Foreningen af Udviklingsforskere i Danmark (FAU) - The Association of Development Researchers in Denmark

FAU CONFERENCE 2010

'Development that matters: Religion, Livelihoods, Social Movements and Community Development'

The Association of Development Researchers in Denmark (FAU) Annual Conference 2010 - 17-19 March 2010 at Danhostel Gjerrild

Theme 1: Religion, Communities and Social Change.

For decades, religion was effectively ignored in research on local development, in part
due to secularist biases in conceptualising development and essentialist conceptions of
religion as inherently conservative and therefore irrelevant to development. But
religious organizations, institutions, values, ideas and practices are a very real part of
the social world in which social change take place, and as such, their inclusion is an
indisputable step towards a broader and more empirically based understanding of
processes of local development. The workshop intends to explore, among others,
different aspects of the relationship between religion and local development, asking
questions as to how, when, where, under what circumstances and in what ways religious
institutions, organizations, values, ideas and practices play a role in processes of
development and social change.

Convenors: Marie Juul Petersen (Department of Regional and Cross-Cultural Studies,
University of Copenhagen, UC) and Catrine Christiansen (Department of Anthropology,
UC)
Resource persons: Karen Lauterbach (International Development Studies, Roskilde
University), Holger Bernt Hansen (Centre for African Studies, UC), Rune Hjarnøe
(Department of Regional and Cross-Cultural Studies, UC), Uffe Torm (Danish Missionary
Project Department), and Louise Nygaard Rasmussen (Centre for African Studies, UC)

Keynote Presenter: Erica Bornstein, University of Milwaukee, USA.

Guest Lecture - Erica Bornstein: Philanthropy and Empathy in New Delhi
Tuesday 16th March 14:00 to 16:00
Room U3 (1st floor)
Institute of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (TORS)
Snorresgade 17-19, 2300 Copenhagen S


Erica Bornstein is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, USA. She has a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Bornstein has
done extensive research in the areas of philanthropy, charity and humanitarianism, development,
human rights, NGOs, political anthropology, and religion, and she has fieldwork experience
from southern Africa and India. Bornstein is the author of ‘The Spirit of Development. Protestant
NGOs, Morality and Economics in Zimbabwe.’ (Stanford University Press, 2005), and
‘Disquieting Gifts: An Ethnography of Humanitarianism in New Delhi.’ (Stanford University
Press, forthcoming).