Lectures and workshops

The conference is divided into three sessions. The first session will take place on the first day, the second and third sessions on the following day.

Session I

The first session will feature two keynote lectures, that will present a general view of the relations between religion and development. Each of the two keynote lectures will be followed by two parallel workshops, in each of which the general thesis will be investigated by focusing on the relation between religion and development in a specific region or country. All workshop leaders will present a discussion paper.

The first two parallel workshops will deal with the question of whether there is a causal relation, interference or correlation between the level of socio-economic development and modernization in regions such as (a) Western Europe and (b) Middle East countries on the one hand, and the public intensity and diffusion of a religion on the other hand.

The second two parallel workshops will reflect on the role which ‘resurgent religions’ are playing in modernization processes in (a) regions such as Latin America (e.g. Brazil) and Western and Southern Africa and in (b) countries such as India and Korea.

Session II

The second session starts with a keynote lecture which reflects on the nature and practices of religion in so-called ‘developing’ regions, and on the possible negative (or positive) impact of religion on western-based and western-initiated development processes.

After this keynote lecture, two workshops will explore the ways in which actual religions and spiritualities have encouraged or hampered specific development processes (as instigated by development cooperation agencies), in regions such as (a) Latin America and (b) South Africa.

Session III

The third session starts with a keynote lecture that deals with the discourses and practice of international development cooperation with regard to religion in developing regions.

After this keynote lecture, two workshops will deal with (a) the way in which religion in ‘the South’ relates to the telos (Oscar Salemink) of development cooperation, the focus of which is not the issue of how to bring about development (methods, technologies, efficiency), but the search for the beliefs and the (imagined) aims of development cooperation; and (b) the issue of whether western-based development cooperation should acquire or is capable of acquiring a new legitimacy.

For the names of lecturers and workshop leaders, as well as the titles of their addresses and presentations, see Programme.