Michel S. Laguerre - Network Governance of Global Religions: Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca

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11. Network Governance of Global
Religions

Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca

Michel S. Laguerre

First published 2011

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the UK

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2011 Taylor and Francis

The right of Michel S. Laguerre to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laguerre, Michel S.

Network governance of global reglions: Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca / by Michel S. Laguerre.

p. cm. (Routledge research in information technology and society; 11)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Religions. 2. CommunicationReligious aspects. 3. Telecommunication. 4. Polity (Religion) 5. GlobalizationReligious aspects. I Title

BL85.L28 2011

201'.6384dc22 2010041521

ISBN13: 978-0-415-88879-0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-82389-7 (ebk)

The study of network governance, management, and administration of global religions including Judaism, Catholic Christianity, and Islam is in an embryonic state. Since their inceptions, global religions have dealt with issues of geographical expansion, border-crossing communication, and long distance patronage. In the particular case of the Catholic Church, territorial and global governance is set in Canon law that establishes the administrative structure of practices and the hierarchical architecture of authority. In contrast, Judaism and Islam, which have evolved under different matrix forms of governance, have developed separate procedures and rules to regulate relations between religious leaders and between administrative offices within their respective faiths. Each global religion, in practice, operates under a specific form of network governance, which reflects and explains its different mode of organizational management.

Network governance of global religions is not well understood, partly because of a dearth of expert analyses on the issue. Scholarship on religion tends to focus on other aspects of religious life and institutional practices, such as State and Church relations, spirituality, doctrines, rituals, authority, religious architecture, pilgrimages, and other dimensions of the faith. Recent interest in the study of the globalization process has provided an incentive for further explorations of global religions such as sharing features similar to those found in the network governance of multinational or multicountry organizations.

Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca evoke a vision of symbolic centers and sites of global governance of Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam. No other cities compete with them for such a distinction. In fact, network governance of each global religion is deterritorialized to encompass actors located across the global landscape. In each, one finds sites that carry more weight than others because of their demographic size, wealth, power, structural locations in the network, or simply for reasons of history and tradition. To uncover, delineate, and map linkages between nodes that constitute these networks required the mobilization of a host of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, facilitators, and interviewees. They provided information, advice, or interpretation in the course of the investigation. In addition, three anonymous external reviewers of the manuscript offered useful and suggestive comments for corrections and revision.

The Berkeley Center for Globalization and Information Technology at the Institute of Governmental Studies of the University of California has been the principal site of the cogitation of my ideas on network governance. I particularly want to thank Jack Citrin, Marc Levin, Barbara Campbell, Nick Robinson, and the rest of the staff for their help through the years. The following graduate and undergraduate studentsLauren Kaplan, Kimberly Wolf, Zared Amirkhanian, Michael Chongpornprasert, Manar Hassan, Lauren Holley, Robert Klein, Nasir Mohammed, Carla Federis, Carmen Taylor, Mariam Yousuf, Allison Dolan, Celine Piser, Alina Shlyapochnik, Nicole Anand, Jonathan Bradshaw, Carmel Javier, Ryan Miller, Kate Tiedeman, Teresa Caturano, Steven Chen, Pamela Thornton, Nan Zhang, Jennifer Wu, Meera Garud, Erika Mark, Aileen Ford, Celina Keshishian, Roopika Subramanian, Chinbo Chong, Roohie Ebrahim, Kacie MacGregor, Flavia Garcia, Charles Li, Caitlin Knowlton, and Lia Economosprovided research assistance to the project in terms of bibliographical searches using digital databases available on campus, translations of Arabic texts, transcriptions of interviews, word-processing blocks of citations, proofreading, and checking the alphabetical order and accuracy of references cited. Their everyday presence in the office uplifted my spirit and kept the project going until its completion. For their contributions to the research process, I acknowledge their help and express my gratitude for their collaboration in the production of this piece of scholarship.