5/8/08

 fyi

Elisabeth
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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)


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