Salvage and Salvation: Guest Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

W hat does it mean to offer salvation in the midst of disaster? This is the question that animates the articles in this special issue, all of which probe the complex dynamics at play in the intersections of religion and disaster relief in contemporary Asia. Here, we seek to advance inquiry into the conceptual categories of "religion," "disaster," "relief," and "Asia" by drawing on recent theoretical advances across a variety of disciplines.The recent history of Asia is replete with frequent, massive, and high profile "natural" disasters as well as innumerable smaller-scale events that nevertheless devastate local communities. Though the casualties, economic losses, and graphic images of material damage caused by Asian disasters often receive primetime-albeit shortlived-attention in the global media, disaster impacts are far more wide-ranging than such reporting tends to reveal. Disasters affect all aspects of social life in ways that continue long after a precipitating event, and they frequently operate as decisive points at which new spaces are opened for political, social, and religious change. 1 The cultural dynamism of disasters also emerges from the social processes that arise in response to it, including efforts to "salvage" damaged assets and through actions aimed at delivering "salvation"-a process that is simultaneously material and social. Additionally, in the wake of major disasters in contemporary Asia, relief and reconstruction activities, as well as various forms of gifting and charity, frequently inspire complex global entanglements across spatial and cultural gaps.We argue that religious mobilizations in the wake of Asian disasters provide compelling opportunities to scrutinize pivotal theoretical concerns within the contemporary social sciences. This special issue is particularly concerned with what analysis of the religion-disaster-relief nexus can do for our understanding of the first of these three key terms: religion. Among the increasingly diverse set of actors that engage in disaster relief today are an array of organizations, movements, congregations,

Strategies of salvation: Evangelical Christian praxis and sites of degradation in Sri Lanka

“…First, it reinterprets ‘disasters’ in a broad sense. This reframing informs my use of the term ‘sites of degradation’, which can be applied to phenomena that go beyond the spatio‐temporal confines of specific, disruptive events, and thus open the discourse up to longer term and more diffuse processes of reconstruction (Fountain and McLaughlin, ). Second, it offers an analysis of sites of environmental and political degradation within a comparative framework.…”

“…Research has started to explore how aid (or ‘the gift’ as it has been theorised) has been interpreted ‘not just [as] material transfers … but also embodiments of cultural symbolism, social power, and political affiliation’ which render it a ‘culturally charged, political commodity’ that is replete with ‘reciprocal obligations’ (Korf et al, : 60, 61; see also Stirrat and Henkel, ; Mahadev, ). Accordingly, aid has been described as an ‘influential material intervention’ that enables its providers to ‘wield considerable power’ (Fountain and McLaughlin, : 10). In the Sri Lankan context, such exchanges are further complicated by the entrenched patronage system, whereby aid is inextricably entwined in the exchange mechanism between patrons (politicians) and their clients (voters) (Spencer, ; Korf et al, ; see also Thornton et al, ).…”

“…In these cases, the ‘non‐local perforates the local, so that the relatively localised space of impact is necessarily implicated in much wider social, economic and emotional circuits’ (Rigg et al, : 138). In this sense, ‘salvation’ is more than reconstruction, and ‘frequently inspire[s] complex global entanglements across cultural and spatial gaps’; it enables the ‘rework[ing of] cultural formations’ and can foreground more broad‐based processes of religious change (Fountain and McLaughlin, : 1, 14). These dynamics are particularly sensitive in Sri Lanka, where Christian groups are associated with both the colonial past and the relative wealth of the West.…”

“…This body of work draws on the fact that ‘we should not treat natural events as separate from the wider structures of everyday life and the social and economic contexts within which people live’ (Rigg et al, : 138), with postmodern approaches in particular helping ‘reviv[e] a sense of openness to the mysterious and the spiritual, [and] challenge the (secular) hegemony of modernity’ (Fountain et al, : 324; see also Gaillard and Texier, ; Clarke, ). Whilst the rigid and oppositional pairing of the religious and the secular has been subject to recent criticism (see Tse, ; Fountain, ; Fountain and McLaughlin, ), I interpret religion as a framework of belief that is reproduced by figures of religious authority, and which serves to unite a community of believers (a ‘religious group’). Religious groups are distinguishable by the frameworks of belief to which they adhere, yet they often interact through the secular domain.…”

“…With this in mind, this paper explores how evangelical Christian groups used the events of 2004 and 1983–2009 to foment processes of religious transformation in areas where their presence was otherwise restricted. It engages with existing work that explores the role of religious groups in facilitating processes of change in Sri Lanka (Hasbullah and Korf, ; Woods, , ; Mahadev, ; Johnson, ), the processes and politics of post‐tsunami reconstruction (Rigg et al, , ; Stirrat, ; Tan‐Mullins et al, ; Ruwanpura, , ; McGregor, ; Hollenbach and Ruwanpura, ) and the emergent role of religion in development studies more generally (Haynes, ; Fountain, , ; Thornton et al, ; Fountain and McLaughlin, ; Woods, ). By tying these literatures together through a unifying focus on the strategies of salvation employed by Christian groups in post‐disaster contexts, the paper's contributions are threefold.…”