Suchergebnisse

This volume brings emerging research on religion and development into conversation with politics. Deploying innovative conceptual frameworks, and drawing on empirical research from across contemporary Asia, this collection makes an incisive contribution to the analysis of aid and development processes

The political theology of development in Asia makes a vital contribution to our understanding of configurations and genealogies of the political. Recent scholarship on political theology has amply illustrated the critical potentialities of examining the theological remainder in even the most secular of modern institutions. However, scholarship on political theology to date has primarily involved tracing the presence of Christian theologies within Western institutions. By shifting the focus to Asia, we not only expand the geographical frame of analysis, but also seek a broader reconceptualisation of the field of political theology. Our focus on development-as a set of transnational networks that connect Western and Asian modernities in complex political and religious entanglements-enables fresh critical analysis of the ways in which the theo-political is imagined, materialised, and contested in and beyond the state. We argue that notions of transcendence, sacrifice and victimhood, and aspiration and salvation are especially valuable for understanding how development is lived and experienced around diverse Asian contexts today.

The neglected intersection between religion and disaster relief should be given much greater attention. This emerging field is an intellectually compelling area for study, though much work stills needs to be done to explore the processes that take place on the ground in different settings. It is also important for practitioners and policy makers involved in disaster response to have a nuanced understanding of the work that religious actors undertake. This special issue begins with an interview with representatives of prominent humanitarian organizations, all of whom call for greater attention to the work of religious actors in disaster relief. The following case studies provide a textured empirical analysis of religious responses to disasters in contemporary Asia. By attending to particular contexts it is shown that religious actors can and do play important yet complex roles in relief processes. This special issue – edited by Philip Fountain, Robin Bush, and R. Michael Feener – aims to critically examine these diverse intersections and also help set future research agendas on the subject.

This paper considers the links between religion and disaster relief through a detailed case study of the activities of Christian churches following the Aitape tsunami of 1998 in northwest Papua New Guinea. Based on primary fieldwork data,
we argue that Christian religion was central to the way in which the Combined Churches Organization conducted its relief work and to why it sought to undertake it in the first place. A comparison of the perspectives of this organization and of other religious and governmental organizations as to the causes of this disaster and what remedies they should undertake suggests that greater attention should be paid—both by aid and development researchers and practitioners—to aspects of religious belief and the way they inform theory and practice. Much remains to explore concerning the ways religion informs the theory and practice of aid and development, particularly in the Pacific. Through the detailed case study offered here, this paper adds to the fledgling debate engaging with the links between religion and development and calls for the initiation of an agenda toward that end.