Resounding Transcendence

In the 2015 UK General Election, the Conservative party pledged to reset the UK's relations with Europe, holding an in-out referendum on membership of the European Union and repealing the Human Rights Act, to be replaced with a UK Bill of Rights. With the decision now taken to leave the EU, the future of the Human Rights Act and the UK's relations to the European Convention on Human Rights remains uncertain.Conor Gearty, one of the country's leading experts on human rights, here dissects the myths and fantasies that drive English exceptionalism over Europe, and shape the case for repealing the Human Rights Act. He presents a passionate case for keeping the existing legal framework for protecting human rights and our relationship with the European Convention. Analysing the reform agenda from the perspective of British law, history, politics, and culture, he lays bare the misunderstandings of thehuman rights system that have driven the debate so far.Structured in three parts, the book first exposes the myths that drive the anti-Human Rights Act argument. Second, Gearty outlines how the Act operates in practice and what its impact really is on the ground. Third, he looks to the future and the kind of Britain we want to live in, and how, for all its modesty, the survival or otherwise of the Human Rights Act will play a pivotal part in that future.Resounding Transcendence is a pathbreaking set of ethnographic and historical essays by leading scholars exploring the ways sacred music effects cultural, political, and religious transitions in the contemporary world. With chapters covering Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist practices in East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, North America, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Europe, the volume establishes the theoretical and methodologicalfoundations for music scholarship to engage in current debates about modern religion and secular epistemologies. It also transforms those debates through sophisticated, nuanced treatments of sound and music - ubiquitous elements of ritual and religion often glossed over in other disciplines.Resounding Transcendence confronts the relationship of sound, divinity, and religious practice in diverse post-secular contexts. By examining the immanence of transcendence in specific social and historical contexts and rethinking the reified nature of "religion" and "world religions," these authors examine the dynamics of difference and transition within and between sacred musical practices. The work in this volume transitions between traditional spaces of sacred musical practice andemerging public spaces for popular religious performance; between the transformative experience of ritual and the sacred musical affordances of media technologies; between the charisma of individual performers and the power of the marketplace; and between the making of authenticity and hybridity in religiousrepertoires and practices. Broad in scope, rich in ethnographic and historical detail, and theoretically ambitious, Resounding Transcendence is an essential contribution to the study of music and religion.