D Mayrl
Biographic Data
| ID | 16977 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Mayrl |
| GIVEN NAMES | D |
| FAMILY NAME | Mayrl |
| SIGNATURE | MAYRL D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Colby College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6763-0547 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 203 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Governing During a Culture War: Religion and Local Government Officials’ Attitudes Toward Transgender Rights Policies in the United States
As battles over transgender rights play out at the local level, this study offers the first large‐scale analysis of religion and U.S. local government officials’ views on key transgender rights policies. Drawing on our 2023 national probability sample of U.S. municipal, county, and school district officials, we examine officials’ attitudes toward policies related to restroom access and gender markers on driver's licenses. We find that religious a…
The State and Soul of Intellectual Property Law
Theorizing Subdisciplinary Exchange: Historical Sociology, Ethnography, and the Case of SSHA
What happens at the point of interchange between scholarly communities? We examine this question by investigating the case of growing ties between historical sociology and ethnography, two social scientific methods that once seemed to have little in common. Drawing on methodological writings by ethnographers and original interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we argue that these ties have been shaped by structural and methodological …
The Funk of White Souls: Toward a Du Boisian Theory of the White Church
This article revisits the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois on the white church. Drawing on a synthetic reading of his scholarship on white Christianity, I argue that Du Bois conceives of the white church as a racialized organization that has been indelibly shaped by white supremacy. I then elaborate six mechanisms identified by Du Bois through which white churches further perpetuate white supremacy: legitimation, revisionism, inaction, segregation, mis…
Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level: Key Findings from a Survey of Religion and Local Elected Officials
Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in 'church-state' relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement req…
Visualizing the Expanding Space of Consecration in American Sociology, 1980–2020
This visualization explores changes in the scope and dynamics of consecration within American sociology by examining awards granted to members of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) constituent sections. Consecration is important because it signals quality to nonspecialists, boosts intellectual careers, and can be a crucial vector introducing various forms of inequality. We show that with ASA sections, the number of awards, multiple awa…
Religion at the Frontline: How Religion Influenced the Response of Local Government Officials to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Frontline officials (such as mayors and commissioners) are responsible for local-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States. Their actions and attitudes, either in support of or opposition to public health recommendations, have resulted in widespread variation in local-level pandemic response. Despite evidence that religion significantly impacts the general public’s response to the pandemic, the influence of religion on off…
Societal religiosity and the gender gap in political interest, 1990-2014
This manuscript examines the structural causes of the gender gap in political interest. In many countries, men are more interested in politics than women. Yet, in others, men and women prove equally interested. We explain this cross-national variation by focusing on the effects of societal religiosity. Since religion sustains the traditional gender order, contexts where societal religiosity is low undermine the taken-for-grantedness of this order…
The dejudicialization of religious freedom
Despite a recent trend toward the judicialization of religious freedom (JRF), both historical experience and theoretical considerations suggest 'dejudicialization' is likely at some point. Yet, dejudicialization has provoked a little comment, and even less theorization, among social scientists studying religious freedom. This article conceptualizes the dejudicialization of religious freedom (DRF) in institutionalist terms, examines the structural…
Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research
Scholars have taken a growing interest in what we call “culturalized religion”—that is, forms of religious identification, discourse, and expression that are primarily cultural in character, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual. This article aims to clarify our current thinking about these phenomena so as to facilitate future theoretical and empirical work. Drawing on recent work in the …
The Archive as a Social World
Conservative Innovators: How States Are Challenging Federal Power
What Do Historical Sociologists Do All Day? Analytic Architectures in Historical Sociology
Drawing on an original data set of over 15,000 in-text citations, we use quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyze 37 award-winning publications in historical sociology between 1995 and 2015. We show that historical sociology comprises no fewer than four distinct analytic architectures that rely on different kinds of sources and use evidence and theory in different ways. We find suggestive evidence that the recognition of these different…
A Secular Age beyond the West: Religion, Law, and the State in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, edited by Mirjam KÜNKLER, John Madeley, and SHYLASHRI SHANKAR
If you read one new book on secularization this year, it should be A Secular Age beyond the West. Mirjam Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar have compiled a marvelously coherent collection of essays that breaks important new ground in the comparative study of secularization. The book is conceived as a direct extension and test of the arguments made in philosopher Charles Taylor’s landmark study, A Secular Age. Taylor (who contributes an …
Negotiating the Politics of Diversity: A Symposium on Rogers Brubaker’s Grounds for Difference
Rogers Brubaker’s work has been a touchstone for the study of ethnicity, nationalism, and politics for more than a quarter-century. His recent book , Grounds for Difference, offers an important new theoretical statement on the politics and organization of cultural diversity. In this symposium, four prominent historical sociologists provide commentary on the possibilities and complexities of the book, with particular attention to their normative, …
Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School. By Benjamin Justice and Colin Macleod
Have a Little Faith is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the educational historian Benjamin Justice and the political philosopher Colin Macleod. The book adopts a “democratic perspective” (p. 20) on American educational history to answer the perennial question of what role religion should play in America’s public schools. Justice and Macleod conclude that American public schools need to do a better job of engaging with religion if they h…
The Judicialization of Religious Freedom: An Institutionalist Approach
Recent years have seen growing interest in the judicialization of religious freedom (JRF). In this article, I identify two distinct meanings of JRF, which are often conflated but which need to be kept separate. I then argue for a stronger institutionalist approach to JRF. An institutionalist approach focuses our attention on both the rules internal to courts, and the relationship of courts to administrative agencies, legislatures, and other gover…
Defining the State from within: Boundaries, Schemas, and Associational Policymaking
A growing literature posits the importance of boundaries in structuring social systems. Yet sociologists have not adequately theorized one of the most fraught and consequential sites of boundary-making in contemporary life: the delineation of the official edges of the government-and, consequently, of state from society. This article addresses that gap by theorizing the mechanisms of state boundary formation. In so doing, we extend culturalist the…
Family Formation and Returning to Institutional Religion in Young Adulthood
Institutional religious involvement wanes during young adulthood, but evidence suggests life-course factors such as family formation bring people back to religion. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Waves 1, 3, and 4), we examine how often young adults who were involved in institutional religion as adolescents return-measured by religious service attendance and religious affiliation-after leaving in emerging adul…
Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990-2008
Whither Secularism? - Christian Joppke, The Secular State under Siege: Religion and Politics in Europe and America (Cambridge, Polity Press2015)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
How Does the State Structure Secularization
Why do similar modern nations accord religion different roles in their public institutions? This paper engages this question by examining trends in religious instruction in the public schools of the United States and Australia from 1850 to 1950. I find that American education secularized farther and faster than Australian education because of its decentralized system of educational administration. In the United States, decentralized educational a…
No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education
Journal Article No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education Get access No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education, by RHONDA HUSTEDT JACOBSEN and DOUGLAS JACOBSEN. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 208 pp.; $29.95 USD (cloth). Damon Mayrl Damon Mayrl Universidad Carlos III de Madrid [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 75, Issue 1, SP…
Fields, Logics, and Social Movements: Prison Abolition and the Social Justice Field
This essay argues that field analyses of social movements can be improved by incorporating more insights from Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Bourdieu's concepts of logic, symbolic capital, illusio, and doxa can enrich social movement scholarship by enabling scholars to identify new objects of study, connect organizational- and individual-level effects, and shed new light on a variety of familiar features of social movements. I demonstrate this c…
When white people report racial discrimination: The role of region, religion, and politics
When white people report racial discrimination: The role of region, religion, and politics
Defining the State from within: Boundaries, Schemas, and Associational Policymaking
A growing literature posits the importance of boundaries in structuring social systems. Yet sociologists have not adequately theorized one of the most fraught and consequential sites of boundary-making in contemporary life: the delineation of the official edges of the government-and, consequently, of state from society. This article addresses that gap by theorizing the mechanisms of state boundary formation. In so doing, we extend culturalist the…
Religion and Higher Education: Current Knowledge and Directions for Future Research
In light of increased scholarly and public discussion about the proper position of religion in higher education, we take stock of existing social scientific studies to illuminate what we know-and what we don't know-about religion and higher education. We argue that research shows that college students are more religiously engaged than has traditionally been thought, but that this interest appears to be more broad than deep; that the college exper…
What Do Historical Sociologists Do All Day? Analytic Architectures in Historical Sociology
Drawing on an original data set of over 15,000 in-text citations, we use quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyze 37 award-winning publications in historical sociology between 1995 and 2015. We show that historical sociology comprises no fewer than four distinct analytic architectures that rely on different kinds of sources and use evidence and theory in different ways. We find suggestive evidence that the recognition of these different…
Family Formation and Returning to Institutional Religion in Young Adulthood
Institutional religious involvement wanes during young adulthood, but evidence suggests life-course factors such as family formation bring people back to religion. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Waves 1, 3, and 4), we examine how often young adults who were involved in institutional religion as adolescents return-measured by religious service attendance and religious affiliation-after leaving in emerging adul…
The Judicialization of Religious Freedom: An Institutionalist Approach
Recent years have seen growing interest in the judicialization of religious freedom (JRF). In this article, I identify two distinct meanings of JRF, which are often conflated but which need to be kept separate. I then argue for a stronger institutionalist approach to JRF. An institutionalist approach focuses our attention on both the rules internal to courts, and the relationship of courts to administrative agencies, legislatures, and other gover…
Religion at the Frontline: How Religion Influenced the Response of Local Government Officials to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Frontline officials (such as mayors and commissioners) are responsible for local-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States. Their actions and attitudes, either in support of or opposition to public health recommendations, have resulted in widespread variation in local-level pandemic response. Despite evidence that religion significantly impacts the general public’s response to the pandemic, the influence of religion on off…
The Archive as a Social World
Fields, Logics, and Social Movements: Prison Abolition and the Social Justice Field
This essay argues that field analyses of social movements can be improved by incorporating more insights from Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Bourdieu's concepts of logic, symbolic capital, illusio, and doxa can enrich social movement scholarship by enabling scholars to identify new objects of study, connect organizational- and individual-level effects, and shed new light on a variety of familiar features of social movements. I demonstrate this c…
The Funk of White Souls: Toward a Du Boisian Theory of the White Church
This article revisits the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois on the white church. Drawing on a synthetic reading of his scholarship on white Christianity, I argue that Du Bois conceives of the white church as a racialized organization that has been indelibly shaped by white supremacy. I then elaborate six mechanisms identified by Du Bois through which white churches further perpetuate white supremacy: legitimation, revisionism, inaction, segregation, mis…
Societal religiosity and the gender gap in political interest, 1990-2014
This manuscript examines the structural causes of the gender gap in political interest. In many countries, men are more interested in politics than women. Yet, in others, men and women prove equally interested. We explain this cross-national variation by focusing on the effects of societal religiosity. Since religion sustains the traditional gender order, contexts where societal religiosity is low undermine the taken-for-grantedness of this order…
Theorizing Subdisciplinary Exchange: Historical Sociology, Ethnography, and the Case of SSHA
What happens at the point of interchange between scholarly communities? We examine this question by investigating the case of growing ties between historical sociology and ethnography, two social scientific methods that once seemed to have little in common. Drawing on methodological writings by ethnographers and original interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we argue that these ties have been shaped by structural and methodological …
The dejudicialization of religious freedom
Despite a recent trend toward the judicialization of religious freedom (JRF), both historical experience and theoretical considerations suggest 'dejudicialization' is likely at some point. Yet, dejudicialization has provoked a little comment, and even less theorization, among social scientists studying religious freedom. This article conceptualizes the dejudicialization of religious freedom (DRF) in institutionalist terms, examines the structural…
Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990-2008
Administering Secularization: Religious Education in New South Wales since 1960
This paper examines the development of religious education policy in the government schools of New South Wales (Australia) since 1960. The New South Wales religious education curriculum features three components: (1) teacher-led "general religious education" (gre); (2) right-of-entry denominational instruction provided by visiting clergy ("special religious education", orsre); and (3) occasional additional devotional exercises such as hymns and p…
How Does the State Structure Secularization
Why do similar modern nations accord religion different roles in their public institutions? This paper engages this question by examining trends in religious instruction in the public schools of the United States and Australia from 1850 to 1950. I find that American education secularized farther and faster than Australian education because of its decentralized system of educational administration. In the United States, decentralized educational a…
Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level: Key Findings from a Survey of Religion and Local Elected Officials
Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in 'church-state' relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement req…
Religion and Higher Education: Current Knowledge and Directions for Future Research
In light of increased scholarly and public discussion about the proper position of religion in higher education, we take stock of existing social scientific studies to illuminate what we know-and what we don't know-about religion and higher education. We argue that research shows that college students are more religiously engaged than has traditionally been thought, but that this interest appears to be more broad than deep; that the college exper…
Higher Education and Religious Liberalization among Young Adults
Going to college has long been assumed to liberalize students' religious beliefs. Using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Youth and Religion, we compare change in the content of religious beliefs of those who do and do not attend college. We find that, in general, college students are no more likely to develop liberal religious beliefs than nonstudents. In some cases, collegians actually appear more likely to retain their initial beli…
Administering Secularization: Religious Education in New South Wales since 1960
This paper examines the development of religious education policy in the government schools of New South Wales (Australia) since 1960. The New South Wales religious education curriculum features three components: (1) teacher-led "general religious education" (gre); (2) right-of-entry denominational instruction provided by visiting clergy ("special religious education", orsre); and (3) occasional additional devotional exercises such as hymns and p…
Fields, Logics, and Social Movements: Prison Abolition and the Social Justice Field
This essay argues that field analyses of social movements can be improved by incorporating more insights from Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Bourdieu's concepts of logic, symbolic capital, illusio, and doxa can enrich social movement scholarship by enabling scholars to identify new objects of study, connect organizational- and individual-level effects, and shed new light on a variety of familiar features of social movements. I demonstrate this c…
When white people report racial discrimination: The role of region, religion, and politics
No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education
Journal Article No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education Get access No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education, by RHONDA HUSTEDT JACOBSEN and DOUGLAS JACOBSEN. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 208 pp.; $29.95 USD (cloth). Damon Mayrl Damon Mayrl Universidad Carlos III de Madrid [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 75, Issue 1, SP…
Whither Secularism? - Christian Joppke, The Secular State under Siege: Religion and Politics in Europe and America (Cambridge, Polity Press2015)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
How Does the State Structure Secularization
Why do similar modern nations accord religion different roles in their public institutions? This paper engages this question by examining trends in religious instruction in the public schools of the United States and Australia from 1850 to 1950. I find that American education secularized farther and faster than Australian education because of its decentralized system of educational administration. In the United States, decentralized educational a…
Defining the State from within: Boundaries, Schemas, and Associational Policymaking
A growing literature posits the importance of boundaries in structuring social systems. Yet sociologists have not adequately theorized one of the most fraught and consequential sites of boundary-making in contemporary life: the delineation of the official edges of the government-and, consequently, of state from society. This article addresses that gap by theorizing the mechanisms of state boundary formation. In so doing, we extend culturalist the…
Family Formation and Returning to Institutional Religion in Young Adulthood
Institutional religious involvement wanes during young adulthood, but evidence suggests life-course factors such as family formation bring people back to religion. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Waves 1, 3, and 4), we examine how often young adults who were involved in institutional religion as adolescents return-measured by religious service attendance and religious affiliation-after leaving in emerging adul…
Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990-2008
Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School. By Benjamin Justice and Colin Macleod
Have a Little Faith is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the educational historian Benjamin Justice and the political philosopher Colin Macleod. The book adopts a “democratic perspective” (p. 20) on American educational history to answer the perennial question of what role religion should play in America’s public schools. Justice and Macleod conclude that American public schools need to do a better job of engaging with religion if they h…
The Judicialization of Religious Freedom: An Institutionalist Approach
Recent years have seen growing interest in the judicialization of religious freedom (JRF). In this article, I identify two distinct meanings of JRF, which are often conflated but which need to be kept separate. I then argue for a stronger institutionalist approach to JRF. An institutionalist approach focuses our attention on both the rules internal to courts, and the relationship of courts to administrative agencies, legislatures, and other gover…
A Secular Age beyond the West: Religion, Law, and the State in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, edited by Mirjam KÜNKLER, John Madeley, and SHYLASHRI SHANKAR
If you read one new book on secularization this year, it should be A Secular Age beyond the West. Mirjam Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar have compiled a marvelously coherent collection of essays that breaks important new ground in the comparative study of secularization. The book is conceived as a direct extension and test of the arguments made in philosopher Charles Taylor’s landmark study, A Secular Age. Taylor (who contributes an …
Negotiating the Politics of Diversity: A Symposium on Rogers Brubaker’s Grounds for Difference
Rogers Brubaker’s work has been a touchstone for the study of ethnicity, nationalism, and politics for more than a quarter-century. His recent book , Grounds for Difference, offers an important new theoretical statement on the politics and organization of cultural diversity. In this symposium, four prominent historical sociologists provide commentary on the possibilities and complexities of the book, with particular attention to their normative, …
Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research
Scholars have taken a growing interest in what we call “culturalized religion”—that is, forms of religious identification, discourse, and expression that are primarily cultural in character, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual. This article aims to clarify our current thinking about these phenomena so as to facilitate future theoretical and empirical work. Drawing on recent work in the …
The Archive as a Social World
Conservative Innovators: How States Are Challenging Federal Power
What Do Historical Sociologists Do All Day? Analytic Architectures in Historical Sociology
Drawing on an original data set of over 15,000 in-text citations, we use quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyze 37 award-winning publications in historical sociology between 1995 and 2015. We show that historical sociology comprises no fewer than four distinct analytic architectures that rely on different kinds of sources and use evidence and theory in different ways. We find suggestive evidence that the recognition of these different…
Visualizing the Expanding Space of Consecration in American Sociology, 1980–2020
This visualization explores changes in the scope and dynamics of consecration within American sociology by examining awards granted to members of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) constituent sections. Consecration is important because it signals quality to nonspecialists, boosts intellectual careers, and can be a crucial vector introducing various forms of inequality. We show that with ASA sections, the number of awards, multiple awa…
Religion at the Frontline: How Religion Influenced the Response of Local Government Officials to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Frontline officials (such as mayors and commissioners) are responsible for local-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States. Their actions and attitudes, either in support of or opposition to public health recommendations, have resulted in widespread variation in local-level pandemic response. Despite evidence that religion significantly impacts the general public’s response to the pandemic, the influence of religion on off…
Societal religiosity and the gender gap in political interest, 1990-2014
This manuscript examines the structural causes of the gender gap in political interest. In many countries, men are more interested in politics than women. Yet, in others, men and women prove equally interested. We explain this cross-national variation by focusing on the effects of societal religiosity. Since religion sustains the traditional gender order, contexts where societal religiosity is low undermine the taken-for-grantedness of this order…
The dejudicialization of religious freedom
Despite a recent trend toward the judicialization of religious freedom (JRF), both historical experience and theoretical considerations suggest 'dejudicialization' is likely at some point. Yet, dejudicialization has provoked a little comment, and even less theorization, among social scientists studying religious freedom. This article conceptualizes the dejudicialization of religious freedom (DRF) in institutionalist terms, examines the structural…
Religion-State Interaction at the Local Level: Key Findings from a Survey of Religion and Local Elected Officials
Relationships between religion and state are a core focus for social scientists, but little is known about a central set of actors in 'church-state' relations in the United States: local elected officials (mayors, town councilpersons, city commissioners). We report on a unique, representative survey of local elected officials, examining their religiosity, their interactions with religion through governance (prayers, meetings, symbol placement req…
The State and Soul of Intellectual Property Law
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (20 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (14 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (8 works)