I am proposing to research religious institutions and peacebuilding because I want to find out what explains what motivates religious actors to become involved in the peacebuilding process in order to help my reader understand whether and to what degree religious actors should become involved in conflicts.
Research question: What explains the variation in the involvement of religious institutions in peacebuilding efforts?
- “Global Totals of religious populations by religion”
This first source shows the percentage of religious within the population of every religion in the world and also shows the percentage of the world population that number constitutes.[1] This source can be used to understand the influence that religions have in the world in regard to the percentage of the world population.[2] This number can be expanded to see the percent population within a particular country or region as well.[3] This information is an important dependent variable to see if there is a statistically relevant relationship between conflicts and percentage of religions. A limitation to this source is that it only looks at the percent of religious globally and not by country.
- “Religious Conflict by Country”
This statistical data shows countries that have experienced religious conflict.[4] It looks at the religious freedom index, governmental restriction index, religious conflict, state religion, and other factors.[5] Using this data with the data about the percentage of the religious within populations, research can be done to see if correlation exists between the two statistics. I also want to specifically look at the state religion where the conflicts are occurring (whether a state is a theocracy or if the state has a national religion). This information will help identify important dependent variables within religious conflicts (like state religion, places where religious conflicts occur, and others), but other statistical sources are needed to show similar evidence about non-religious conflicts. The combination of religious and secular conflicts will give a wider variation to understand the complexity of conflicts. This source is limited because it only considers religious conflicts.
Overall, this research would compare conflict between countries and within the same country to gain a diverse set of conflicts.
[1] Boston University, Global Totals of Religious Populations by Religion, 2015, Distributed by the Institute of Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, https://libguides.webster.edu/data/chicago.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Boston University, Religious Conflict by Country, 2015, Distributed by the Institute of Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, https://libguides.webster.edu/data/chicago.
[5] Ibid.
Bibliography
Boston University. Religious Conflict by Country. 2015. Distributed by the Institute of Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. https://libguides.webster.edu/data/chicago.
Boston University. Global Totals of Religious Populations by Religion. 2015. Distributed by the Institute of Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. https://libguides.webster.edu/data/chicago.
I am particularly interested in the second dataset to see the macro data about religious conflict across the globe. How will you address the psychology of religion in neopositivisit form? By survey polls, as the first data set, or some other form of compiled data? If you have not yet, I would recommend the “What Terrorists Really Want” Article by Abrahms. The article talks about differing reasons to commit acts of extremism from the perspective of religious individuals. It eventually concludes that terrorists actions are rarely in cohesion with the overall organizational mission, and in fact are usually due to a series of small-scale calculations about material or psychological benefit. Very interesting topic to study, and I look forward to see where it goes!
Hi Savannah! Your datasets seem to be directly related to your research, which is a huge benefit. I think it may also be interesting to look at conflicts that aren’t purely religious conflict but may have had religion cited as a reason. That may give you a wider variety of sources to look at. I love this topic – it’s so interesting and I’m excited to learn more through your research. Good luck and happy researching!
Hi Savannah! Your datasets seem to be directly related to your research which is a huge benefit. I think something that could be interesting is looking at conflicts that may not be rooted in religion but may also have may religion or religious ideas cited as a variable. I think this may give you a little bit more to work with in terms of data and maybe even more avenues for research! I love this topic – it’s so interesting and I’m excited to learn more through your research. Good luck!
Savannah — the data sources that you discuss here are clearly relevant for your project and they provide information that will be useful as you consider the various variables you would investigate. At this stage, however, it is important to focus first on the dependent variable. With your question — What explains the variation in the involvement of religious institutions in peacebuilding efforts?” — the DV is then “involvement.” How would you operationalize the concept of involvement (as an interval/ratio indicator) to show that there is indeed variation in how religious institutions involve themselves (or don’t) in peacebuilding?