Call for Abstracts: Women and Faith-based development

FIRST CALL for Abstracts for a Workshop on
WOMEN AND ‘FAITH-BASED DEVELOPMENT’:
MIXING MORALITY AND MONEY
International Gender Studies Centre Workshop
Queen Elizabeth House, Dept of International Development, Oxford University
[proposed date: September 2007]

Recent geo-political events have placed religious issues centre stage. This has led faith based-organizations and issues to feature prominently in development debates. There is, nevertheless, inadequate understanding of the complex inter-relationship between religion and development at the state, agency and community level. What is clear is that assumptions about gender identity and roles underline much of the debate about the moral and material meaning of development goals. This workshop is devoted to exploring the intersection between faith-based development organizations, donor recipients, and gender relations.
What are the implications of faith-based development projects for the agency of women as opposed to men in a given local community? How does faith-based development work contrast with secular development in terms of the implicit or explicit gender roles accorded to donor and recipient? How is development work related to religious activism and what implications does this have for local, gendered power hierarchies? How do local community-based projects’ gender agendas relate to those of the state? What are the gender implications of transnational development projects within specific religious traditions? These are some of the questions to be addressed via three proposed panels in this multi-disciplinary workshop. We welcome papers with a theoretical-conceptual bias as well as those which favour a more empirical and/or ethnographic approach.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop please send us an abstract of no more than 250 words by June 30th2006 to the relevant panel coordinator or post to her at: IGS/Conference-QEH, 3 Mansfield Rd, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK.

THEME 1 – Maria Jaschok, email: Maria.Jaschok@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Indigenising Religions, Postcolonial Sentiment and Women Driving Alternative Development
The growing membership of religious organizations, the prominence of women in all of them, the privatisation of the welfare state and more liberal state policies concerning international funding raises crucial questions in many countries. Could gendered, religious notions of development be seen as ’alternative‘, or even ’subversive‘, to state sponsored development ideology? Is there a clash of objectives between the ’development for women‘, and the ’development of religion‘? To what extent are transnational religious organizations becoming more influential in religious-based development projects and what is the impact on gender relations locally? These questions will be explored through case studies of local women’s initiatives and international feminist networks as well as NGOs and international donor agencies in various countries.

THEME 2 – Josephine Reynell, email: Josephine.Reynell@lmh.ox.ac.uk
Gender and the Organization of Aid in Diasporic Religious Communities
Recent humanitarian disasters across the world, caused by war and environmental factors have revealed how diasporic religious communities, and particularly informal organizations of women, mobilise to collect both money and goods to help populations who often, but not invariably, share the same religious faith or country of origin. This panel will examine the gendered consequences of such projects for both recipient and donor communities, and the impact of the resultant trans-national links on the nation state in both the donor and recipient countries.

THEME 3 – Deborah Bryceson, email: dfbryceson@bryceson.net
Compassion and Moral Righteousness: Faith- based Donor Assistance for AIDS-affected Communities
The devastating impact of AIDS in local communities has encouraged people to seek solace in religion. Faith based organizations of virtually every major religious denomination as well as numerous Pentecostal and other religious sects have offered spiritual and material support, assisting AIDS orphans, and instructing their followings on sexual morality, gender relations and the role of women in society. This panel will examine the range and nature of various faith-based interventions, consider their impact on local communities and ask how such interventions have influenced gender hierarchies.

THEME 4 – Anne Coles, email: JohnandAnneColes@compuserve.com
GENERAL PANEL
For those who feel their paper does not fit into any of the above themes.