2014
Women, Violence and Religion in South Africa, Johannesburg, 31 October 2014: Call for Papaers
The Department of Religious Studies of University of Johannesburg and the Circle of Women Theologians in Africa invite paper proposals for the one day conference on Women, Violence and Religion in South Africa, to be held on 31st October 2014. Closing date for paper proposals is 15 August 2014.
The theme
Although South Africa enjoys one of the most gender-equal constitutions and has among the highest number of women in government in the world, violence against women is widespread in the country. This conference seeks to examine violence against women by considering the role, perspective and contribution of various religious organisations. Our debates will be framed by three broad questions.
First, are the high levels of violence against women in South Africa influenced by religious ideologies and/or practices? Second, what is the role of women in societies where violence against women is commonplace? In particular, do women in leadership perpetuate cycles of violence against other women? What types of role models are female leaders to other women, especially to the victims of violence? Third, how do religious organisations and teachings perpetuate, condone or combat violence against women?
The conference will address these questions by means of an interdisciplinary approach. The discussion will accommodate theological, anthropological, psychological and sociological discourses. We invite paper from any of these fields, and encourage interdisciplinary papers.
PAPERS ON THE FOLLOWING BROAD TOPICS ARE WELCOME
- Understanding women, violence and the sacred text – with particular reference to episodes dealing with the abuse of women.
- Religious interpretations of violence against women – do religions ‘glorify’ violence against women, or turn a blind eye to it?
- The various roles of leaders in perpetuating or fi ghting violence against women in religious communities or organisations.
- Female leadership and violence – are female leaders in political, medical, educational, economic and spiritual spheres violent towards their subjects or employees?
- Violence against women in sacred spaces.
- Violence against women in the media.
- Violence against marginalised women in South African society, including foreigners, the economically deprived and the politically ignored.
- Theoretical perspectives on how we conceptualise and study the interface between violence against women and different religions.
- Proposals dealing with non-Christian traditions
SELECTED PAPERS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN A SPECIAL EDITION of a peer reviewed and DoHET accredited journal
CONTACT DETAILS:
Dr, Maria Frahm-Arp
Department of Religion
University of Johannesburg
mariafrahmarp@gmail.com
2014
International Conference of the Research Network on Religion, AIDS and Social Transformation in Africa (RASTA), Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, 28-30 May 2015
Research Network on Religion, AIDS and Social Transformation in Africa (RASTA), International Conference: Spirit and Sentiment: Affective Trajectories of Religious Being in Urban Africa, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, 28-30 May 2015
Keynote speakers
* Prof. Dr. Filip de Boeck, University of Leuven
* Prof. Dr. AbdouMaliq Simone, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Call for papers
Experiences and social practices of people living in urban Africa are powerfully shaped by the dynamics of affect and emotion. Moving into and residing in the vital and (economically, ethnically, socially) diverse urban centers of the continent often triggers, and is driven by, states of anxiety, insecurity and fear, as well as feelings of excitement and hope, e.g. for a better life and socio-economic liberation. In addition, urban centers, and the opportunities and risks that living in them implies, provide space for sensations of pleasure, love, care and intimacy, but also experiences of suffering, alienation and emotional drama.
Many of these emotional and affective dynamics are engendered by the particular characteristics that have shaped urban life in and beyond Africa over the last decades; including the presence of violence and crime in urban dwellings; high levels of unemployment, poverty and epidemic illness; the promises, desires and actual pains induced by neoliberal, market-oriented reforms; along with the proliferation of artistic and aesthetic forms in urban centers. They have been exacerbated further in the context of HIV/AIDS and urban violence where cities have become signifiers not only as sites of death and bereavement, as exemplified by Mbembe s notion of necropolitics and de Boeck s writings on the invisible city and young people s social and moral imaginaries in Kinshasa (2004). Cities have also become places of hope and possible future(s) where due to the existing infrastructure and higher degrees of anonymity antiretroviral medication was available first and where people started to refashion their lives and emotional selves around as well as beyond the rigid frameworks of the emerging treatment regimes. Thus, as the case of HIV/AIDS illustrates, moving into and residing in urban settings may imply the reorganization of social relations and individual subjectivities, thereby giving rise to new understandings and practices of citizenship, self and personhood, but also sensations of marginality and exclusion and the anxieties of leading a good life in morally, socially, politically and spiritually corrupt environments.
This conference focuses on the multiple articulations between the wide array of affective and emotional states that living in and beyond urban Africa implies, on the one hand, and religious practices and ideas present in African cities and that may impact on the former, on the other. While a further goal of the conference is to establish a link between these various domains and HIV/AIDS, this is not an obligatory requirement for paper submissions. In a fundamental sense, the emotional and affective dynamics in urban Africa and the social, political and material configurations that sustain (or are sustained by) them are bound up with religion, its politics of collective aspirations and presence in material public space, and its material practices: First, religious ideas and practices offer affective regimes that regulate the hermeneutics of religious selves; second, religion allows people to encode their emotional states in religious and/or spiritual terms that may shape their maps of meaning and guide their movements; third, it supplies affective forms of belonging that are often simultaneously localized and transnational and thus forge new notions of emplacement; fourth, it provides ritual spaces for catharsis, peace and elation hence an outlet for the discord and anxiety of city life but religious groups and rituals may also foster aggression towards those considered outside their moral order; and fifth, religious communities often provide concrete material, emotional and organizational support and care to those in need and danger.
We are particularly interested in contributions from anthropology, sociology, political science, urban studies, history, geography, and religious studies that are based on thorough empirical research and that highlight not only how religious idioms, practices and structures channel and articulate emotional and affective states, but also how they foment emotions and affect in their own way (e.g., in ritual and prayer, religious group formation and mass mobilization, and religious engagements with political and moral issues in contemporary society). We expect presenters to engage with the analytical key concepts of the conference, i.e. the notions of affect, emotion and the urban. In our view, the notion of sentiment is helpful in defining distinctive ways of moral and emotional being in specific communities (Throop 2012) which cultivate ethical lives in times of social transformation and moral breakdown (Zigon 2007) and which can also be inscribed in forms of humanitarian and state governance (Fassin 2011). Also, engaging analytically with urban space may benefit from the notion of scale (Brenner 2001) that addresses the hierarchical arrangements of urban centers in an interconnected world as well as the internal diversity of urban space with its hot spots and dead zones (van Dijk 2011). Furthermore, we consider cities as spaces of intensification (Debord 1977) which are configured around spatial mobilities, risks and opportunities. Papers can address these issues from the perspective of dominant traditions (Christianity, Islam, African Traditional Religion) or actors who engage with their ideas, practices and everyday articulations in the flourishing religious markets and popular sectors of African cities , religious minorities, and other, site-specific scenarios of religious diversity both on the continent and in the African diaspora.
Paper submissions may cover one or several of the following themes:
- African Cities as epistemological laboratories: medicine, faith and enchantment
- Insecurity, health and healing
- Emotionality of religious politics in urban Africa and the mobilization of religious sentiment in urban governance
- The manifestation of religious sentiment in urban art and media (song, graffiti, theatre, TV)
- Emotionality, affect and religious engagements with public space
- Anxieties, hopes and affect in interreligious encounters
Sentiment and the formation of religious personhood in and beyond institutional settings
Intimacy, love and care in religious and family domains
The material as well as immaterial practices of care and support that enable the navigation of the urban in spiritual, emotional and material ways.
Abstracts
*Please submit your abstracts of 250-300 words to*: rasta.berlin.conference2015[at]gmail.com
Deadline
The deadline for applications is September 30, 2014. Participants will be informed about the acceptance or non-acceptance of their papers by mid- to end of October. Accepted speakers will be expected to submit their paper (4-5000 words) by April 20, 2015 for pre-circulation among all conference participants.
Scholarships
Several travel and accommodation fellowships are available for select participants. African scholars will be prioritized in selection, though we also invite others to apply whose participation would be dependent on financial support. Please write a 500 word motivation for funding applications, outlining your reasons for the application, whether you require full or partial funding, and your expected travel costs. Please include also a short CV of no more than 2 pages.
Organizing Team
- Hansjörg Dilger (Frei Universität Berlin, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, hansjoerg.dilger@berlin.de )
- Astrid Bochow (Georg-August University Göttingen, Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, a.bochow@gmail.com )
- Marian Burchardt (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity, Göttingen, burchardt@mmg.mpg.de )
- Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon (African Center for Migration and Society, Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa, matthew.wilhelm-solomon@wits.ac.za)
Sponsor
The conference will be co-sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation Program Knowledge for Tomorrow Cooperative Research Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa
2014
Gender and Diversity Issues in Religious-Based Institutions and Organizations: Call for Chapters
Gender and Diversity Issues in Religious-Based Institutions and Organizations
Proposals Submission Deadline: July 15, 2014
Full Chapters Due: October 15, 2014
2014
Accountable Leadership and Sustainability in Africa, UNISA, Pretoria, April 21-24, 2015: Call for papers
CALL FOR PAPERS for an international, interdisciplinary conference, celebrating the 40th Anniversary of UNISA’s Research Institute for Theology and Religion, on:
ACCOUNTABLE LEADERSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY IN AFRICA: RELIGION, DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY
at UNISA (University of South Africa), Pretoria, South Africa, April 21-24, 2015
This International Conference brings together scholars/researchers, practitioners of diverse religious traditions and spiritualities, FBOs/NGOs and policy makers to interrogate the interconnectedness between religion, democracy and civil society; its impact on accountable leadership and sustainability in Africa. Public commentators often criticize political entrepreneurs and African states of their failure to develop an ethic of public probity and accountability, partly exemplified by corruption. The enigmas of public transparency and probity can hardly be limited to public governance. We can also explore how religious institutions in Africa interrogate, critique, practice or fail to eschew transparency, accountability and probity in the quest for economic, social-political transformation and sustainability. Religious entrepreneurs grapple with similar issues of accountable leadership, good governance, probity, and integrity as a reflection of their wider societies. Ecclesiastical, Islamic, or Indigenous religious polities are situated within wider pluralistic (secular) polities in Africa and are thus mutually reinforcing each other.
The significance of leadership and corporate governance (religious/secular) lies in its contribution to prosperity, peaceful coexistence, moral regeneration and accountability. Accountability requires appropriate rules and regulations, doctrines, codes of conduct, values and behaviour to make for viable transformation and sustainability. For instance, a historical perspective on leadership dynamics can be helpful in the present crisis in leadership in church and secular contexts. The churches and missionary societies played a crucial role in the shaping of South African religious cultures, as much in the colonial period as during the years of the formation of the Union and the Apartheid era.
The conference provides a platform in which scholars/researchers, practitioners and policy makers will explore, through historical and contemporary perspectives, how authority structures, institutionalized myths, beliefs, and rituals of authority differently mobilize and influence members? behaviour and attitudes towards financial probity and organizational policies. How do various hierarchical/decentralized religious polities (i.e. structures of church government) in Africa deal with issues of probity (moral regeneration), equity and sustainable development? What values do African religions and spiritualities evince that represent a boon or bane for improving corporate governance and ensuring improved ethics and probity in African systems of governance? How should religious polity structures respond, critique and identify with national/international policies that are aimed at a disciplined management and equitable distribution of public resources, and the establishment of a viable culture of financial probity? What various models condition religious polities and leadership in Africa, and how have these been influenced by modern political movements, such as Western democracy, as well as by modern economics and technology? Are liberal or conservative forms of religiosity compatible with Western democracy? How and to what extent should religious insights be present in the public sphere of the secular polity and vice versa? How does prayer ritual action impact on religious and national polities to maximize probity at personal and institutional levels?
The conference will highlight and explore how and to what extent African religious traditions and spiritualities may cohere on the critical issues, such as that of probity, equity and accountability, which confront the African continent, but also the African religious diaspora, their ‘faiths’ in relation to the wider, global community.
Interrelated issues on religion, spirituality, democracy, leadership, social capital, public engagement, poverty, corruption and transparency will be discussed. The conference is intended to build synergies and forge dialogue on how religious/spiritual communities in Africa and the African diaspora can combat poverty and foster probity, accountable leadership and financial sustainability.
The conference programme shall focus on the following and related sub-themes:
- Corruption and Financial Sustainability
- Religious Polity
- Leadership and intimate spaces
- Women, Gender and Leadership
- Youth and Leadership
- Democracy, NGOs and FBOs
- Participatory Democracy
- Religion and Politics
- Religion and Development
- Ecological Sustainability
- Religion, Constitutionalism and Secularism
- Leadership, Violent Conflict, Peace and Reconciliation
- Religion, Health and Sustainable Development
- Religion, Media and Leadership
Paper/presentation proposals based or related to one or more of the above themes are invited from the interested public: scholars, religious/spiritual communities and organizations, policy makers, and FBOs/NGOs. Interested panelists are invited to submit a paper/abstract proposal (max. 200 words), stating institutional affiliation, on or before 30 September 2014.
Abstract proposals and all correspondences regarding the conference should be sent electronically (email) to the conference secretariat:
bentlw1@unisa.ac.za
Successful applicants will be informed by 15 October, 2014. Papers presented will be considered for a book/journal publication through a peer review process. Drafts of paper are expected to be submitted by
20 February 2015. A final full draft of the revised paper will be expected by 30 June 2015. Following the acceptance of abstracts, presenters will be given specific guidelines for writing their draft papers.
Conference registration details will follow on the conference website:
www.unisa.ac.za/ritr
Hosting institutions:
- Research Institute for Theology and Religion (RITR), University of South Africa;
- Department of Church History & Church Polity, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria; and
- School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, UK
In collaboration with: African Association for the Study of Religions (AASR) & Pan African Strategic and Policy Research Group (PANAFSTRAG)
Local Organizing Committee:
Proff. Christina Landman, Ignatius Swart, Victor Molobi, Drr. Wessel Bentley, Obaji Agbiji (UNISA); Proff. Graham Duncan, Jerry Pillay (University of Pretoria)
International Collaborative Partner:
Prof. Afe Adogame (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Confirmed keynote speakers:
- Proff. Vusi Gumede (Thabo Mbeki Leadership Institute, University of South Africa);
- Paulus Zulu (University of KwaZulu Natal);
- Dapo Asaju (Lagos State University);
- Anne Kubai (Uppsala University);
- Afe Adogame (University of Edinburgh)
2014
PentecoStudies: Call for articles
The editor of PentecoStudies, Allan Anderson, calls for articles for this journal which offers a distinctly interdisciplinary forum for the study of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.
Authors from the social sciences, the humanities, cultural studies, religious studies and theology are all welcome to submit research on global expressions of Pentecostalism defined in its broadest sense. The journal invites work that attends to historical, contemporary and regional studies. In particular, it is interested in the global expansion of Pentecostalism, its mutations and impact on society, culture and the media, including its influence on traditional non-Pentecostal churches. Comparative research is encouraged, especially if it is based on different regional studies and contributes to our understanding of globalization and the role of Pentecostalism in post-colonial contexts. Attention to the lived experience of religion is important and studies that include empirical research are welcome, as well as theoretical studies.
