Revisiting Religion: Development Studies Thirty Years On

Abstract

This paper reassesses the treatment of religion in development studies thirty years after the publication of a special issue of World Development on 'Religion and Development'. Given the changes in the social and political context, consideration of the subject of religion can no longer be avoided. The paper identifies two implications of this for development studies. First, the assumptions of secularization and secularism that supposedly define the relationships between religion, society and politics have to be revisited. Second, development studies must recognize that religion is a dynamic and heterogeneous social category. Both development studies and religion are concerned with the meaning of 'progress' or a 'better life'. Therefore, attention has to be given to social and historical processes of meaning creation. This has the methodological implication of a shift from positivist to interpretivist research methods. The paper concludes by looking at how consideration of religion is transforming development studies.

Does religious beliefs affect economic growth? Evidence from provincial-level panel data in China

“…Recently, many trends, such as the inseparability of religion and politics (especially in Islamic countries), the continuing importance of religion in people's lives and identities, have brought religion back into economics research. As argued by Deneulin and Rakodi (2011), "because religion is fundamental to people as they try to make sense of and give meaning to their lives, and because it is one of the primary sources of values and morality for the majority of the world's population, it is important that development studies acknowledges the religious dimension of people's lives; understands the relationships between religion, societies, and states." Some literature on economic growth and development has increasingly focused on very longrun effects of geographic, historical, and cultural factors on productivity and income per capita.…”

Faith-Based International Development Work: A Review

“…"First, the assumptions of secularization and secularism that supposedly define the relationships between religion, society, and politics have to be revisited. Second, development studies must recognize that religion is dynamic and heterogeneous" ( [4], p. 45). After reviewing the literature and conducting our study, we concur.…”

“…While this may be linguistically the case, Muslim and Hindu faith-based development organizations are deeply aware that they originate from and represent a specific faith tradition. In this respect we distinguish between the "substantive" and "functional" definitions of religion [3][4][5]. We do not follow a substantive definition that is focused on how religion is carried out such as "the sacred", rather we apply the functionalist definition that focuses on "what religion does" for society or a group ( [3], p. 638).…”

Transnational Islamic charity as everyday rituals

“…Transnational Islamic charity has been studied in the context of development, mainly as part of emergent work on the connections between religion and development (De Cordier 2009;Deneulin and Rakodi 2011;Orji 2011), including studies of © 2016 The Author(s) transnational Muslim NGOs (Ozkan 2012;Petersen 2012aPetersen , 2012bRosenow-Williams and Sezgin 2014). Some authors have explicitly connected it with humanitarian engagement in times of crisis (Benthall 2008;De Cordier 2009).…”