“Christian and Muslim Development Organizations in Urban Africa: New Challenges for Researchers and Practitioners”

To be held at the Cape Town Lodge Hotel in Cape Town, 8 November 2018

Conventional assumptions hold that secularization and development – understood as modernization and progress – lead to a decline in religion, or at least its relegation to the realm of private life. However, in the early 21st century a new political and scholarly concern with the ways in which religious organizations have come to (re)occupy the public sphere has emerged. This workshop explores how the growing presence of religious actors in various domains of collective life might be (re)shaping societal and political concerns with notions of 'modernization', 'development', and 'progress' in novel ways.

We call for papers which look at the ways in which Christian and Muslim organizations have become involved in development activities, and how the challenges arising from this involvement can be analyzed in a comparative perspective in African urban settings. Paper proposals are invited to investigate the various roles that faith-based organizations (FBOs) from diverse Christian and Muslim backgrounds play for the provision of social services in contemporary urban Africa, especially in the areas of health care, gender-related issues, and education. The workshop will also provide opportunities to discuss perspectives for future collaboration between FBO practitioners and researchers, and the various expectations they have in relation to each other’s work.

Organized by:

• Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town & the project “Religious Reform, Faith-Based Development and the Public Sphere in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lagos, Dar es Salaam and Cape Town)”, a research collaboration between Freie Universität Berlin, University of Cape Town, University of Dar es Salaam, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

• Project website: http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/ethnologie/forschung/arbeitsstellen/fbo_africa/index.html; Twitter: @FBO_Africa

Please submit your abstract of no more than 200 words to the following email address: Fboafrica2018@Gmail.com. The deadline for the submission of abstracts has been extended to October 5, 2018.

If you wish to attend the workshop without presentation, please register under the same email address by October 20, 2018.