******************************************************
* http://www.anthropologymatters.com *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal, *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources *
* and international contacts directory. *
******************************************************
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Hansjoerg Dilger <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> 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
>
>
> *Symposium background and themes*
>
> 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*
> 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 l!
> ocal 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 be!
> ing 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 ava!
> ilability 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 sex!
> uality, 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.
>
>
> *Convenors*
>
> Rijk van Dijk (African Studies Centre, Leiden)
> Hansjoerg Dilger (Free University of Berlin)
> Marian Burchardt (University of Leipzig)
> Thera Rasing (University of Zambia)
>
>
> *Workshop partners*
>
> Justo Mwale College, Lusaka
> University of Zambia (UNZA)
> Christian Health Organization, Zambia (CHAZ)
> Zambia Interfaith Networking Group on HIV/AIDS (ZINGO)
> _______________________________________________
> aarg mailing list
> [log in to unmask]
> http://mailman.creighton.edu/mailman/listinfo/aarg
>
*************************************************************
* Anthropology-Matters Mailing List *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous *
* messages visit: *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to: *
* [log in to unmask] *
* *
* Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new *
* CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com *
* an international directory of anthropology researchers *
***************************************************************
|