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ABSTRACT
Much academic writing on religion and development tends to focus on the values, beliefs, and modes of operation of religious organizations to examine whether religion contributes ethically to development. A problem with such an approach is its disregard of the contested and evolving nature of religious participation in development in broader national and global contexts. What constitutes ethical religious contribution to development? How can we study the question sociologically? To answer these two questions, I develop Roland Robertson’s notion of the global field to present a framework for analyzing the dynamic interaction between religion and development ethics. In terms of methodological contribution, the framework proposed here prompts us dynamically to contextualize the issue of religious development ethics with reference to four components that make up the global field: the religious agent, the national society, the global civil society, and the global discourse on wellbeing and development. This means that, from an analytical perspective, what is proper or ethical in religious development ethics should not be construed in absolute terms, but in terms of degree and variation. I demonstrate the usefulness of such a contextual approach by drawing on research on ‘GMV’ (pseudonym for an international Christian medical professional services group actively engaged in community development) in China and examining the relationship between religious NGOs, the party-state, and evolving discursive practice of development in the country.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Sng Bee Bee for her invaluable contribution to the research. Many thanks to the respondents who shared their experiences. Michael Feener, Thomas Borchert, Shirley Sun, and the two anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion provided insightful comments and suggestions for revising this article. This research is supported by the NTU (Nanyang Technological University) New Silk Road Award and Singapore’s Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (RG73/12).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Francis Khek Gee Lim
Francis Khek Gee Lim is Associate Professor in the Sociology programme at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His current research interest focuses on religion in Asian cultures and societies. His latest book project examines how Christians seek to transform mainland China through the workplace, social media, and community development work. He is the author of Imagining the Good Life: Negotiating Culture and Development in Nepal Himalaya (2008), co-editor of Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and Conflict (2009), and editor of Mediating Piety: Technology and Religion in Contemporary Asia 2009) and Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-cultural Perspectives (2013). CORRESPONDENCE: School of Social Sciences, 14 Nanyang Drive, HSS-05-29, Singapore 637332.