Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning

Additional Information

Title: ‘In True Faith’: the search for authenticity in religious social action.
Subject: The project develops a theoretical framework drawing on Georg Simmel’s sociology of religion. The theory is developed through ethnographic research of a Christian evangelical church looking at how faith is translated into social action.
Supervisors: Professor David Clapham / Dr Richard Gale

Publications:

• (2010) Misunderstanding faith: when ‘capital’ does not fit the ‘spiritual’. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences vol.5, n.5, pp.179-192.
  The paper provides a critique of rational choice theory and sketches a framework for the study of religion building on Georg Simmel’s insights.
• (In Press) The enchanting dream of ‘spiritual capital’, Implicit Religion.
  The paper analyses critically the re-conceptualisation of ‘spiritual capital’ in UK academic research, away from rational choice theory.

Working Papers:

• ‘Making life sacred’: Rethinking Georg Simmel’s Sociology of Religion.
  The paper outlines the notion of ‘sacralisation’ as a process arising from faith. It is part of the theory framing current ethnographic research and is informed by its initial findings.
• Shopping for a Church? The role of choice in church-going and church-doing in 21^st century Britain.
  The paper presents initial findings reflecting on church-doing and church-going questioning the approach of rational choice theory.

Unpublished Dissertation:

• (2009) 'Followers of Jesus': journey into an evangelical Christian church in Wales. Cardiff: Cardiff University.

Research interests: Georg Simmel, individual religiosity, Christian evangelicalism, religious pluralism, pragmatism

Websites: http://cardiff.academia.edu/FrancescaMontemaggi ; http://paswonky.blogspot.com