Religion, spirituality, and challenging marginalisation

Religion, spirituality, and the social sciences: challenging marginalisation (2008) is edited by Basia Spalek and Alia Imtoual, the former from the field of criminology, criminal justice, and victims; the latter a writer on Muslims in Australia. Unfortunately neither writes a chapter of their own, although both write the conclusion. The contrubutors are a mix of very experienced and less experienced writers. Central to the many discussions is the hegemony of secularism in the social sciences, producing tensions when examining spiritual or religious topics. After decades of relative marginalisation in the social sciences (this is the meaning of marginalisation in the title), religion and spirituality have returned as a topic worthy of research and indeed as a factor which needs to be understood as the world tries to make sense of itself. 7/11 has brought Islamic values to the fore in a contested way; the death of Victoria Climbie as an example of belief in child demons could not be grasped by the Laming Commission, but many children are abused and killed because of beliefs in spirits, demons and ancestors. Religion is an aspect of identity for some, and attacks on religion can be part of their victimisation - 'spirit injury' is a term apparently used by critical Black feminists. One sub-theme is the championing of mixed-method research (that is introducing a qualitative aspect). There are examples of quantitative nonsenses, such as a statistical grouping which puts aboriginees, bahais and scientologists in the same box, to produce meaningless statistics. One appeal is to come to terms with shamanic altered mental states, another to included emotion in the research process, not only reporting the emotions of respondants, but also allowing emotion in the researcher, who is trying to get to grips with emotions labeled spiritual of religious.
This is one part of the issue. Another is that we need to understand the place of emotions in self understanding, and in particular distinguish between helpful and harmful emotions. People can be emotional to an obsessive level about nonsense, about demon possiession (remember The Crucible?), and about angels, crystals, heaven, hell. Giving them a voice does not mean we have to accept their dangerous misunderstandings.