religion, Gender und Bildung. Beiträge zu einem erweiterten Verständnis von Intersektionalität. 1. Auflage. Bielefeld: transcript; transcript Verlag (Kultur und soziale Praxis).
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4451-7/migration-religion-gender-und-bildung/
Yurdakul, Gökçe (2016): Jews, Muslims and the Ritual Male Circumcision Debate: Religious Diversity and Social Inclusion in Germany. In: Social Inclusion 4 (2), S. 77. DOI: 10.17645/si.v4i2.494.
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/494
(republished) Yurdakul, Gökçe (2018): Jews, Muslims and the Ritual Male Circumcision Debate: Religious Diversity and Social Inclusion in Germany. In: Jan-Jonathan Bock und Sharon Macdonald (Hg.): Refugees welcome? Difference and diversity in a changing Germany. First edition. New York: Berghahn Books.
(translated) Yurdakul, Gökçe (2018): Beschneidungsdebatten. In: Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç und Ármin Langer (Hg.): Fremdgemacht & Reorientiert. Jüdisch-muslimische Verflechtungen. 1. Auflage. Berlin: Yilmaz-Günay.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323199663_Beschneidungsdebatten
Boas, Hagain; Lavi, Shai J. (2018): Organ donation, brain death and the limits of liberal bioethics. In: Hagai Boas, Shai Joshua Lavi, Yael Hashiloni-Dolev, Dani Filc und Nadav Davidovitch (Hg.): Bioethics and biopolitics in Israel. Socio-legal, political and empirical analysis. Cambridge, United Kingdom, New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
GIF Workshops & Conferences
Contested Authorities over the Body: The State, the Secular, and the Religious (October 16 /17, 2017)
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Pascale Fournier (University of Ottawa)
“Regulating Bodies & State Recognition: Jewish and Muslim Women in Contested Spaces in the West”
Keynote Lecture in the GIF workshop can be found here.
Discussants:
Yofi Tirosh (Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and Sapir Academic College) and
Anna Korteweg (University of Toronto, Department of Sociology)
Introduction and moderation:
Gökce Yurdakul (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Participants of "Contested Authorities over the Body: The State, the Secular, and the Religious" Workshop at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, October 2017
Media & Public Appearances