Courses

About the course:

Life trajectory is a highly public issue which has shaped controversial public and political debates on the normative demands of the way of living, transitions and aging. The way people organize their lives, in terms of coming of age, establishing a family, pursuing an education, everyday family life and retirement transitions, does not reflect uniform processes. However, it does imply changes on the social level and reflects cultural perceptions, contemporary ideas and images of age groups in culturally plural societies.

The course addresses questions of how values, religion and spirituality develop, change and are expressed over the life course. It explores research on the outcomes of socialization, faith and value expressions, diversification of religious identities and various dimensions of non-religion, and the influences of the growth of super-diversity and multi-religious societies. A key question in this regard is how values impact generations and the management of transitions between childhood and adulthood, and between working age and retirement. Which changes do these processes lead to in the various political, social and economic contexts? How are the various age groups’ experiences mediated by politics of religion, sexuality, gender and ethnicity? What interactions are there between media, religious associations, work, education and healthcare?  Working with these questions allows us, within interdisciplinary perspectives, to trace the tensions between doctrinal concepts and lived practices, which may point to very different sets of norms, and to investigate concrete and diverse empirical settings.

We have an excellent group of speakers for this program: Elisabeth Arweck (University of Warwick); Aagje Swinnen (Maastricht University); Jenni Spännärï (Univeristy of Helsinki); Pål Ketil Botvar (UiA) and Ida Marie Høeg (UiA). See the full program here