Thinking about Religion, Law, and Politics

In Latin America

Biography of Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd teaches and writes on religion and politics, the
politics of human rights and the right to religious freedom, the legal
governance of religious diversity, US foreign relations, and the
international politics of the Middle East. Her work pursues an integrative
approach to the study of politics and religion that offers insight into
dilemmas of national and international governance involving difference,
governance, power, law, and pluralism. Hurd is the author of The Politics
of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious
Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015), both published by
Princeton, and co-editor of Politics of Religious Freedom and
Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age. She is co-PI, with Winnifred
Sullivan, on a Luce-supported collaborative research project “Politics of
Religion at Home and Abroad” (2016-2019) and co-organized the “Politics
of Religious Freedom” project (2011-2014). At Northwestern, Hurd directs
the Buffett Faculty Research Group on Global Politics & Religion, co-
directs a graduate certificate program in Religion & Global Politics, is a
core faculty member of the MENA Program, and teaches courses on
America and the world, religion and international relations, the Middle
East in global politics, and religion and law in cross-cultural perspective.
Hurd is a regular contributor to public discussions on US foreign policy
and the politics of religious diversity, and has written for Boston Review,
Public Culture, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera
America, Globe and Mail, and The Monkey Cage. In 2015-16 Hurd is a
Faculty Fellow at the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and is serving on
Northwestern’s Global Strategy Task Force, charged with defining a
global engagement strategy for Northwestern in the coming decade. Hurd
has a courtesy appointment in Religious Studies at NU.
Problematica central
El autor se centra en como las historias y los procesos como la
globalización de la secularidad europea han influido en los modos locales
de gobernanza colectiva a la vez que considera aspectos de la
experiencia local y regional en el caso de américa latina, como el papel
de los indígenas y las religiones afrodecendientes que pueden desafiar,
ser indiferentes o trabajar fuera de las historias y experiencias europeas
APORTES
Expone la brecha entre la religión como se interpreta por razones de
poder, incluida la ley, y un campo más amplio de prácticas religiosas de
individuos y comunidades en el terreno, aborda esta posibilidad al
contrastar la construcción legal de la religión en la Corte Interamericana
de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) con las experiencias de los pueblos
La globalización de una secularidad y sensibilidad política y jurídica de
Taylor.
ENCONTRA
Lo desarrollado por el autor es insuficiente en la medida que las historias
y experiencias latinoamericanas se apartan de manera significativa de la
influencia occidental. En America Latina desde tiempos coloniales la
religión ha sido un pensamiento de las sociedades como una forma de
imponer significados hasta llegar a cobrar legitimidad disimulando las
relaciones de dominación que hay detrás y generando una
homogeneización cultural en detrimento de los pueblos indígenas