Global Sceptical Publics

From non-religious print media to ‘digital atheism’

Edited by Jacob Copeman and Mascha Schulz

£30.00

ISBN: 9781800083455

Publication: December 08, 2022

Paperback £30.00 Open Access PDF £0.00 Hardback £50.00

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Global Sceptical Publics is the first major study of the significance of different media for the (re)production of non-religious publics and publicity. While much work has documented how religious subjectivities are shaped by media, until now the crucial role of diverse media for producing and participating in religion-sceptical publics and debates has remained under-researched. With some chapters focusing on locations hitherto barely considered by scholarship on non-religion, the book places in comparative perspective how atheists, secularists and humanists engage with media – as means of communication and forming non-religious publics, but also on occasion as something to be resisted. Its conceptually rich interdisciplinary chapters thereby contribute important new insights to the growing field of non-religion studies and to scholarship on media and materiality more generally.

Praise for Global Sceptical Publics

'When it comes to the burgeoning study of atheists, humanists, and the like, Global Sceptical Publics is just the volume we need. For unbelievers and secularists, media technologies and the promises of the public sphere have long been central to their practical aims and conceptual commitments alike. And now here, between two covers, is an analytically nuanced and empirically rich set of essays showing how and why. It deserves a prominent place on the shelf of any serious student of media, aesthetics, and non-religion.'
Matthew Engelke, Columbia University

'Global Sceptical Publics provides vital insight into the formation and transformation of non-religious identities, communities and publics through media – engaging some of the most significant and most under-researched topics in the sociology and anthropology of non-religion, and demonstrating their profound importance for addressing major questions in political philosophy. Global Sceptical Publics is an outstanding achievement and one of the most significant publications of recent years in the several fields it brings together.'
Lois Lee, University of Kent

'This vibrant collection offers a major conceptual incentive to rethink the non-religious from a material and corporeal angle. Importantly, non-religion is not reduced to a mere abstract and intellectual project, but instead shown to emerge through actual political-aesthetic practices and media representations. A marvellous intervention which liberates us from the straitjacket of the religious-secular binary!'
Birgit Meyer, Utrecht University

'Breaking free from the limitations of the religious-secular binary and approaching the study of non-religious phenomena from a material angle, the volume... stands as a seminal work, paving the way for a deeper understanding of the multifaceted dynamics between media, non-religion, and the complexities of contemporary human experiences.'
Reading Religion

Jacob Copeman is Research Professor, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and Distinguished Researcher (Oportunius).

Mascha Schulz is a postdoctoral research fellow on the ERC project ‘Religion and its Others in South Asia and the World (ROSA)’ and based at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Germany).

List of figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements

Foreword: the frustrating and wonderful ambiguity of sceptical publics
Joseph Blankholm

Introduction: Non-religion, atheism and sceptical publicity
Jacob Copeman and Mascha Schulz

Part I Aesthetics and visual culture of non-religion

1 Rationalist camera: non-religious techniques of vision in India
Jacob Copeman and John Hagström

2 Performing the secular: street theatre and songs as ‘secular media’ in Bangladesh and West Bengal
James Bradbury and Mascha Schulz

3 ‘There is no god, Summer’: a critical evaluation of Rick and Morty’s approach to atheism and nihilism
Frank Bosman

4 Aesthetics of the secular
Stefan Binder

5 Gender, affect and atheism on Arabic media
Natalie Khazaal

Part II Mediated scepticism: historical and contemporary trajectories

6 ‘Apostates’: a new secularising public in the United Kingdom
John Hagström

7 Satan, sex and an Islamist zombie apocalypse: religion-sceptical publicity and and blasphemy in Turkish cartoons and comic books
Pierre Hecker

8 From campaign and dispute to ‘public service broad/narrowcasting’: secularist and atheist media strategies in Britain and America – a contextual history
David Nash

Part III Atheism and scepticism in a digital age

9 Intimate deconversions: digital atheist counterpublics on Reddit
Eric Chalfant

10 Pumpkins at the centre of Mars and circlejerks: Do atheists find community online?
Evelina Lundmark

11 From ‘talking among’ to ‘talking back’? Online voices of young Moroccan non-believers
Lena Richter

12 Ungodly visuals: confrontations, religion and affect in the everyday lives of atheists in India
Neelabh Gupta

Afterword: paradox laxity and unwordy indifference:non-religious figurations beyond emancipatory narratives and declamatory genres
Johannes Quack

Index