G Giordan
Biographic Data
| ID | 4983 |
|---|---|
| NAME | G Giordan |
| GIVEN NAMES | G |
| FAMILY NAME | Giordan |
| SIGNATURE | GIORDAN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Padua |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3945-4291 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Multiple habitus: Italian Buddhism, neoliberalism, and embodiment
This article introduces the idea of multiple habitus , a heuristic tool for analyzing the transmission, incorporation and social reproduction of religious teachings within a continuously transforming spiritual field. Drawing on data from the project ‘Buddhism in Italy’ we show how Italian Buddhism articulates a plurality of “core dispositions” that display notable congruence across major Buddhist traditions while simultaneously reflecting the loc…
Across the Loop: Comparing Perceptions of Religious Freedom, Pluralism, and Secularism in Italy and Croatia
This article adopts a comparative analytical framework inspired by W. Cole Durham, Jr. to examine religious freedom through the lenses of religion–state relations and religious pluralism. Using primary data from a 2021–2022 cross-national survey of 1,317 university students in Italy and Croatia, it explores how varying degrees of religion–state identification influence support for freedom of and from religion. The findings indicate that both reli…
After the Buddha: Tradition, institutionalization, and multiple charismas in Italian Buddhism
In this article, based on a selection of 267 semi-structured personal interviews with Buddhist practitioners conducted for the project “Buddhism in Italy” (2022–2023), we investigate the present state of Buddhism in Italy, accounting for its plural, hybrid, and global ethos. We enquire into the ways in which the three main forms of legitimate domination classically theorized by Max Weber—‘legal’ or ‘rational’, ‘traditional’, and ‘charismatic’—inf…
Freedom Within Religion: The Participation of LGBT+ Catholics in the Jubilee 2025
In 2000, during the Great Jubilee, the Catholic Church opposed the celebration of the International Gay Pride in Rome. Twenty-five years later, in 2025, the LGBT+ Jubilee pilgrimage was included in the official Jubilee program. This article analyzes both the narratives of those who participated in the pilgrimage and the sociohistorical factors that made this event possible. Using digital content analysis of 50 testimonies collected by La Tenda di…
Multiple Buddhism in a Catholic country: Measuring religious belonging and practice across traditions in Italy
The argument for adopting more comprehensive measures of religiosity, put forward by Yang and McPhail, underscores the centrality of the concept of ‘multiple’ as an entry point for analyzing contemporary religious belonging and practice. This article offers the findings from a 2023 study conducted among adherents of the Italian Buddhist Union (UBI, n = 515), testing the multiple religiosity hypothesis within the context of a predominantly Catholi…
A Sociology of Religious Freedom
Freedom of and from religion is a key concept to understand the place of religious and spiritual identities, beliefs, and practices in the contemporary world. Sociology can assist in explaining why and how religious freedom holds a variety of meanings in society and may be perceived differently by individuals, social groups, and institutions. This book addresses three major questions of a sociology of religious freedom. First, how to define relig…
Youth, Spirituality, Religion, and the Categories in Between
Spirituality among young people has garnered attention within the realm of social studies of religions and spiritualities, both globally and in Italy. In this study, we present findings derived from a survey conducted with 1384 students aged 13 to 20 who were attending a high school in Vicenza, in the Veneto region. Viewing young individuals as active participants in a transition to greater autonomy, one with religious and spiritual dimensions, o…
Attributes and Activities of Religious Communities in Italy: First Results from a City Congregations Study (CCS)
This article explores the attributes and religious, social and political activities of local religious groups in three Italian cities across all religious traditions. This is the first application of Congregations Study methodology in Italy to analyze the social composition, structure and activities of religious communities. The research was conducted between 2020 and 2021 with a total number of 877 communities mapped in the cities of Bologna, Mi…
Misconceptions of Religious Freedom: Toward an Empirical Study of Religious Freedom Awareness
This article offers an overview of the most common misconceptions about religious freedom, with reference to the 2017 UN Report by Mr. Shaheed and the perspectives of other human rights scholars and experts. It proceeds with the operationalization of a selected list of misconceptions about this subject for empirical research of religious freedom awareness. We discuss the primary results from a survey on social perceptions of religious freedom col…
Francesco Molteni, A Need for Religion: Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World
Il libro A Need for Religion: Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World di Francesco Molteni tocca un tema classico della sociologia della religione, la secolarizzazione, discusso ormai da più di sessant’anni, e cioè a partire dai lavori di Sabino Samele Acquaviva, Peter Berger, David Martin e Bryan Wilson, solo per citarne alcuni. L’autore analizza il cambiamento religioso sia a livello sociale come anche a quello individuale, nel con…
Social construction of religious freedom: A comparative study among youth in Italy and Russia
Do social perceptions of religious freedom (SPRF) represent individual a priori experiences, or are they the results of a process of socialisation into a normative political and religious culture? The contribution responds to this inquiry with data from comparative research on the multidimensional construct of SPRF among youth in Italy and Russia (N = 1,810). The study conducted between 2018 and 2019 investigates the patterns of constructed meani…
Religious freedom: Thinking sociologically
Sociology’s engagement with the religious freedom agenda is a comparatively new enterprise compared to legal and political science scholarship. The five contributions included in this collection continue the debate about the role of sociological theory and methods in defining, interpreting, and implementing religious freedom in modern societies. By articulating sociological sensitivity and readiness to address existing lacunae in the social-scien…
The Lautsi Legacy: A New Judgment on the Crucifix in Classrooms and the Multiculturalist Turn on Freedom of/from Religion in Italy
The article offers a socio-legal analysis of the recent case on freedom of/from religion in Italy, the Coppoli judgment of the Italian Supreme Court, which grants public schools the autonomy to manage religious symbols. The new ruling is discussed in the shadow of the Lautsi case, examining the shift from the discourse of "passive religious symbol" to the framework of "respect of different sensibilities" in pluralistic classrooms. In doing that, …
“Democratization in Christian Orthodox Europe: Comparing Greece, Serbia and Russia”
Identifying learning preferences among Italian undergraduate students studying the sociology of religion: Drawing on psychological type preferences
This study argues that the notion of learning preferences (rooted within a coherent and established theory of personality and individual differences) may be more fruitful than the largely contested notion of learning styles. The case is illustrated by extrapolation from psychological type theory in the light of the profile of 581 students enrolled in undergraduate programmes embracing the sociology of religion at Padua University, Italy, employin…
Introduction: Religious freedom: between governance and social perception Introduction: Liberté religieuse : entre gouvernance et perception sociale
Social perception of religious freedom: Testing the impact of secularism and state-religion relations
The measures and correlates of religious freedom constitute a comparatively new area of study eliciting research at the level of state agency and judicial institutions. The article adds to this the individual level of analysis by introducing a five-dimensional concept of the Social Perception of Religious Freedom (SPRF). It discusses results of its testing on a convenience sample of 1035 Italian University students. We examine the predictive powe…
Spirituality
Prayer
Vocation
Perceptions of the Functions of Religion and Attitude toward Religious Freedom: Introducing the New Indices of the Functions of Religion (NIFoR)
This article proposes, tests, and introduces the New Indices of the Functions of Religion (NIFoR) and explores their relevance for explaining individual differences in attitude toward religious freedom. The theory being tested is that openness to the principles of religious freedom is related to perceptions of the functions of religion in society. A review of extant literature on the functions of religion identified eleven conceptually distinct f…
Measuring the Social Perception of Religious Freedom: A Sociological Perspective
This article discusses the construction of the measuring instrument for the study of social perception of religious freedom (SPRF). We provide an overview of existing definitions of religious freedom from a social-science perspective, which ground the empirical research of religious freedom and describe the conceptualization of SPRF. We focus on the operationalization model and introduce the operational variables for the SPRF research, also empha…
Gender Order and Romanian Orthodox Women in Italy: A Socio-Religious Perspective
Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity
La spiritualità come sfida alle religioni. Credere e far credere nell'Europa plurale
Questioning the concept of religion and the theory of secularization, the article aims to document the contemporary shift of the legitimization of the sacred, in a transition from the centrality of traditional institutions of believing to the progressive affirmation of subject's freedom of choice also in matters of faith. From this movement comes a repositioning of both the subject and the religious institutions. The scientific debate that has de…
Measuring the Social Perception of Religious Freedom: A Sociological Perspective
This article discusses the construction of the measuring instrument for the study of social perception of religious freedom (SPRF). We provide an overview of existing definitions of religious freedom from a social-science perspective, which ground the empirical research of religious freedom and describe the conceptualization of SPRF. We focus on the operationalization model and introduce the operational variables for the SPRF research, also empha…
Human Rights and Religion: A Sociological Perspective
This essay aims to review mainstream literature and research perspectives on the sociology of human rights with the further focus on relationship between human rights and religion. We consider the challenges of late engagement of sociology with human rights and current narratives of the relationship of human rights and religion that encompass normativity as the central category of historically oriented sociology. We discuss the contribution of tw…
The over-policing of the devil: A sociology of exorcism
Discussing the social construction of the phenomenon of exorcism, this article illustrates how it is located in contemporary culture and specifically in the religious field. Following the study done by Michel de Certeau on the mass possession of the Ursulines' convent of Loudun (France) in the 17th century, the authors differentiate between the 'possessed' and the 'possessionists', that is between those who are possessed by the devil and those wh…
The Lautsi Legacy: A New Judgment on the Crucifix in Classrooms and the Multiculturalist Turn on Freedom of/from Religion in Italy
The article offers a socio-legal analysis of the recent case on freedom of/from religion in Italy, the Coppoli judgment of the Italian Supreme Court, which grants public schools the autonomy to manage religious symbols. The new ruling is discussed in the shadow of the Lautsi case, examining the shift from the discourse of "passive religious symbol" to the framework of "respect of different sensibilities" in pluralistic classrooms. In doing that, …
Social perception of religious freedom: Testing the impact of secularism and state-religion relations
The measures and correlates of religious freedom constitute a comparatively new area of study eliciting research at the level of state agency and judicial institutions. The article adds to this the individual level of analysis by introducing a five-dimensional concept of the Social Perception of Religious Freedom (SPRF). It discusses results of its testing on a convenience sample of 1035 Italian University students. We examine the predictive powe…
Social construction of religious freedom: A comparative study among youth in Italy and Russia
Do social perceptions of religious freedom (SPRF) represent individual a priori experiences, or are they the results of a process of socialisation into a normative political and religious culture? The contribution responds to this inquiry with data from comparative research on the multidimensional construct of SPRF among youth in Italy and Russia (N = 1,810). The study conducted between 2018 and 2019 investigates the patterns of constructed meani…
Introduction: Religious freedom: between governance and social perception Introduction: Liberté religieuse : entre gouvernance et perception sociale
The persistence of spiritual experience among churchgoing and non-churchgoing Italians: Sociological and psychological perspectives
The study presented in this article draws on theories and methods developed within the psychology of religion to examine, from a fresh perspective, a problem established within the sociology of religion: the ‘oddity of the Italian situation’. The study employs the notion of openness to mystical experience as an indicator of the level of spiritual awareness among a sample of 1,155 Italians ranging in age from 14 to 80 years. The data demonstrated …
Mastering the devil: A sociological analysis of the practice of a Catholic exorcist
This study takes the documented growth in the ministry of exorcism within the Catholic Church as a significant challenge to some accounts of secularization. After clarifying how, according to Catholic doctrine, the devil can operate in people's lives, this study offers a sociological interpretation of exorcism. This interpretation is illustrated and tested by a sociological analysis of data collected, over a period of 10 years, by a well-establis…
Youth, Spirituality, Religion, and the Categories in Between
Spirituality among young people has garnered attention within the realm of social studies of religions and spiritualities, both globally and in Italy. In this study, we present findings derived from a survey conducted with 1384 students aged 13 to 20 who were attending a high school in Vicenza, in the Veneto region. Viewing young individuals as active participants in a transition to greater autonomy, one with religious and spiritual dimensions, o…
Attributes and Activities of Religious Communities in Italy: First Results from a City Congregations Study (CCS)
This article explores the attributes and religious, social and political activities of local religious groups in three Italian cities across all religious traditions. This is the first application of Congregations Study methodology in Italy to analyze the social composition, structure and activities of religious communities. The research was conducted between 2020 and 2021 with a total number of 877 communities mapped in the cities of Bologna, Mi…
Religious freedom: Thinking sociologically
Sociology’s engagement with the religious freedom agenda is a comparatively new enterprise compared to legal and political science scholarship. The five contributions included in this collection continue the debate about the role of sociological theory and methods in defining, interpreting, and implementing religious freedom in modern societies. By articulating sociological sensitivity and readiness to address existing lacunae in the social-scien…
Orthodox Christianity in Italy: Historical continuity and social discontinuity
From the historical point of view, the presence of Orthodox churches in Italy is a reality established over several centuries; from the sociological point of view, however, their presence is a new phenomenon. As a result of the significant processes of immigration from Eastern Europe over the last 15 years, their importance within the social and religious contexts has grown considerably, to the point that Orthodoxy is rivalling Islam as the secon…
Vocation and Social Context
The category of Beruf has intrigued sociology since Max Weber made it a fundamental element in understanding the relationship between the individual and society. The richness of the concept can be found in the simultaneous polarity and interpenetration between the subject's personal profession and the feeling of a call from God: precisely this ambiguity widens the possibility of applying the concept in understanding the meaning that individuals g…
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 14; Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 15
Spirituality as a Chance for Intercultural Theology
Conversion in the Age of Pluralism
The theme of conversion constitutes a privileged point to study the framework linking an individual to the sociocultural contexts in which he or she is included. Changes in personal biographies and sociocultural change are interwoven when we speak of conversion: values, speech, norms, behaviors, beliefs, lifestyles, interests--everything is open to potential debate when an individual "converts." Conversion is especially developed here through a c…
The Body between Religion and Spirituality
The distinction between religion and spirituality, as it is increasingly understood in the contemporary sociology of religion, has led to a reconsideration of the relation between the individual and his/her own body. In the Christian ambit, and especially in the Catholic sphere, the traditional religious attitude has always been that of emphasizing the dichotomy between soul and body, setting a hierarchy that puts the soul in a position superior …
Towards a Common Sense Religion? The Young and Religion in Italy
The culture of pluralism, understood as the legitimation of the most diverse life options, seems to unite more and more both church-goers and non church-goers, even in a country like Italy where Catholicism still holds a position of “relative monopoly.” A research carried on with a sample of eight hundred Italian eighteen year old young people has highlighted their opinions about a few particularly “hot” questions inside Catholicism: women’s and …
Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World
Individualization of believing and the logic of pluralism today inevitably bring a redefinition of the role of religion in the lives of individuals as well as societies themselves. New concepts and new theories are necessary to try to describe and understand how such processes work: this is without doubt the most problematic and intriguing aspect of the processes of change that characterize our era. This is a difficulty that makes us use only par…
A religião como comunicação na era digital
In the digital age, the social sciences of religion have begun to face the problem of studying a new complex phenomenon: religious communication mediated by the computer. Sociology needs to find instruments, categories and methodologies to nalyze it. In this essay we focus on the state of the art of the phenomenon, discussing the terminology, and suggesting a classification methodology and a few reading guidelines.Indeed the cyberspace it is not …
Orthodox Christianity in Italy: Historical continuity and social discontinuity
From the historical point of view, the presence of Orthodox churches in Italy is a reality established over several centuries; from the sociological point of view, however, their presence is a new phenomenon. As a result of the significant processes of immigration from Eastern Europe over the last 15 years, their importance within the social and religious contexts has grown considerably, to the point that Orthodoxy is rivalling Islam as the secon…
The over-policing of the devil: A sociology of exorcism
Discussing the social construction of the phenomenon of exorcism, this article illustrates how it is located in contemporary culture and specifically in the religious field. Following the study done by Michel de Certeau on the mass possession of the Ursulines' convent of Loudun (France) in the 17th century, the authors differentiate between the 'possessed' and the 'possessionists', that is between those who are possessed by the devil and those wh…
Asceticism
The concept of asceticism refers to the unity of efforts by which an individual desires to progress in their moral, religious, and spiritual life. The original meaning of the term refers to any exercise, physical, intellectual, or moral, practiced with method and rigor, in hopes of self‐improvement and progress. Notwithstanding the great flexibility that characterizes the application of asceticism, the concept always alludes to a search for perfe…
Values
Values represent beliefs and ideals that form the basis for choices and preferences, both at an individual and at a collective level. Generally speaking, a value is defined as that which is “good” and which is desired and able to make one happy. Such long‐lasting and immaterial ideas relate to current conduct and to one's ultimate objective in life: They are different from simple interests, which are not particularly characterized by duration, an…
Religious Cults
The cult is intended to be the concrete form through which humans express their veneration for a superhuman entity or force whom they believe to be superior and deem worthy of honor and devotion. This term usually makes a reference to the relationship of dependence and adoration between humans and the divine, be it a personal entity, a force of nature, or an ancestor's spirit. The cult therefore is placed in the center of every religion and carri…
Gender Order and Romanian Orthodox Women in Italy: A Socio-Religious Perspective
Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity
La spiritualità come sfida alle religioni. Credere e far credere nell'Europa plurale
Questioning the concept of religion and the theory of secularization, the article aims to document the contemporary shift of the legitimization of the sacred, in a transition from the centrality of traditional institutions of believing to the progressive affirmation of subject's freedom of choice also in matters of faith. From this movement comes a repositioning of both the subject and the religious institutions. The scientific debate that has de…
One pope, two churches: Refugees, human rights and religion in Croatia and Italy
This article analyses the responses of the Catholic Church in Croatia and Italy to the refugee crisis, particularly the churches’ discourses on human rights issues and positions in public debates on refugees and migrants. Although both Catholic churches followed the Church’s teachings on ‘strangers’, associated with providing concrete help to people in need, the Catholic Church in Croatia pursued what can be classified as a charitable approach, w…
The persistence of spiritual experience among churchgoing and non-churchgoing Italians: Sociological and psychological perspectives
The study presented in this article draws on theories and methods developed within the psychology of religion to examine, from a fresh perspective, a problem established within the sociology of religion: the ‘oddity of the Italian situation’. The study employs the notion of openness to mystical experience as an indicator of the level of spiritual awareness among a sample of 1,155 Italians ranging in age from 14 to 80 years. The data demonstrated …
Mastering the devil: A sociological analysis of the practice of a Catholic exorcist
This study takes the documented growth in the ministry of exorcism within the Catholic Church as a significant challenge to some accounts of secularization. After clarifying how, according to Catholic doctrine, the devil can operate in people's lives, this study offers a sociological interpretation of exorcism. This interpretation is illustrated and tested by a sociological analysis of data collected, over a period of 10 years, by a well-establis…
Human Rights and Religion: A Sociological Perspective
This essay aims to review mainstream literature and research perspectives on the sociology of human rights with the further focus on relationship between human rights and religion. We consider the challenges of late engagement of sociology with human rights and current narratives of the relationship of human rights and religion that encompass normativity as the central category of historically oriented sociology. We discuss the contribution of tw…
Measuring the Social Perception of Religious Freedom: A Sociological Perspective
This article discusses the construction of the measuring instrument for the study of social perception of religious freedom (SPRF). We provide an overview of existing definitions of religious freedom from a social-science perspective, which ground the empirical research of religious freedom and describe the conceptualization of SPRF. We focus on the operationalization model and introduce the operational variables for the SPRF research, also empha…
Spirituality
Prayer
Vocation
Perceptions of the Functions of Religion and Attitude toward Religious Freedom: Introducing the New Indices of the Functions of Religion (NIFoR)
This article proposes, tests, and introduces the New Indices of the Functions of Religion (NIFoR) and explores their relevance for explaining individual differences in attitude toward religious freedom. The theory being tested is that openness to the principles of religious freedom is related to perceptions of the functions of religion in society. A review of extant literature on the functions of religion identified eleven conceptually distinct f…
Sociology (32 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (27 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · Epistemology (20 works) · Political science (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Social science (13 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (12 works) · Religious studies (12 works)