The Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), the Department for Anthropology and the Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, have the pleasure of inviting you to a seminar in the Religion and Development Seminar Series on:
Religion, Development and Good Governance
Thursday, 30 April 2009, 14.00-16.30
Danish Institute for International Studies
Main Auditorium
Strandgade 71, 1401 Copenhagen K
Background
For many years, religion was effectively ignored by development practitioners and academics. Secularist development traditions, combined with essentialist conceptions of religion as inherently conservative and reactionary, left no room for religion. But recent years have questioned both the secularisation thesis and the modernisation theory on which this thesis has been built. Combined with a number of other factors, such as the disappointing outcomes of mainstream development aid, this has prompted a re-conceptualization of development discourses and practices. Today, religion is increasingly seen as an important, though ambiguous, factor in development aid. This has created a need for practical and academic explorations of the relations between religion and development.
With this seminar series on religion and development we seek to establish a forum for such an exploration of the ambiguous relations between religion and development. Five internationally renowned scholars will give lectures on different aspects of the relations between religion and development, each lecture commented upon by two national experts in the field, leading to a discussion with the seminar’s participants.
At the fifth and last seminar in the series, Cecilia Lynch will give a presentation on Religion, Development and Good Governance. Manni Crone and Benjamin Jones will serve as discussants.
Cecilia Lynch is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine. She is an expert on international relations, religion and ethics, social movements and civil society and has researched and published extensively on topics related to peace, security, globalization, humanitarianism, and religion. Her publications include Law and Moral Action in World Politics (University of Minnesota, 1999), and “Public Spheres Transnationalized: Comparisons Within and Between Muslim Majority Societies,” in Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, ed.: A. Salvatore and M. LeVine). In 1999, Lynch won the Furniss Award, which is given by Mershon Center for International Security to an author whose first book makes an exceptional contribution to the study of national and international security, and was co-winner of 1998-99 Myrna Bernath Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, both for Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics. She was recently rewarded the Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Post-doctoral Fellowship for her research on Islamic and interfaith religious ethics in world crises.
Manni Crone is Senior Researcher at DIIS, and has previously taught political science and sociology at the University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD from Institut d'Études politiques de Paris, commonly referred to as Sciences Po, and a postgraduate degree from l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, also in Paris. She is an expert on Islamism, secularism, radicalisation, and Middle East Shi’ism, and has written extensively on these topics, including “Sharia and secularism in France”, in Sharia as Discourse (I.B. Tauris, forthcoming, ed.: J. S. Nielsen), “Religious secularism”, in Secularism in the Arab Levant (Atlas, 2007) and “The Disenchantment of an Islamic state: perspectives on secularism in Iran”, Nordic Journal of Religion and Society (2007). Crone is the co-editor of the journals Dansk Sociologi [Danish Sociology] and Forum for Islamforskning [Forum for Islam Research].
Ben Jones is Lecturer at the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, and has previously worked at the Centre for Civil Society at London School of Economics as well as at the World Bank. He was educated at Cambridge University, Johns Hopkins University, and the London School of Economics, where he did his PhD. Jones is an expert on Sub-Saharan Africa, and in his research, he focuses on issues of social development, civil society and NGOs, local government, and Christianity. He was awarded the William Robson Memorial Prize for his PhD work, and his book, Beyond the State in Rural Uganda, has just been published by Edinburgh University Press (2008). Jones also authored the “Uganda” entry to the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion and is a regular contributor to The Guardian's Katine website, which tracks a development project in Uganda.
Programme
14.00-14.10 Introduction
Lars Engberg-Pedersen, Senior Researcher, DIIS
14.10-15.00 Religion, Development and Good Governance
Cecilia Lynch, Director, Center for Global Peace and
Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine
15.00-15.15 Coffee Break
15.15-15.45 Responses by Discussants
Manni Crone, Senior Researcher, DIIS
Ben Jones, Lecturer, University of East Anglia
15.45-16.30 Plenary Discussion and Questions
Chair: Lars Engberg-Pedersen, Senior Researcher, DIIS
Practical Information
This is the last of five seminars in the Religion and Development Seminar Series, organised by the Danish Institute for International Studies in cooperation with the Department for Anthropology and Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. The seminar series is financed by the Danish Social Science Research Council (Forskningsrådet for Samfund og Erhverv). For more information about the seminar series, please visit http://diis.dk/reldev
Please note that the seminars are held at different venues each time. This seminar is held in the Main Auditorium at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Strandgade 71, ground floor, 1401 Copenhagen K.
The seminar will be held in English.
Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Please use the registration form below no later than Wednesday, 29 April 2009 at 12.00 noon. |
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