1. Education

2. Career

3. The Religion and Diversity Project

4. Religion and Law

5. Deep Equality

6. Awards and honours

7. Influences

8. Selected publications
    Books (Sole author)  Books (Co-authored)  Book Series (Co-Edited)  Edited Volumes  Book Chapters  Journal Articles 

9. See also

10. References

11. External links

Education

Beaman earned her B.A. in philosophy (1985), an LL.B. in law (1987), an M.A. in sociology (1992), and a Ph.D. in sociology (1996) from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, NB, Canada. She was admitted to the law society of New Brunswick in 1988 and practiced law for five years before her graduate studies.{{citation needed|date=July 2018}}

Career

Beaman has held professorships at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and The University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta. She is the Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada and full professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. She teaches Religion and Law, Theory and Method, and Religion in Contemporary Canada.{{citation needed|date=July 2018}}

The Religion and Diversity Project

Beaman is the principal investigator of the Religion and Diversity Project, a $2.5 million, seven-year, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) headquartered at the University of Ottawa. She guides a team of 37 international researchers who study religious diversity in Canada as well as Australia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. The project explores the contours of religious diversity and how to best respond to opportunities and challenges presented by religious diversity in ways that promote a just and peaceful society.^[4] Researchers look at the social construction of religious identities, how religion is defined and delimited in law and public policy, and how gender and sexuality emerge as volatile issues in debates over religious freedom.^[5][6] Perspectives from multiple academic disciplines inform the work of the project, including anthropology, communication, education, history, law, philosophy, political science, religious studies, and sociology.  Advocating a shift away from the language and frameworks of tolerance and accommodation, Beaman and her team of researchers focus on the creation of innovative approaches to religious diversity in order to foster substantive or deep equality.

Religion and Law

Beaman has written extensively on religious diversity and the intersections of religion and law.^[7][8][9] In her 2008 book Defining Harm: Religious Freedom and the Limits of the Law,^[10][11] she explores the case of an adolescent cancer patient whose objection to blood transfusions was based on religious conviction. The ensuing legal fray exposed what Beaman characterized as a "culture of fear" and the construction of the religious 'other' as a threat to social order (7). The work offers a critical socio-legal analysis, drawing on Foucauldian notions of genealogies of power, sedimentation, and resistance to explain how religious minorities (in particular post 9/11 Muslims) or those on the margins of normative religion are perceived as destabilizing forces that "threaten a Christian hegemony that is itself in flux and under revision" (5). Beaman points to "law’s privileged status" as a "producer of truth" and engages the work of Carol Smart^[12] who proposes the decentering of law in order to create more comprehensive depictions of social life (7-8). Beaman's publication record demonstrates a preoccupation with how the courts define religion and how the normalization or marginalization of certain religious groups influences the interpretation of religious freedom. She has also written about polygamy and how law frames certain types of family structures.^[13] Her commentaries on government responses to religion in the public sphere^[14] (such as the proposed Charter of Québec Values)   and the complexities of religious freedom^[15] have appeared on the academic blog The Immanent Frame   and in the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's Global Perspectives Series, where she emphasized the need for positive narratives and more nuanced understandings of intra-religious diversity.   Her work on diversity also considers non-belief and non-religious world views, including the growing social significance of those who identify as religious 'nones'. The status and voices of nones are a concern for Beaman, as they fall outside the purview of religious freedom protections.^[16] Beaman's career corpus demonstrates a commitment to the broad themes of justice, fairness, equality and inclusion.

Deep Equality

In 2015, the Royal Society of Canada acknowledged Beaman's contributions to the study of religious diversity in Canada and her research on deep equality.^[17][18] In the article Deep Equality as an Alternative to Accommodation and Tolerance (2014), Beaman contends that the conceptualization of diversity as a problem to be solved sets up a hierarchy of privilege whereby majorities or host cultures bestow tolerance or accommodation on minorities. She rejects the language of tolerance and accommodation as frameworks for the management of this "crisis of diversity," in favor of a model she refers to as deep equality (90). Informed in part by political theorist William E. Connolly's thoughts on deep pluralism and agonistic respect, Beaman's paradigm of deep equality proposes the displacement of conflict narratives with a focus on empirical evidence from the successful negotiation of religious diversity in the quotidian. She argues that the exploration, understanding and mapping of micro-level instances of day-to-day cooperation and collaboration between ordinary people are crucial to shifting the perception of diversity as a problem to one of opportunity. Beaman engages Connolly's notion of agnostic respect as foundational to the work of deep equality, noting that "respect is 'agonistic' because it requires the abandonment of rightness and the conviction that one is imbued with the truth through some sort of transcendent authority" (98). She also points to static representations of religion and rigid religious identities (particularly as perpetuated in the media), as well as an overreliance on law to resolve disputes as persistent impediments to the progress of deep equality. "Law," according to Beaman "has colonized the meaning of equality, watering it down and displacing it with concepts like ‘reasonable accommodation’ and tolerance" (92). Beaman argues three points: "1. That tolerance and accommodation are inappropriate frameworks to facilitate human thriving in a diverse context; 2. That a reconstituted notion of equality can subvert the binaries that are kept alive by tolerance and accommodation; 3. That positive narratives offer a map toward a renewed conceptualization of equality, and a recognition of day-to-day human activity in its constitution" (104). Beaman draws from the disciplines of law, neuroscience, philosophy, political theory, sociology, and social psychology, among others, to inform her emerging model of deep equality. She projects the utility of deep equality as a lens for exploring inequality in a broad range of areas including economics, environmental relations, gender, race, religion, and sexuality. The broad notion of respect is a recurrent theme emerging from Beaman's research, with "the values of caring, neighborliness and shared humanity" as core components of deep equality's emphasis on striving to live well together with difference (98). Beaman's work on human/non-human animal relationships is likewise linked to her interest in the diversity of religious and non-religious world views and their expression in everyday interactions. She is currently conducting empirical research on the global phenomenon of sea turtle rescue, employing aspects of the lived religion approach to explore identity construction in late modernity and narratives of cooperation that emerge from human engagement with both animals and the environment.

Awards and honours

2017 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Award Nominee  

2015 Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Academy of the Arts and Humanities [https://www.uottawa.ca/gazette/en/news/two-professors-promoted-royal-society-canada]

2014 Resident, Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, Bellagio, Italy

2010 - 2017 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) $2.5 million grant, Major Collaborative Research Initiatives. Project Title: Religious Diversity and Its Limits: Moving Beyond Tolerance and Accommodation [https://www.uottawa.ca/media/media-release-1893.html]

2010 Visiting Fellowship, Atlantic Human Rights Centre, New Brunswick, Canada

2006–present Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada [https://www.uottawa.ca/media/media-release-930.html]

1997 - 1999 Young Scholars in American Religion Program

Influences

Selected publications

Books (Sole author)

• Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity. 2017. [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/deep-equality-in-an-era-of-religious-diversity-9780198803485?cc=ca&lang=en&]
• Defining Harm: Religious Freedom and the Limits of the Law. 2008. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Excerpt
• Shared Beliefs, Different Lives: Women’s Identities in Evangelical Context. 1999. Saint Louis: Chalice Press.

Books (Co-authored)

• Exploring Gender in Canada: A Multidimensional Approach. 2007. Co-authored with Beverly Matthews. Toronto: Prentice Hall.

Book Series (Co-Edited)

• International Studies in Religion and Society. 2007–present. Co-edited with Peter Beyer. Leiden: Brill.  
• Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies. 2015–present. Co-edited with Anna Halafoff and Lene Kühle. Cham: Springer. [https://www.springer.com/series/11839]

Edited Volumes

• Constructions of Self and Other in Yoga, Travel and Tourism: A Journey to Elsewhere. 2016. Edited by Lori G. Beaman and Sonia Sikka. [https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319325118]
• Living with Religious Diversity. 2016. Edited by Sonia Sikka, Bindu Puri and Lori G. Beaman. New Delhi: Routledge India. [https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138944589]
• Issues in Religion and Education, Whose Religion? 2015. Edited by Lori G. Beaman and Leo Van Arragon. Leiden: Brill.  
• Atheist Identities: Spaces and Social Contexts. 2015. Edited by Lori G. Beaman and Steven Tomlins. Cham: Springer. [https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319096018]
• Multiculturalism and Religious Identity: Canada and India. 2014. Edited by Sonia Sikka and Lori G. Beaman. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.  
• Religion in the Public Sphere: Canadian Case Studies. 2014. Edited by Solange Lefebvre and Lori G. Beaman. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.  
• Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family, and Law. 2013 Edited by Gillian Calder and Lori G. Beaman. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.  
• Varieties of Religious Establishment. 2013. Edited by Winnifred Sullivan and Lori G. Beaman. Farnham: Ashgate.  
• Reasonable Accommodation: Managing Religious Diversity. 2012. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.  
• Religion and Diversity in Canada. 2008. Edited by Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer. Leiden: Brill Academic Press.  
• Religion, Globalization and Culture. 2007. Edited by Peter Beyer and Lori G. Beaman. Leiden: Brill Academic Press.  
• Religion and Canadian Society: Traditions, Transitions and Innovations. 2012. Toronto: Canadian Scholar's Press Inc.  
• New Perspectives on Deviance: The Construction of Deviance in Everyday Life. 2000. Toronto: Prentice Hall.  

Book Chapters

• Namaste: The Perilous Journey of ‘Real’ Yoga, in Constructions of Self and Other in Yoga, Travel and Tourism: A Journey to Elsewhere, edited by Lori G. Beaman and Sonia Sikka. 2016. [https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319325118]
• Opposing Polygamy: A Matter of Equality or Patriarchy? in Of Crime and Religion: Polygamy in Canadian Law, edited by Marie-Pierre Robert, David Kousssens and Stéphanie Bernatchez. Sherbrooke: Éditions Revue de droit de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 2014: 131-157.
• Labyrinth as Heterotopia: The Pilgrim's Creation of Space, in On the Road to Being There: Continuing the Pilgrimage-Tourism Dialogue, edited by William Swatos Jr. Leiden: Brill Academic Press, 2006: 83-103.

Journal Articles

• Living Well Together in a (non)Religious Future: Contributions from the Sociology of Religion. Sociology of Religion, 78(1): 9-32. [https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article/78/1/9/3053446/Living-Well-Together-in-a-non-Religious-Future]
• Deep Equality as an Alternative to Accommodation and Tolerance, Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 27(2): 89-111. 2014. Article
• Overdressed and Underexposed or Underdressed and Overexposed? Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 19(6): 723-742. 2013
• The Will to Religion: Obligatory Religious Citizenship, Critical Research on Religion 1(2): 141-157. 2013.
• Battles over Symbols: The ‘Religion’ of the Minority Versus the ‘Culture’ of the Majority, Journal of Law and Religion 28(1): 67-104. 2012/3.
• Protéger les relations entre les sexes: La Commission Bouchard-Taylor et l’égalité des femmes, avec Solange Lefebvre, Revue Canadienne de recherché social, 2(1): 84-94. 2012.
• It was all slightly unreal’: What's Wrong with Tolerance and Accommodation in the Adjudication of Religious Freedom? Canadian Journal of Women and Law 23(2): 442-463. 2011.
• The Myth of Plurality, Diversity and Vigour: Constitutional Privilege of Protestantism in the United States and Canada, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(3): 311-325; and 341-346. 2003.
• Aboriginal Spirituality and the Legal Construction of Freedom of Religion, Journal of Church and State 44: 135-149. 2002.
• Molly Mormons, Mormon Feminists and Moderates: Religious Diversity and the Latter Day Saints Church, Sociology of Religion 62(1): 65-86. 2001.

See also

References

External links

• [https://www.luthercollege.edu/university/academics/impetus/winter-2012-impetus/deep-equality-moving-beyond-tolerance-and-accommodation/ Deep equality: Moving beyond tolerance and accommodation]
• The Religion and Diversity Project
• [https://twitter.com/rdiversity The Religion and Diversity Project Twitter Feed]
• Patterns of Governing Religion
• 2014 Nordic Conference for Sociology of Religion Keynote Address
• Living with Religious Diversity
• States of Devotion
• Book Preview - Varieties of Religious Establishment, edited by Winnifred Sullivan and Lori Beaman

• Maxwell v Dow
• Maxwell Walters
• Maxwell Woosnam (priest)
• Maxwell Xolani Rani
• Maxwell Zweifach
• Maxwell–Bloch equations
• Maxwell–Boltzmann
• Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution law
• Maxwell–Juettner distribution
• Maxwell–Juttner distribution
• Maxwell–Jüttner distribution
• Maxwell’s spot
• Maxwelton House
• Maxwelton, Queensland
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• Max Westenhoeffer
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