Negotiating religion in everyday life: A critical exploration of the relationship between religion, choices and behaviour

Abstract

One of the characteristics most often associated with religion is that it is a discrete source of value that shapes people's attitudes and behaviour. In some cases, these values may be negative such as submission or violence; in other cases, religion is seen to promote positive values such as charity and social justice. In recent years, the international development community has reawakened an interest in religion, and has directly embraced the assumption that religion is foundational of people's values, seeking how best to tap into the potential positive values while mitigating against the more negative values. This paper critically explores the assumptions behind this approach. It argues that there is no straightforward relationship between belonging to a religion and the values which inform one's actions and decisions. Drawing on fieldwork research from India, the paper shows that it is impossible to disentangle religion from its interaction with the social, economic and political contexts in which it is lived. The paper concludes by deriving some implications of this for the way the international development community engages with religion.

Keywords:

• values
• behaviour
• India
• faith communities

Notes

 1. We are very grateful to Shreya Jha for conducting the interviews used in our arguments, and to Carole Rakodi and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft. The primary research reported here is part of the Religions and Development Research programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (see www.rad.bham.ac.uk for more details). Dr Sarah White at the University of Bath has also been involved in the research programme and has made important contributions to the development of key ideas expressed here. A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the closing conference of the ‘Religions and Development’ Research Programme at the University of Birmingham, 21–23 July 2010.

 2. Very few articles on the subject of religion have been written in Development Studies journals. Between 1982 and 1998, only five articles in World Development had religion as subject, while 83 dealt with the environment and 85 with gender (Ver Beek 2000). This trend has been reversed since 2001 and one is witnessing a growing interest in religion in development studies and international relations (Thomas 2005, 2010).

 3. The distinction between secular and faith-based is however not clear-cut as many ‘secular’ organisations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International or VSO were founded by people directly inspired by their faith.

 4. http://www.unaids.org/en/Partnerships/Civil + society/religionAndAids.asp.

 5. http://www.unfpa.org/culture/fbo.html.

 6. http://www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org.

 7. For a summary discussion of the genesis of the concept of ‘religion’ and its use in the social sciences, see Chapter 3 of Deneulin and Bano (2009).

 8. For a critical discussion of the social sciences conception of religion as a set of private beliefs, see Thomas (2005).

 9. For more details of this research, see www.welldev.org.uk.

10. The religious distribution of survey respondents (1200 households) was 56% Hindus, 24% Sikhs, 15% Muslims and 5% Christian, and the caste distribution was 55% General Castes, 16% Other Backwards Castes and 29% Scheduled Castes.

11. We have classified respondents by religion, gender and interview rota number. Hence, FS, 30 means Female, Sikh, interview number 30. In this paper, we use direct quotes from Hindus (H) and Muslims (M).

12. According to Hinduism, Kalyug is the fourth and last of the eras. It is an age of darkness and evil, in which spirituality and morality are shunned.

13. This theory of moral causality of course underpins the idea of karma.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Séverine Deneulin

1