Emma Tomalin

Supporting cultural and religious diversity in higher education: pedagogy and beyond

The aim of this paper is to present and interpret the findings of a recent questionnaire-based survey amongst staff working in higher education, which was concerned to explore the impact of cultural and religious diversity upon their working practices. We were also interested to find out in which areas staff felt that they required support. Many staff are concerned that they cannot work effectively because they do not have sufficient knowledge about different cultures and religions. Others are worried that they may unwittingly discriminate against a student on cultural or religious grounds from a position of ignorance. The paper argues that HEIs have a responsibility towards both students and staff to couple the financial and policy driven requirements of widening participation and internationalisation with adequate training and institutional support.

Religion and a rights-based approach to development

This paper is concerned with the observation that rights-based approaches to development have tended to ignore the ways in which religion and culture shape understandings of human rights. Although religious traditions often act against the pursuit of human rights, there are also areas of overlap and consensus. The first part of the paper suggests that the absence of a research agenda within development studies on ‘religion and development’ has meant that a significant indigenous mechanism for pursuing rights has been overlooked. Drawing upon examples from India, the second part of my discussion then asks whether a language of social justice based upon the concept of duty is more appropriate than one based upon rights.

The Thai bhikkhuni movement and women's empowerment

This paper discusses the recent emergence of a movement in Thailand that aims to critique and transform patriarchal values supported by the Theravada Buddhist tradition by introducing female ordination (bhikkhuni ordination). The paper argues that there is a relationship between the low status of women in Thai Buddhism and the inferior status of women in Thai society. The introduction of female leadership roles in Thai Buddhism could play a role in balancing the gender hierarchies within the tradition as well as in society more broadly.

Intelligent Design?: A Gender-Sensitive Interrogation of Religion and Development

Development policy, in terms of international development cooperation, as well as the operations of multilateral, bilateral and mainstream non-governmental development agencies, has tended to focus on the material and political outcomes of development with little reference to the religious structures and belief systems which shape the life worlds in which the majority of the inhabitants of poor countries live. This bias should not be interpreted to deny, as noted elsewhere in this book, that many individuals and organizations have engaged in development work in line with specific commitments from different religious traditions (Alkire 2006). Faith-based organizations (FBOs), particularly in the poor countries of the global South, have increasingly been working in partnership with donor agencies and international organizations, in response, for instance, to calls for greater local accountability and participation of community-based organizations in the development process. Nor can there be any dispute about the fact that faith traditions continue to exert a strong influence upon the lives of many people in developing countries; or indeed that the desired outcome of development practice and policies, in terms of opportunities and services for poor people to enhance their living standards and their overall well-being, coincides with the objectives of most religious traditions.

Buddhist Feminist Transnational Networks, Female Ordination and Women's Empowerment

Consideration of the role that religion plays in womens lives in developing contexts can be important in understanding ways of approaching their “strategic gender needs”. Rather than rejecting religion for its inherent patriarchy, styles of “religious feminism” have emerged across the globe. These argue for reinterpretations of religious systems that are consistent with the “core” values of the tradition as well as various types of feminist thinking. The aim of this paper is to discuss the emergence of a transnational movement across Buddhist traditions and countries that is concerned to make full ordination an available option to women in contexts where it is currently prohibited. While becoming fully ordained is considered to be the most suitable way of becoming enlightened and escaping future rebirths, a strong theme within the movement is the argument that gender hierarchies within Buddhism have a broader cultural impact upon social attitudes that disempower women and limit their development. Dialogue between members of Buddhist communities across the world has encouraged reflection upon and a challenge to unequal and oppressive gender hierarchies within the Buddhist tradition and within Buddhist societies. This paper explores four “international” events/examples that enable information exchange as well as the flow of material support between women from different traditions.

The Routledge Handbook of Religions and Global Development

This Handbook provides a cutting-edge survey of the state of research on religions and global development. Part one highlights critical debates that have emerged within research on religions and development, particularly with respect to theoretical, conceptual and methodological considerations, from the perspective of development studies and its associated disciplines. Parts two to six look at different regional and national development contexts and the place of religion within these. These parts integrate and examine the critical debates raised in part one within empirical case studies from a range of religions and regions. Different religions are situated within actual locations and case studies thus allowing a detailed and contextual understanding of their relationships to development to emerge. Part seven examines the links between some important areas within development policy and practice where religion is now being considered, including: Faith-Based Organisations and Development; Public Health, Religion and Development; Human rights, Religion and Development; Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Religion; Global Institutions and Religious Engagement in Development; Economic Development and Religion; Religion, Development and Fragile States; Development and Faith-Based Education. Taking a global approach, the Handbook covers Africa, Latin America, South Asia, East and South-East Asia, and the Middle East. It is essential reading for students and researchers in development studies and religious studies, and is highly relevant to those working in area studies, as well as a range of disciplines, from theology, anthropology and economics to geography, international relations, politics and sociology.

Gender, faith, and development

1 Introduction 1 Emma Tomalin 2 The challenges of incorporating Muslim womens views into development policy: analysis of a Dutch action research project in Yemen 13 Brenda Bartelink and Marjo Buitelaar 3 Tackling HIV and AIDS with faith-based communities: learning from attitudes on gender relations and sexual rights within local evangelical churches in Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, and South Africa 25 Mandy Marshall and Nigel Taylor 4 The Thai bhikkhuni movement and womens empowerment 37 Emma Tomalin 5 Reflecting on gender equality in Muslim contexts in Oxfam GB 51 Adrienne Hopkins and Kirit Patel 6 Christianity, development, and womens liberation 65 Bridget Walker 7 Conflict and compliance: Christianity and the occult in horticultural exporting 75 Catherine S. Dolan 8 No time to worship the serpent deities: women, economic change, and religion in north-western Nepal 85 Rebecca Saul 9 A double-edged sword: challenging womens oppression within Muslim society in Northern Nigeria 97 Fatima L. Adamu 10 Islam and development: opportunities and constraints for Somali women 105 Sadia Ahmed 11 Abortion law reform in Latin America: lessons for advocacy 111 Gillian Kane 12 Conclusion: moving forward 127 Emma Tomalin Annotated bibliography 137 Index 145

Buddhist buildings in England: the construction of ‘under-represented’ faith heritage in a multicultural and post-Christian setting

Abstract Until recently the ‘heritage industry’ in England overlooked buildings of minority faith traditions. Little has been written about this ‘under-represented’ heritage. Drawing on data from the first national survey of Buddhist buildings in England, we examine the ways in which Buddhist heritage is beginning to be incorporated into the state-funded ‘heritage industry’ as well as how Buddhist communities in England construct heritage through these buildings. First, we draw upon spatial theory in the study of religion to examine three dimensions of minority faith buildings in England and what this tells us about the communities involved: ‘location’ (i.e. the geographical location of the buildings); ‘space’ (i.e. what the buildings are used for and their relationship to local, national and transnational scales); and ‘place’ (i.e. what types of buildings are selected by different communities and why). We then turn to theories of memory that have become popular within the study of religion as well as heritage studies. Religion understood as ‘a chain of memory’ plays an important role in heritage construction via faith buildings, and an analysis of faith buildings, their spatial dimensions and role in ‘memorywork’, helps us think through the dynamics of modern religious belief in a multicultural and post-Christian setting.

Cyber Sisters: Buddhist Women’s Online Activism and Practice

While the churches are emptying, other virtual religious places as the religious websites seem to be filling up. The researcher focusing on religion and internet or digital religion as an object of study must seek answers to a number of questions. Is computer-mediated religious communication a particular communication process whose object is what we conventionally call religion? Or is it a modern, independent form of religious expressiveness that finds its new-born status in the web and its particular language? To examine the questions above, and others, the book collects more empirical data, claiming that the Internet will have a specific or novel impact on how religious traditions are interpreted. The blurring of previous boundaries (offline/online, virtual/local, illegitimate/legitimate religion) is another theme common to all the contributions in this volume.

Enchantment and its uses

What are the uses of enchantment? From an anarchist perspective, are forms of spiritual belief and practice always to be considered as a surrendering of personal autonomy, an enslavement to irrationality? We will suggest otherwise – that spirituality can be a source of personal empowerment. Our title contains an implicit reference to Bruno Bettelheim, who argued that fairy tales were useful for children, in that they contributed to their psychological development (Bettelheim, 1976). While we will not take a similarly psychological route in defence of eco-spirituality – with the implication that spiritual beliefs cannot be true but only useful – we make here a parallel argument: we believe that spiritual forms of belief and action empower individuals in the life of protest. Firstly, we will introduce environmental direct action, particularly as it developed in Britain in the 1990s for specific political and cultural reasons. Secondly, we will explore the tensions between the spiritual and the secular in this movement, in the context of a critique, broadly shared within the movement, of mainstream Western religion as hierarchical and ecologically malign. Thirdly, drawing on detailed qualitative research regarding environmental direct activists in the 1990s,1 we argue that, despite these struggles over religion, activists routinely draw on cultural resources in order to give meaning to their values, identities and actions in forms that are – sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly – religious in nature. We explore the uses of this ‘de-regulated religion’ in three different dimensions of direct action, namely beliefs, identity and action.