Joel S. Fetzer

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Joel S. Fetzer
Born (1965-11-13) November 13, 1965 (age 57)
Board member of American Association for Chinese Studies
Awards Society for the Scientific Study of Religion's Distinguished Book Award (2020)
Academic background
Alma mater Yale University (Ph.D.)
Cornell University (A.B.)
Thesis National borders/cultural boundaries (1996)
Doctoral advisorMartin Gilens
Notable worksReligion and Nationalism in Global Perspective (2018)

Joel Steven Fetzer (born November 13, 1965) [1] is an American political scientist best known for his pioneering work on comparative politics, nationalism, and democratization. He is a distinguished professor of political science at Pepperdine University.

Contents

Life and work

Early life

Fetzer was born on November 13, 1965, in Jacksonville, Florida, to Christian parents. [1] [2] His father, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer, received orders to report to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and relocated the family to northern Virginia. [1]

He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate where he wrote Selective Prosecution of Religiously Motivated Offenders in America: Scrutinizing the Myth of Neutrality. Fetzer matriculated at Yale University and completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1996. He was awarded the Ebert Dissertation Fellowship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Peace Scholar Fellowship from the United States Institute of Peace. [3]

His dissertation was published as Public Attitudes toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany in 2000. Fetzer taught at Central Michigan University from 1998 to 2000 then at Pepperdine University starting in 2001. [4] He was coordinator of the political science department at Pepperdine from 2019 to 2022 and spent time as a visiting professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities (CIRCM) at University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Luxembourg. [3]

Research

Fetzer's book Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective (2018), co-authored with Christopher Soper, explores the "resurgence of nationalism, usually populist, often religious, and all too often authoritarian" in the United States, Israel, India, Greece, Uruguay, and Malaysia and popularized the idea that the relationship between religion and nationalism for each and every nation in the world fits into one of three models: secular nationalism, religious nationalism, or civil-religious nationalism. [5] [6]

Fetzer and Soper, in the words of then President of the American Political Science Association (APSA) Rogers Smith, "produced a seminal theory of how and why religion and nationalism are related in distinct ways in different societies." [7] Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective was the first large-scale cross-national analysis undertaken to understand the emergence, development, and stability of different church-state arrangements over time. The research received the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion's Distinguished Book Award, which is given to the year's best book on the sociology of religion, in 2020. [8]

Archives

The Fetzer's archives are maintained by Pepperdine University and the Online Archive of California (OAC). [1]

Publications

Books

Related Research Articles

Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland to create a nation-state. It holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture. There are various definitions of a "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. Historically, since the beginnings, the civic type of nationalism was the determinant factor in the development and spread of modern constitutional and democratic value system in the societies, however the ethnic nationalism has a tendency to prefer authoritarian rule or even dictature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese nationalism</span> Nationalism of the Chinese nation

Chinese nationalism is a form of nationalism in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan which asserts that the Chinese people are a nation and promotes the cultural and national unity of all Chinese people. It is often equated with Han nationalism, although these two concepts are different. According to Sun Yat-sen's philosophy in the Three Principles of the People, Chinese nationalism should be a form of civic nationalism constructed on top of a united value, however this has not been fully recognized or applied in practice by successors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democratization</span> Trend towards democratic norms in a society

Democratization, or democratisation, is the transition to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. It may be a hybrid regime in transition from an authoritarian regime to a full democracy, a transition from an authoritarian political system to a semi-democracy or transition from a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic political system. The opposite process is known as democratic backsliding or autocratization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Confucianism</span> 20th–21st century Confucianist revival movement

New Confucianism is an intellectual movement of Confucianism that began in the early 20th century in Republican China, and further developed in post-Mao era contemporary China. It primarily developed during the May Fourth Movement. It is deeply influenced by, but not identical with, the neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political culture</span> Set of attitudes and beliefs that give order and meaning to a political process

Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture.

Economic nationalism, also called economic patriotism and economic populism, is an ideology that favors state interventionism over other market mechanisms, with policies such as domestic control of the economy, labor, and capital formation, including if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labor, goods and capital. The core belief of economic nationalism is that the economy should serve nationalist goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National identity</span> Identity or sense of belonging to one state or to one nation

National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity may refer to the subjective feeling one shares with a group of people about a nation, regardless of one's legal citizenship status. National identity is viewed in psychological terms as "an awareness of difference", a "feeling and recognition of 'we' and 'they'". National identity also includes the general population and diaspora of multi-ethnic states and societies that have a shared sense of common identity identical to that of a nation while being made up of several component ethnic groups. Hyphenated ethnicities are an example of the confluence of multiple ethnic and national identities within a single person or entity.

Democratic Front or the Maha Aghadi is name of the former governing coalition in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The Alliance of Indian National Congress and Nationalist Congress Party was called as Maha Aghadi.

Opposition to immigration, also known as anti-immigration, has become a significant political ideology in many countries. In the modern sense, immigration refers to the entry of people from one state or territory into another state or territory in which they are not citizens. Illegal immigration occurs when people immigrate to a country without having official permission to do so. Opposition to immigration ranges from calls for various immigration reforms, to proposals to completely restrict immigration.

Secular Progressive Alliance, formerly known as Democratic Progressive Alliance, is an alliance of Indian political parties formed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

Amrita Basu is an American academic and political scientist. She currently is a professor at Amherst College where she holds affiliations in the departments of Political Science, Sexuality, Women's, & Gender Studies, Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Black Studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Gries</span>

Peter Hays Gries is the Lee Kai Hung Chair and founding Director of the Manchester China Institute at the University of Manchester, where he is also Professor of Chinese politics. He studies the political psychology of international affairs, with a focus on China and the United States.

Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee</span> Indian political party

The West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC), formerly known as the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee in Colonial India, is the unit of the Indian National Congress for the state of West Bengal.

Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric approach to various political issues related to national affirmation of a particular ethnic group.

Jack Lewis Snyder is an American political scientist who is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Columbia University, specializing in theories of international relations.

Mahagathbandhan, also known as Grand Alliance, is a coalition of political parties in the state of Jharkhand in India, formed before the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.

Halima Krausen is a German Muslim leader, theologian and scholar. Krausen served as an imam for the Islamic Centre of Hamburg following the resignation of Imam Mehdi Razvi in 1996, and she held this position until 2014. She was Germany's first female imam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiangism</span> Political philosophy

Chiangism, also known as the Political Philosophy of Chiang Kai-shek, or Chiang Kai-shek Thought, is the political philosophy of President Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who used it during his rule in China under the Kuomintang on both the mainland and Taiwan. It is a right-wing authoritarian nationalist political ideology which is based on mostly Confucian and Tridemist ideologies, and was used in the New Life Movement in China and the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement in Taiwan. It is a syncretic mix of many political ideologies, including revolutionary nationalism, Tridemism, socialism, militarism, Confucianism, state capitalism, constitutionalism, fascism, authoritarian capitalism, and paternalistic conservatism, as well as Chiang's Methodist Christianity.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Fetzer (Joel S.) Papers". Online Archive of California (OAC) . Retrieved 2022-12-12.
  2. Tyrkus, Michael J. (2015). Joel S. Fetzer. Contemporary Authors .
  3. 1 2 "Cornell divestment movement collection, 1983-1987". Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  4. Leonard, Andrew (March 18, 2020). "Taiwan Is Beating the Coronavirus. Can the US Do the Same?". Wired . Retrieved December 12, 2022.
  5. 1 2 Reviews of Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective:
  6. Andrew L Whitehead (Autumn 2019). "Reviewed: Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective, by J. CHRISTOPHER SOPER and JOEL S. FETZER". Sociology of Religion .
  7. "Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved December 12, 2022.
  8. "Distinguished Book Award". Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Retrieved 2022-12-12.
  9. Reviews of Public Attitudes toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany:
  10. Reviews of Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany:
  11. Reviews of Confucianism, Democratization, and Human Rights in Taiwan: