An Uncomfortable Instrument: The Weak Vilification of Religion in Development Discourse
20 January 2012
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Ton Groeneweg (Mensen met een Missie, KCRD member) held a lecture on the Weak Vilification of Religion in Development Discourse, on the conference Religions and their Despisers, organised by the Dutch Society of Religious Studies on November 4-5 2011. He adapted this to an article.
Groeneweg writes: "What I would like to do in this paper is to show that the discomfort surrounding the topic of religion in development is at least partly due to certain presumptions within the development discourse itself, and its instrumental way of dealing with religious agents and religious practices. A possible way out of this discomfort could be envisaged if the development discourse would be more conscious and self-critical with regard to these presumptions, which is not immediately the same as simply giving them up. I will do this by focusing on one particular example of religious revivalism, the so-called da’wa movement that emerged and prospered by the end of the 20 th century in urban Egypt."
