Rethinking development and peacebuilding in non-secular contexts: a postsecular alternative in Mindanao

Abstract

This paper aims to positively engage with the religious character of many development contexts through an exploration of my own fieldwork in Mindanao. Through problematising a secular development industry and building on the momentum of the religious turn some scholars have identified, I share my initial explorations of how a postsecular framing might offer an alternative approach to development and peacebuilding. Through a deconstructive framing of the religious-secular binary I analyse the practices of one small non-governmental organisation (NGO) and suggest that a practice of ‘journeying with’ – Muslims and Christians on the shared philosophical/theological project to nourish each other’s faiths – can contribute to material and spiritual benefit, and the conditions to enable this.

Keywords:

• Development
• religion
• postsecular
• Mindanao
• Caputo

Notes

1. West, The American Evasion of Philosophy, cited in Mendieta and Vanantwerpen, “Introduction,” Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, 10.

2. Tomalin, Religions and Development.

3. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars; and Novelli, “New Geopolitics of Educational Aid.”

4. Jones and Peterson, “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative.”

5. Stiglitz, “Change in the Paradigm in Economics.” 529.

6. Eade, Development and Culture. ix, cited in Tomalin, Religions and Development, 1.

7. De Sousa Santos, World Social Forum. 239.

8. Clarke, “Faith Matters.”

9. Compiled from Tomalin, Religions and Development.

10. Jones and Petersen, “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative.”

11. Tomalin, Religions and Development.

12. Clarke, Faith Based Organisations.

13. Deneulin and Bano, Religion in Development.

14. Jones and Peterson, “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative.”

15. Tomalin, Religions and Development; and Jones and Petersen, “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative.”

16. Tylor, Religion in Primitive Culture.

17. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 193.

18. Smith, Meaning and End of Religion, cited in Tomalin, Religions and Development, 67.

19. Asad, Formations of the Secular.

20. Thomas, Global Resurgence of Religion.

21. Dubuisson, Western Construction of Religion, 9.

22. Asad, Formations of the Secular.

23. Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen, “Introduction,” Rethinking Secularism, 5.

24. Asad, Formations of the Secular.

25. Appleby, “Rethinking Fundamentalism in a Secular Age,” 213.

26. Ibid., 239.

27. Ibid., 244.

28. Clifford, “Ethnographic Allegory.”

29. Lather, Getting Lost.

30. Horner, “Peace as an Event.”

31. Dubuisson, Western Construction of Religion.

32. Madsen, “Secularism, Religious Change.”

33. Taylor, Secular Age.

34. Lefort, “Permanence of the Theological–Political,” cited in Habermas, “The Political,” 16.

35. Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen, Rethinking Secularism.

36. Ibid., 4.

37. For a more extensive overview of secularisation theories see Cannell, “Anthropology of Secularism.”

38. Derrida and Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 6.

39. Derrida, “Force of Law,” 23.

40. Caputo, Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida; and Caputo, Weakness of God.

41. Caputo, Weakness of God.

42. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 81.

43. Caputo, Weakness of God, 93.

44. Jones and Petersen, “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative,” 1299, emphasis in original text.

45. Horner,

46. De Sousa Santos, World Social Forum, 239.

47. Appleby, “Rethinking Fundamentalism in a Secular Age.”

48. Rollins, How (not) to Speak of God, 16.

49. Nancy, Dis-enclosure.

50. McKinnon, “Postdevelopment, Professionalism, and the Politics of Participation.”, 772.

51. Such as described by Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

52. Caputo, Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, 74.

53. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 169.

54. Derrida, Force of Law, 23, emphasis added.

55. Vattimo, After Christianity.

56. Moylan, “Bloch against Bloch.”

57. Bloch, Das Prinsip Hoffnung, 1274, cited in Moylan, “Bloch against Bloch,” 98.

58. Green, “Bloch’s Revision of Atheism,” 128.

59. Moylan, “Bloch against Bloch,” 101.

60. Ibid., 146.

61. Levitas, Concept of Utopia, 101.

62. Moylan, “Bloch against Bloch,” 115.

63. Ibid., 102.

64. Horner, “Networking Resources, Owning Productivity.”

65. Jones and Petersen, “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative.”