ChangingTurkey.com is currently looking for an academic book reviewer for ‘Choreographies of Shared Sacred Sites: Religion, Politics, and Conflict Resolution‘ edited by Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey (Columbia University Press, 2014). PhD candidates and academics working on related themes are warmly welcome to send their CV to ChangingTurkey@gmail.com
We require a maximum 1000 word-long review which explains the main contributions of the book to the state-of-the-art. We strongly encourage book reviews that put forward constructive criticisms about the book’s main arguments, some important issues that the book may have neglected, the dialogue (or lack thereof) between individual book chapters, and so on. The deadline for review submission is proposed as 16 March 2015.
Information about the book
This anthology explores the dynamics of shared religious sites in Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus, and 
Algeria, indicating where local and national stakeholders maneuver between competition and cooperation, coexistence and conflict. Contributors probe the notion of coexistence and the logic that underlies centuries of “sharing,” exploring when and why sharing gets interrupted–or not–by conflict, and the policy consequences.
These essays map the choreographies of shared sacred spaces within the framework of state-society relations, juxtaposing a site’s political and religious features and exploring whether sharing or contestation is primarily religious or politically motivated. Although religion and politics are intertwined phenomena, the contributors to this volume understand the category of “religion” and the “political” as devices meant to distinguish between the theological and confessional aspects of religion and the political goals of groups. Their comparative approach better represents the transition in some cases of sites into places of hatred and violence, while in other instances they remain noncontroversial. The essays clearly delineate the religious and political factors that contribute to the context and causality of conflict at these sites and draw on history and anthropology to shed light on the often rapid switch from relative tolerance to distress to peace and calm
