Wednesday 16:00-16:30
Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
04 October 2006
SHIFTING DEMOGRAPHY Eric Kaufmann, Lecturer in Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College and author of The End of Secularisation in the West? discusses the rise of religion through demographic advantage.
Eric's work looks at the idea that "a combination of higher religious fertility and immigration will lead to a growth in the religious population of the most secular nations of Europe" and this population will exceed the numbers of people who desert their religion. His findings suggest that the population of the developed world will become increasingly religious (and conservative) in the long-term, reversing decades - even centuries - of liberal secularisation.
MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS "Few modern innovations have spread quite so quickly as the cell phone. This technology has transformed communication throughout the world. Mobile telecommunications have had a dramatic effect in many regions, but perhaps nowhere more than for low-income populations in countries such as Jamaica, where in the last few years many people have moved from no phone to cell phone."
Laurie Taylor is joined by Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London and co-author of The Cell Phone to explore the impact of mobile communications in poor communities.
Additional information:
Eric Kaufmann, Lecturer in Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University College London
The End of Secularisation in the West?
Paper by Erik Kaufmann given at last week's conference: Political Demography: Ethnic, National and Religious Dimensions at LSE. The research and its implications appear in an article for new issue of Prospect magazine (publication 20 October to be confirmed).
Professor Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London
The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication
by Heather Horst, Daniel Miller
Publisher: Berg Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1845204018
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