Research on religion and globalization is revealing that religious responses to global dynamics have been highly varied, positioned across a broad spectrum that ranges from the defensive to the open and creative. However, attempts to engage this area of studies in the case of Japanese religions have been unexpectedly few and fragmentary; the use of full-scale globalization theory remains underdeveloped. Sometimes an underlying conceptual obstacle is that the dominating perspective is reduced to the dimension of worldwide institutional expansion, which prevents a full engagement with the much more complex dynamics. In other cases, there may simply be resistance to the application of contemporary globalization theories to concrete case studies in religion. Possibly also some features peculiar to Japanese history have delayed the application of globalization perspectives to its religious worlds. Based on these premises the articles by Inoue Nobutaka, Ugo Dessì, Galen Amstutz, Victoria Rose Montrose, Girardo Rodriguez Plasencia, Regina Yoshie Matsue, and Rafael Shoji and Frank Usarski collected in this special issue address several examples and themes in this diversified, complex world as part of the ongoing work of addressing our existing gaps in awareness.
Operations ResearchCall for Papers: Special Issue on Computational Economics