Brandon Vaidyanathan
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 104581 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Brandon Vaidyanathan |
| PRENOMES | Brandon |
| SOBRENOME | Vaidyanathan |
| ASSINATURA | VAIDYANATHAN B |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Notre Dame |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5748-6051 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 36 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 120 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 36 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2010 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Surprise in Science
A growing literature in philosophy of science focuses on the role of surprise in scientific practice. The aesthetic dimension of science is also gaining momentum in very recent discussions. While surprising results have been recognised as playing an important epistemic role in science, the literature so far has primarily focused on establishing the power of simulations and thought experiments as compared to experiments and the epistemic superiori…
Open to talent? How scientists assess merit and diversity in hiring
Beyond Disenchantment
Scholars of secularization suggest that while the processes of disenchantment and the delegitimization of religious institutions have weakened religious belief systems, they also produced, as an unforeseen result, a renewed awakening of spiritual and existential longing. From this perspective, the search for meaning and spiritual yearning in contemporary Western societies is not simply a residual feature of human experience; rather, it emerges wi…
The Enchantment of Science
Scientists have long been depicted as mainly rational, bereft of emotional and personal commitments, and disenchanted. Such a view assumes the practice of science as sterile and inoculated from aesthetic and spiritual experiences. This article questions such assumptions by investigating how scientists experience beauty, wonder, and awe in their work as a source of enchantment-a sense of awe and wonder that connects the human being to one or more …
The Faithful Scientist
Beauty in experiment
Introduction to the Special Issue
This special issue of Review of Religious Research, titled “The Catholic Priesthood in Times of Change,” is dedicated primarily to social-scientific inquiry into the Roman Catholic presbyterate in the United States. The issue’s main focus is to analyze and discuss data from a new and original nationally representative study, The National Study of Catholic Priests. The rationale for dedicating a special issue to this topic stems from the considera…
Evoking, Grounding, and Defining
Social scientific research challenges stereotypes of scientists as irreligious, on the one hand, and lacking aesthetic sensitivity, on the other. Yet, while some research suggests connections between these domains, the question remains as to whether and how scientists themselves connect their religion or spirituality with their aesthetic experiences in science. Drawing on interviews with 71 biologists and physicists in India, Italy, the United Ki…
Prone to wellness? Dispositional awe, religion/spirituality, and well-being among academic scientists
Stigma toward mental illness and substance use disorders in faith communities
Faith Leaders’ Views on Collaboration with Mental Health Professionals
Is it the Sermon or the Choir? Pastoral Support, Congregant Support, and Worshiper Mental Health
Background Although religious involvement tends to be associated with improved mental health, additional work is needed to identify the specific aspects of religious practice that are associated with positive mental health outcomes. Our study advances the literature by investigating how two unique forms of religious social support are associated with mental health. Purpose We explore whether support received in religious settings from fellow cong…
Looking beyond the Covid-19 Pandemic
Many religious congregations in the United States have adapted to COVID-19 lockdowns by offering religious services online. This study aims to understand whether congregants from a diverse set of faith traditions expect to attend online or in-person religious services after the pandemic. First, it examines how members of different religious traditions vary in their expectations of future attendance. Second, it explores whether respondents' habitu…
Mental Health Correlates of Sharing Private Problems in Congregations during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Given the adverse mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to examine whether faith communities continue to provide social and emotional support to members during the pandemic. This study focuses on a particular mechanism through which congregations may help members' mental health--talking to fellow congregants about private problems. Data for this study come from online surveys conducted between October and December 2…
Race, Trust in Police, and Mental Health Crisis Support
This abstract is incorrect. Please see the corrected abstract here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15365042221083001 . This report examines police-public encounters that resulted in the fatal shooting of civilians during 2015 and 2016. How police contact was initiated varies by race/ethnicity, age, sex, mental health status, and whether (or how) the individual killed by police was armed with a weapon. This crucial information sheds furt…
Religious leaders’ trust in mental health professionals
Religious leaders are often the first recourse for people facing mental health challenges. Efforts have been made to understand faith leaders’ mental health literacy, but little is known about the extent to which faith leaders trust mental health professionals, which likely influences their referral practices. To address this gap, this paper examines faith leaders’ perceptions of mental health professionals using data from interviews with leaders…
Coping with an Evil World
This research note advances the religious coping literature by testing whether belief in an evil world conditions the stress-moderating role of scripture reading. Hypotheses are tested with original data from a survey of black, Hispanic, and white American churchgoers from South Texas (2017-2018; n = 1,115). Our findings show that reading scripture for insights into the future attenuates the positive association between major life events and psyc…
Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business
Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business: The Neoliberal Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capital. By James Dennis LoRusso Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business: The Neoliberal Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capital. By James Dennis LoRusso. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 248 pages. $120.00 (hardcover), $39.95 (paper), $35.95 (e-book). Brandon Vaidyanathan Brandon Vaidyanathan The Catholic University of America Search for…
Secularity and Science
In order to take an in-depth look at the relationship between science and religion around the world, the authors of this book completed the most comprehensive international study of scientists’ attitudes toward religion ever undertaken, surveying more than twenty thousand scientists and conducting in-depth interviews with over six hundred of them. From this wealth of data, the authors extract the real story of the relationship between science and…
Mercenaries and Missionaries
Mercenaries and Missionaries examines the relationship between rapidly diffusing forms of capitalism and Christianity in the Global South. Using more than two hundred interviews in Bangalore and Dubai, Brandon Vaidyanathan explains how and why global corporate professionals straddle conflicting moral orientations in the realms of work and religion. Seeking to place the spotlight on the role of religion in debates about the cultural consequences o…
Challenging Evolution in Public Schools
Researchers argue that white evangelical Christians are likely to support teaching creationism in public schools. Yet, less is known about the role religion may play in shaping attitudes toward evolution and teaching creationism among blacks and Latinos, who are overrepresented in U.S. conservative Protestant traditions. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining whether religious factors (e.g., religious affiliation and Biblical liter…
Naturally Ambivalent
This article examines the role of religion in shaping environmental action by bringing contemporary arguments in cultural sociology to bear on longstanding debates about the role of religion in environmental care. Drawing on 169 in-depth interviews from 22 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish congregations in Houston and Chicago, we examine conditions under which religion enables and constrains environmental action. Findings reveal that religious instit…
Structural Strain in Science
This article examines the relationship between structural strain (the imbalance between actual and preferred conditions of work) and anomie in science (the absence of opportunities to achieve recognition). Using data from a nationally representative survey of physicists and biologists in the United Kingdom (N = 1,604), we test competing hypotheses about the occupational factors that produce structural strain. We find that structural strain is inf…
Rejecting the conflict narrative
Sociological research on the US population's views of science and religion has recently burgeoned, but focuses primarily on Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. Our study advances understandings of how Americans of non-Christian faiths - namely Judaism and Islam - perceive the relationship between science and religion. We draw on in-depth interviews (N=92) conducted in Orthodox Jewish, Reform Jewish, and Sunni Muslim congregations in two m…
Religion, Poverty, and Development
This article serves two purposes. First, it introduces the forum that follows in this issue on religion and development. Second, it serves as a review of the small but quickly growing literature on how religion interacts with efforts by (often religious) people and organizations to ameliorate poverty worldwide. We address the need to define both 'religion' and 'development' with clarity and precision. We also call for further research in this are…
Roundtable on the Sociology of Religion
American sociology has not taken and does not take religion as seriously as it needs to in order to do the best sociology possible. Despite religion being an important and distinctive kind of practice in human social life, both historically and in the world today, American sociologists often neglect religion or treat it reductionistically. We explore several reasons for this negligence, focusing on key historical, conceptual, methodological, and …
Religious Resources or Differential Returns? Early Religious Socialization and Declining Attendance in Emerging Adulthood
The transition from adolescence into emerging adulthood is usually accompanied by a decline in religious participation. This article examines why such decline occurs at different rates across major Christian traditions and whether this variation can be explained by early socialization factors. Using data from waves 1 and 3 of the National Study of Youth and Religion (N = 1,879), I examine the effects of parental religiosity, church support, relig…
Rejecting the conflict narrative
Sociological research on the US population's views of science and religion has recently burgeoned, but focuses primarily on Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. Our study advances understandings of how Americans of non-Christian faiths - namely Judaism and Islam - perceive the relationship between science and religion. We draw on in-depth interviews (N=92) conducted in Orthodox Jewish, Reform Jewish, and Sunni Muslim congregations in two m…
Religion and Charitable Financial Giving to Religious and Secular Causes
Previous research on charitable giving has identified a significant relationship between political conservatism and greater financial giving to charitable causes. Yet that research has not adequately explored the important role of religion in that relationship, nor differences in financial giving targets (i.e., religious congregations, noncongregational religious organizations, and nonreligious organizations). Support for competing theories conce…
Causality in Contemporary American Sociology
Using a unique data set of causal usage drawn from research articles published between 2006–2008 in the A merican J ournal of S ociology and A merican S ociological R eview, this article offers an empirical assessment of causality in American sociology. Testing various aspects of what we consider the conventional wisdom on causality in the discipline, we find that (1) “variablistic” or “covering law” models are not the dominant way of making caus…
Professionalism 'from below
While the ideology of professionalism is criticized by scholars as a tool of managerial control, the contestable and situated nature of its meaning can weaken this mechanism. Drawing on interviews with Indian call centre employees, the present study reveals how professionalism is understood by employees as an ideal that is binding on managers as much as on workers. Respondents draw on it to articulate grievances against managerial abuse, corrupti…
Challenging Evolution in Public Schools
Researchers argue that white evangelical Christians are likely to support teaching creationism in public schools. Yet, less is known about the role religion may play in shaping attitudes toward evolution and teaching creationism among blacks and Latinos, who are overrepresented in U.S. conservative Protestant traditions. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining whether religious factors (e.g., religious affiliation and Biblical liter…
Motivations for and Obstacles to Religious Financial Giving
This paper extends previous findings on religion and generosity by developing and assessing a conceptual typology of potential motivations for and obstacles to religious giving. Specifically, we examine “socialized giving,” “need giving,” “normative giving,” and “guilt giving” as potential motivators, and “wealth insecurity,” “giving illiteracy,” and “comfortable guilt” as potential obstacles. To investigate these mechanisms, we then combine beha…
Mercenaries and Missionaries
Mercenaries and Missionaries examines the relationship between rapidly diffusing forms of capitalism and Christianity in the Global South. Using more than two hundred interviews in Bangalore and Dubai, Brandon Vaidyanathan explains how and why global corporate professionals straddle conflicting moral orientations in the realms of work and religion. Seeking to place the spotlight on the role of religion in debates about the cultural consequences o…
Multiple Modernities and Religion
The Enchantment of Science
Scientists have long been depicted as mainly rational, bereft of emotional and personal commitments, and disenchanted. Such a view assumes the practice of science as sterile and inoculated from aesthetic and spiritual experiences. This article questions such assumptions by investigating how scientists experience beauty, wonder, and awe in their work as a source of enchantment-a sense of awe and wonder that connects the human being to one or more …
Religion, Poverty, and Development
This article serves two purposes. First, it introduces the forum that follows in this issue on religion and development. Second, it serves as a review of the small but quickly growing literature on how religion interacts with efforts by (often religious) people and organizations to ameliorate poverty worldwide. We address the need to define both 'religion' and 'development' with clarity and precision. We also call for further research in this are…
Gossip as Social Control
Research on misconduct in science has largely focused on egregious violations such as fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Recent scholarship, however, calls for greater attention to forms of everyday misconduct and how scientists navigate ethical ambiguity when they are unable or unwilling to make formal accusations. Drawing on interview data from 251 physicists and biologists from both elite and non-elite universities and research instit…
Evoking, Grounding, and Defining
Social scientific research challenges stereotypes of scientists as irreligious, on the one hand, and lacking aesthetic sensitivity, on the other. Yet, while some research suggests connections between these domains, the question remains as to whether and how scientists themselves connect their religion or spirituality with their aesthetic experiences in science. Drawing on interviews with 71 biologists and physicists in India, Italy, the United Ki…
Is it the Sermon or the Choir? Pastoral Support, Congregant Support, and Worshiper Mental Health
Background Although religious involvement tends to be associated with improved mental health, additional work is needed to identify the specific aspects of religious practice that are associated with positive mental health outcomes. Our study advances the literature by investigating how two unique forms of religious social support are associated with mental health. Purpose We explore whether support received in religious settings from fellow cong…
Coping with an Evil World
This research note advances the religious coping literature by testing whether belief in an evil world conditions the stress-moderating role of scripture reading. Hypotheses are tested with original data from a survey of black, Hispanic, and white American churchgoers from South Texas (2017-2018; n = 1,115). Our findings show that reading scripture for insights into the future attenuates the positive association between major life events and psyc…
Conflict & Community
This in-depth case study investigates the religious, ethnic, and social conflicts that exist between two groups co-located in the same congregation. A diocesan cost-based merger brought together two religio-ethnic communities that were formerly housed in separate parishes. One group already had their congregation in the existing building and is mostly composed of aging Polish immigrants. The second group had been in a building across town that wa…
Beauty in experiment
Faith Leaders’ Views on Collaboration with Mental Health Professionals
Mental Health Correlates of Sharing Private Problems in Congregations during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Given the adverse mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to examine whether faith communities continue to provide social and emotional support to members during the pandemic. This study focuses on a particular mechanism through which congregations may help members' mental health--talking to fellow congregants about private problems. Data for this study come from online surveys conducted between October and December 2…
Multiple Modernities and Religion
Substitution or Symbiosis? Assessing the Relationship between Religious and Secular Giving
Research on philanthropy has not sufficiently examined whether charitable giving to religious causes impinges on giving to secular causes. Examining three waves of national panel data, we find that the relationship between religious and secular giving is generally not of a zero-sum nature; families that increase their religious giving also increase their secular giving. We argue that this finding is best accounted for by a practice theory of soci…
Religion and Charitable Financial Giving to Religious and Secular Causes
Previous research on charitable giving has identified a significant relationship between political conservatism and greater financial giving to charitable causes. Yet that research has not adequately explored the important role of religion in that relationship, nor differences in financial giving targets (i.e., religious congregations, noncongregational religious organizations, and nonreligious organizations). Support for competing theories conce…
Religious Resources or Differential Returns? Early Religious Socialization and Declining Attendance in Emerging Adulthood
The transition from adolescence into emerging adulthood is usually accompanied by a decline in religious participation. This article examines why such decline occurs at different rates across major Christian traditions and whether this variation can be explained by early socialization factors. Using data from waves 1 and 3 of the National Study of Youth and Religion (N = 1,879), I examine the effects of parental religiosity, church support, relig…
Motivations for and Obstacles to Religious Financial Giving
This paper extends previous findings on religion and generosity by developing and assessing a conceptual typology of potential motivations for and obstacles to religious giving. Specifically, we examine “socialized giving,” “need giving,” “normative giving,” and “guilt giving” as potential motivators, and “wealth insecurity,” “giving illiteracy,” and “comfortable guilt” as potential obstacles. To investigate these mechanisms, we then combine beha…
Professionalism 'from below
While the ideology of professionalism is criticized by scholars as a tool of managerial control, the contestable and situated nature of its meaning can weaken this mechanism. Drawing on interviews with Indian call centre employees, the present study reveals how professionalism is understood by employees as an ideal that is binding on managers as much as on workers. Respondents draw on it to articulate grievances against managerial abuse, corrupti…
Roundtable on the Sociology of Religion
American sociology has not taken and does not take religion as seriously as it needs to in order to do the best sociology possible. Despite religion being an important and distinctive kind of practice in human social life, both historically and in the world today, American sociologists often neglect religion or treat it reductionistically. We explore several reasons for this negligence, focusing on key historical, conceptual, methodological, and …
Professional Socialization in Medicine
One way of transmitting culture is through narrative scripts—ideas about the kind of self one ought to become—that shape medical students’ ideas of what desires, attitudes, behaviors, and dispositions are expected or unbecoming of professionals
Causality in Contemporary American Sociology
Using a unique data set of causal usage drawn from research articles published between 2006–2008 in the A merican J ournal of S ociology and A merican S ociological R eview, this article offers an empirical assessment of causality in American sociology. Testing various aspects of what we consider the conventional wisdom on causality in the discipline, we find that (1) “variablistic” or “covering law” models are not the dominant way of making caus…
Conflict & Community
This in-depth case study investigates the religious, ethnic, and social conflicts that exist between two groups co-located in the same congregation. A diocesan cost-based merger brought together two religio-ethnic communities that were formerly housed in separate parishes. One group already had their congregation in the existing building and is mostly composed of aging Polish immigrants. The second group had been in a building across town that wa…
Rejecting the conflict narrative
Sociological research on the US population's views of science and religion has recently burgeoned, but focuses primarily on Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. Our study advances understandings of how Americans of non-Christian faiths - namely Judaism and Islam - perceive the relationship between science and religion. We draw on in-depth interviews (N=92) conducted in Orthodox Jewish, Reform Jewish, and Sunni Muslim congregations in two m…
Religion, Poverty, and Development
This article serves two purposes. First, it introduces the forum that follows in this issue on religion and development. Second, it serves as a review of the small but quickly growing literature on how religion interacts with efforts by (often religious) people and organizations to ameliorate poverty worldwide. We address the need to define both 'religion' and 'development' with clarity and precision. We also call for further research in this are…
Gossip as Social Control
Research on misconduct in science has largely focused on egregious violations such as fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Recent scholarship, however, calls for greater attention to forms of everyday misconduct and how scientists navigate ethical ambiguity when they are unable or unwilling to make formal accusations. Drawing on interview data from 251 physicists and biologists from both elite and non-elite universities and research instit…
Naturally Ambivalent
This article examines the role of religion in shaping environmental action by bringing contemporary arguments in cultural sociology to bear on longstanding debates about the role of religion in environmental care. Drawing on 169 in-depth interviews from 22 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish congregations in Houston and Chicago, we examine conditions under which religion enables and constrains environmental action. Findings reveal that religious instit…
Structural Strain in Science
This article examines the relationship between structural strain (the imbalance between actual and preferred conditions of work) and anomie in science (the absence of opportunities to achieve recognition). Using data from a nationally representative survey of physicists and biologists in the United Kingdom (N = 1,604), we test competing hypotheses about the occupational factors that produce structural strain. We find that structural strain is inf…
Secularity and Science
In order to take an in-depth look at the relationship between science and religion around the world, the authors of this book completed the most comprehensive international study of scientists’ attitudes toward religion ever undertaken, surveying more than twenty thousand scientists and conducting in-depth interviews with over six hundred of them. From this wealth of data, the authors extract the real story of the relationship between science and…
Mercenaries and Missionaries
Mercenaries and Missionaries examines the relationship between rapidly diffusing forms of capitalism and Christianity in the Global South. Using more than two hundred interviews in Bangalore and Dubai, Brandon Vaidyanathan explains how and why global corporate professionals straddle conflicting moral orientations in the realms of work and religion. Seeking to place the spotlight on the role of religion in debates about the cultural consequences o…
Challenging Evolution in Public Schools
Researchers argue that white evangelical Christians are likely to support teaching creationism in public schools. Yet, less is known about the role religion may play in shaping attitudes toward evolution and teaching creationism among blacks and Latinos, who are overrepresented in U.S. conservative Protestant traditions. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining whether religious factors (e.g., religious affiliation and Biblical liter…
Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business
Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business: The Neoliberal Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capital. By James Dennis LoRusso Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business: The Neoliberal Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capital. By James Dennis LoRusso. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 248 pages. $120.00 (hardcover), $39.95 (paper), $35.95 (e-book). Brandon Vaidyanathan Brandon Vaidyanathan The Catholic University of America Search for…
Race, Trust in Police, and Mental Health Crisis Support
This abstract is incorrect. Please see the corrected abstract here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15365042221083001 . This report examines police-public encounters that resulted in the fatal shooting of civilians during 2015 and 2016. How police contact was initiated varies by race/ethnicity, age, sex, mental health status, and whether (or how) the individual killed by police was armed with a weapon. This crucial information sheds furt…
Religious leaders’ trust in mental health professionals
Religious leaders are often the first recourse for people facing mental health challenges. Efforts have been made to understand faith leaders’ mental health literacy, but little is known about the extent to which faith leaders trust mental health professionals, which likely influences their referral practices. To address this gap, this paper examines faith leaders’ perceptions of mental health professionals using data from interviews with leaders…
Coping with an Evil World
This research note advances the religious coping literature by testing whether belief in an evil world conditions the stress-moderating role of scripture reading. Hypotheses are tested with original data from a survey of black, Hispanic, and white American churchgoers from South Texas (2017-2018; n = 1,115). Our findings show that reading scripture for insights into the future attenuates the positive association between major life events and psyc…
Stigma toward mental illness and substance use disorders in faith communities
Faith Leaders’ Views on Collaboration with Mental Health Professionals
Is it the Sermon or the Choir? Pastoral Support, Congregant Support, and Worshiper Mental Health
Background Although religious involvement tends to be associated with improved mental health, additional work is needed to identify the specific aspects of religious practice that are associated with positive mental health outcomes. Our study advances the literature by investigating how two unique forms of religious social support are associated with mental health. Purpose We explore whether support received in religious settings from fellow cong…
Sociology (29 obras) · Psychology (25 obras) · Political science (19 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (16 obras) · Social Psychology (15 obras) · Religion and Society Interactions (14 obras) · Philosophy (13 obras) · Religion, Society, and Development (13 obras) · Epistemology (12 obras)