Economies of Conversion and Ontologies of Religious Difference: Buddhism, Christianity, and Adversarial Political Perception in Sri Lanka

Mahadev, Neena

doi:10.1086/700650

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Ultimately, the study of conversion has remained intertwined with and prompted by the study of Christianity in new and possibly unintended ways (Bialecki et al 2008). To the extent that a conversionist, born-again model of personhood is the hallmark of evangelism, it is only natural that studies of evangelical Christianity would provide detailed accounts of conversion and, in so doing, shape significant segments of this area of study (e.g., Harding 2000, Luhrmann 2012.…”

Section: Anthropology Of Religious Conversion In Context and In Conve...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making a Difference: The Political Life of Religious Conversion

Kravel-Tovi

2023

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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This article reviews the anthropological scholarship that engages with religious conversion as a political phenomenon, broadly defined. It develops the idea of making a difference as an overarching framework with a double meaning. First, this idiom captures how, by framing religious conversion in political terms, anthropologists have claimed to have substantially intervened—have made a difference, so to speak—in the discussion of conversion. Second, the article sets aside the prevalent problematization of conversion as a category of change, showing instead how anthropologists have sought to establish how religious change makes a difference—in the interweaved realities of individuals, collectives, and polities. I scrutinize and contextualize the belated consolidation of this area of inquiry, map its major strands, and identify the interrelated theoretical developments within anthropology. Seeing these strands as a generative domain of inquiry, I conclude with a number of suggestions for future research, such as paying closer attention to political conversions and to the links between religious conversion and political crises.

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Section: Anthropology Of Religious Conversion In Context and In Conve...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making a Difference: The Political Life of Religious Conversion

Kravel-Tovi

2023

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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“…Additionally there has been a constant spate of violence against Christian communities during the war years and after. For instance, there is violence against Evangelical Christian churches, and the very presence of Evangelicals engaged in what has long been perceived as "unethical conversions" in the local discourse has resulted in community endorsed attacks at which monks, village elders, and the police are seen to be colluding (Mahadev 2018).…”

Section: The Ethnic Riot In Contemporary Sri Lankan Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnicity and Violence in Sri Lanka: An Ethnohistorical Narrative

Silva¹,

Haniffa²,

Bastin³

2019

The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity

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The ethnicity and violence in Sri Lanka have many root causes and consequences that are closely interconnected. Given the nature and the complexity of root causes and consequences of these highly contested concepts, it should not be treated as a part of linear historical processes where one event led to another. Sri Lanka presents case of how intersecting not only ethnicity and violence but also religion, caste, class, linguistic, and cultural mosaics have been and might be billeted within the borders of a nation-state. However, state building in Sri Lanka has been riddled with paradoxes. The curious notion of numerically dominant ethnic group, Sinhala manifesting a "minority complex" or anxieties about minority groups, Tamil and Muslims, is evident in the rise of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism during the nineteenth and the twentieth century of the country. Since state building has often meant

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“…Since the end of civil war in 2009, populist leaders with pro-Buddhist prejudices and a readiness to embrace Sri Lanka's strategic location along China's Silk Road had dominated high office (Venugopal, 2015). Ethno-religious divisions had sharpened and charitable activity had fractured along communal linesleaving little space for the "liberal" humanitarian subject the Society promoted (Gajaweera, 2015(Gajaweera, , 2020Mahadev, 2018;Silva, 2015). During an interview in 2013, Mrs Kalyani Ranasinghe, the Society's president, explained how the new political climate represented financial jeopardy for the organisation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kin, friends, philanthronationalists: “Relations” as a modality of colonial and post-colonial charity in Sri Lanka

Widger

2022

Ethnography

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Through an historical ethnographic analysis of Sri Lanka’s oldest charity, the Colombo Friend-in-Need Society, this article explores changing modalities of humanitarian “relations” in colonial and post-colonial contexts. For two hundred years, “the Society” would provide a model of liberal humanitarianism premised on “friendship,” a civil and secular relation that the organisation distinguished from “kinship” on the one side and “religion” on the other. Sorting and ranking kinds of charitable practice according to their relations became a project through which the elite could establish the relative values of different forms of mutuality and autonomy and their contribution to colonial and post-colonial development. Paying attention to the Society’s role in this process also helps to reveal the historical contingencies of “relation” as a foundational anthropological concept and analytical objective.

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Economies of Conversion and Ontologies of Religious Difference: Buddhism, Christianity, and Adversarial Political Perception in Sri Lanka

Cited by 8 publications

References 41 publications

Making a Difference: The Political Life of Religious Conversion

Making a Difference: The Political Life of Religious Conversion

Ethnicity and Violence in Sri Lanka: An Ethnohistorical Narrative

Kin, friends, philanthronationalists: “Relations” as a modality of colonial and post-colonial charity in Sri Lanka

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