Print

---

5/8/08

 fyi

Elisabeth
-------

CALL FOR PAPERS  for the International Research Network on Religion and AIDS
in Africa Symposium entitled:

Prolonging Life, Challenging Religion?:
ARVs, New Moralities and the Politics of Social Justice

Justo Mwale College, Lusaka
15-18 April 2009


Access to antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for HIV/AIDS patients has been made
possible in most
Sub-Saharan African countries in recent years. A wide range of local,
national and
international actors has become involved in the provision of these
life-extending drugs that
have turned HIV/AIDS from a fatal disease into a chronic condition. At the
end of 2007, a
total of 1.3 million people with HIV/AIDS were being treated with ARVs in
the Sub-Saharan
African region and the number of ARV patients in low- and middle-income
countries is
expected to climb to 18 million by the year 2025.


In addition to governmental and non-governmental institutions and agencies,
religious actors
have become involved in this antiretroviral therapy, often in collaboration
with more secular
organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa's increasingly diversified healthcare
systems. This
growing involvement with the biomedical sector is challenging religious
organizations and
their followers on multiple levels: ARVs are expected to effect a shift in
values concerning
life, death and personal responsibility in the era of HIV/AIDS and change
moral concepts of
sociality, solidarity and healing within congregations, communities and
kinship networks.
Religious organizations are also being confronted with questions about how
to support the
establishment of effective systems of treatment and counselling that help
their clients to
access ARVs in low-income areas. Finally, religious actors are facing the
challenge of
reorganizing and disciplining their followers' lives in ways that are
consistent with the rigid
regimes associated with ARVs; and combine medico-scientific models of
counselling,
treatment and 'living positively' with religious ideas and practices
surrounding sexuality,
health, marriage and reproduction.

While all these issues may be challenging to religious groups, practices and
ideologies, the
question is also whether religion is challenging Western bio-medicine and
'secular'
development - and their premises of human life - as well as local, national
and international
systems of access and availability of ARVs. How are these institutions and
organizations and
the communities that they serve relating to the growing involvement of
religious actors in the
HIV/AIDS field?

The proposed symposium will take up these questions and explore
interrelations between
religion and ARVs in Africa with regard to the following issues:

* Humanitarianism, philanthropy and the challenge of religious health
governance

* Humanitarianism, philanthropy and the challenge of religious health
governance
The workshop will consider how philanthropic and religious organizations
have become
involved in the provision of ARVs and counselling services in Africa in
recent years.
What kind of funding channels have emerged in relation to faith-based
developments in
Africa and under which political-economic circumstances have religious
organizations
become implicated in transnationally funded treatment programmes and
healthcare
provision? How do concepts of social and distributional justice, charity and
philanthropy
- and the specific terminologies that are connected to these concepts -
inform the
engagement of religious organizations in the context of local, national and
international
AIDS work? Is the rollout of ARVs leading to a different positioning of
religion in the
public domain that lends religious bodies and their influence vis-à-vis the
general public a
new impetus? Is the economic power of international religious bodies
contributing to the
already ongoing fragmentation of local healthcare systems? While the
introduction of
ARVs may be assumed to lead religious groups to vie for different policies,
the increased
visibility of their often conservative and moralistic agendas may also
present a challenge
for other actors in the health field: How do the biomedical institutions and
non-religious
AIDS organizations perceive the growing presence of religious actors in the
healthcare
system and the diverting of funds to faith-based organizations (FBOs)? How
are notions
of the 'secular' negotiated and maintained by funding agencies and
governmental
authorities that have supported and promoted the involvement of religious
actors in the
wake of HIV/AIDS?

* Religious development and distributional justice on the ground

At another level, the symposium will investigate how philanthropic
engagement and
religiously defined concepts of social and distributional justice are being
translated into
actual treatment and counselling programmes on the ground. How can ideas of
compassion, charisma and spirituality be reconciled with professionalized
systems of
accountability and ethics and the bureaucratic and technical language of
healthcare
interventions that are enforced by international donors and biomedical
experts in the
context of HIV/AIDS? How are fellow believers being turned into 'clients'
and 'patients'
who are supposed to take responsibility for their own and their families'
health and
bodies? And how are equitable and non-discriminatory systems of counselling
and
treatment being established in the face of poverty, suffering and
inequality? Is religion
developing modes of critical engagement with local access and the
availability of
therapies or does it run the risk of being perceived as being complicit in
existing
inequalities? All these questions should take into account the fact that
access to
counselling and treatment are shaped by factors like the age, gender and
socio-economic
status of the clients, counsellors and health personnel alike, and that
religious
organizations are establishing their services in relation to and in
communication with
other actors in the healthcare system. Equally, it should be considered
whether religious
actors are establishing their activities in relation to specific target
groups (e.g. sex 
workers, street children, gay and bisexual men) that have been defined - not
unproblematically - as 'risk groups' by earlier interventions.



* Facing 'old' challenges in the era of ARVs: Stigma, prevention and care

While ARVs have become increasingly available in Sub-Saharan Africa, it has
also
become evident that access to them remains limited and that prevention, care
and the
reduction of stigma will remain core features of (religious) AIDS
organizations' work.
The symposium will explore whether the manageability of the disease and the
availability
of drugs have led to changing perceptions of risk, solidarity and sociality
among
individuals, families and communities and how such changes have affected the
work of
FBOs regarding prevention, care and the promotion of 'living positively'
programmes.
How are ideas of fidelity, abstinence and the 'sacredness of sex' negotiated
and discussed
by religious groups and communities? And how are these concepts being dealt
with by
internationally composed advisory boards and employees of donor agencies and
NGOs?
What role can religion play in the prevention of new styles of risk-taking
behaviour that
may be expected to occur as a result of the availability of life-prolonging
drugs? How do
religious leaders themselves view the challenges of stigmatization and
living positively
and how are they positing themselves as public leaders in the context of ARV
provision
and global development?

* Shifting notions of life, death and healing

In the same vein as antiretroviral medications have turned HIV/AIDS into a
treatable
disease, the availability of the drugs may be expected to lead to shifting
understandings of
life, death and healing within religious communities and regarding religious
practice. It
can be assumed that the increased availability of drugs and the
'medicalization' of
people's lives in the context of HIV/AIDS will pose questions about the
(continued)
relevance of religious actors in the field of healing. What role does
religious healing play
in a world where people's problems are increasingly being solved by the
rapidly growing
(secular) HIV/AIDS industry? How does the availability of drugs affect
concepts of
disease and healing that may ascribe the reason for suffering to witchcraft
and/or the
disturbance of social relations? Who has the authority to change the
trajectories of healing
and treatment? At another level, antiretroviral therapy may also have a
strong impact on
local notions of sexuality, reproduction and well-being: How does the
availability of
ARVs influence people's decisions to marry and have children? How are
antiretroviral
therapies inscribing themselves in kinship-based reproductive orders and
what role are
religious leaders playing in the definition of 'proper' family and marriage
arrangements in
this context?


Symposium Structure and Participants

We hope to attract paper presentations that deal with the above-mentioned
issues from
different disciplinary perspectives (e.g. anthropology, sociology, political
science, history,
theology, religious studies, public health), as well as from a wide range of
vantage points:
FBOs and NGOs; different denominations; patients, clients and communities;
governments
and donors, etc. Papers dealing with these issues in all Sub-Saharan African
regions are
welcome.

While the symposium will primarily create a space for scholarly exchange for
researchers
from Africa, Europe and other parts of the world, the workshop will be
followed by a
roundtable discussion involving representatives from national and local
governments, faith
based organizations and international donor agencies. The topic for the
roundtable discussion
has not yet been finalized but will be related to the larger workshop
agenda.
Funding, Call for Papers and Symposium Outcome

To attract funding for participants of the symposium (especially travel and
accommodation), a
grant proposal will be submitted to potential funding institutions by
mid-September 2008. As
the funding proposal is to be accompanied by a preliminary programme
indicating a list of
presenters and the preliminary paper titles, we request the submission of
preliminary titles
and short abstracts (100-150 words) by 30 August 2008. Notification
of the acceptance of papers will follow in mid-September. Abstracts should
be submitted by
30 August 2008 to Marian Burchardt: [log in to unmask]

One major outcome of the symposium will be the publication of selected
symposium papers
in an edited volume and/or as a special issue of a relevant journal. In
addition, a separate
session of the symposium will be dedicated to discussing possibilities for
the establishment of
a research programme on religion and HIV/AIDS in Africa that would involve
African and
non-African scholars. Funding possibilities for the research network will be
discussed at the
meeting in Lusaka.

Workshop partners
Justo Mwale College, Lusaka
University of Zambia (UNZA)
Christian Health Organization, Zambia (CHAZ)
Zambia Interfaith Networking Group on HIV/AIDS (ZINGO)


------ End of Forwarded Message