The Stanford University Center for African Studies will be hosting a conference on March 6-7, 2020 about Religion and Development in Africa, and are seeking papers to be presented at that conference. Application from early-career
scholars are particularly encouraged, and limited funds are available to reimburse costs. The questions to be asked include, but are not limited to:
- How did missionary, Muslim and indigenous religious institutions actually position themselves towards the rhetoric and practice of development in its heyday?
- If religious practitioners ‘ceded territory’ to development experts, how have their recent successors claimed it back in the course of the turn towards ‘faith-based organisations’?
- Given that the growth of the book religions in Africa continued unabated in the presence of the a-religious promises of development, how did believers square their developmental and their religious hopes?
- Why was the mid-twentieth century, in hindsight, such a high-water mark of secularism, and how was developmentalism implicated in enabling it?
- How secular or crypto-religious was and is developmentalism in its concrete manifestations?
To apply, please send a title and abstract of no more than 300 words, CV and institutional affiliation to reldevt@gmail.com by September 15, 2019.