H2020Индивидуална стипендия2019–2023

FarGo · 'Farming God's Way': Cultivation and religious practice in contemporary South Africa

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2019-08-01 → 2023-02-23
Финансиране от ЕС: 328 968 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Връзката между християнството и земеделието в Южна Африка се анализира чрез практиките на организацията „Farming God’s Way“. Това помага да се разбере как религиозните вярвания влияят върху устойчивото управление на природата и продоволствената сигурност в региона.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

'Farming God's Way': Cultivation and religious practice in contemporary South Africa

As exemplified by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), humanity’s use of land, water and natural resources has become a growing global concern (SDG no. 15). Combined with a changing climate, these concerns highlight humanity’s impact on our ecosystems, leading to debates over humans’ current dominion over nature. These debates have linked abuse of the environment to religious doctrines, and in particular to Christian traditions, that have given humans an elevated role vis-a-vis nature. FarGo addresses the largely under-researched relation between Christianity, farming and the environment in Africa. Considering that Africa is the scene of a rapid growth of religious institutions and is facing enormous environmental challenges in relation to food security it is highly relevant to supplement the existing literature by investigating the relationship between religion and farming in an African context. FarGo addressed this lacuna by focusing on contemporary Christian pro-environmental trends in South Africa and explore the relationship between theological ideas and religious practice in the context of ecologically and socially sustainable farming. Through a qualitative case-study of the Charismatic Christian cluster of organizations called ‘Farming God’s Way’ (FGW) in South Africa, FarGo assesses Charismatic Christians’ readings of the bible and religious resources role in producing sustainable management principles and alternative agricultural technology. By analyzing the interconnectedness of farming and religious practice, FarGo has addressed the importance of, and relations between, religious attitudes and environmental concerns in contemporary South Africa. The analysis stresses cultivation’s long historical role in producing distinct ways of being Christians and its revival in contemporary articulations of moral Christian in relation to notions of environmental as well as social crisis. FarGo has approached faith-based farming activities beyond its functional dimension (i.e. producing food and improving standards of living) by seeing farming as acts that creates meaning, and also influences positions, in relation to social, gendered and environmental dimensions of the world. By addressing this, FarGo has provided an important contribution to ongoing academic debates on religious materializations of space and time and the material dynamics of religious configurations of land.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

With this project, I will to study how religious agents engage with every-day challenges connected to food security, environmental decline and climate change. Via ethnographic methods, I will examine religious attitudes to environmental concerns through the case of Pentecostal Christian farming in South Africa. By investigating Pentecostal Christians’ methods of combining biblical principles and secular management approaches, I aim to provide a unique analysis of how Christian farming shapes religious practices that strive for social and ecological sustainability. Situated against a dichotomy between man and nature in Christians traditions historically, the proposed project will generate novel theoretical insights into how religious agents’ relationship to materiality today is manifested. Moreover, the project will demonstrate how the interplay between Christianity and farming produce novel social relationships in the intersection of religion, gender and race. As a religious scholar in the intersection of theology and social science, I understand how religious ideas and practices relate to identity-making, culture and social interactions. I have studied Pentecostal Christianity in Eastern Africa, so I have a robust and field-tested methodological and theoretical framework for investigation of Christian farming in South Africa. The Centre of African Studies at UCPH will be the perfect setting for this project due to its expertise on the material aspects of religion as well as climate and environmental changes. At this centre, I will have the opportunity to improve both my professional maturity and interdisciplinary skills. In addition, the fellowship will allow me to develop transferable skills in relation to project management, administration and teaching—skills that will enhance my career prospects within, as well as outside, academia.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNКоординаторДания