Papers are invited for a graduate student symposium on “From Oikonomia to Occupy: Intersections of the Religious and the Economic,” to be held April 21 & 22, 2016, at the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, Jackman Humanities Building/170 St. George Street/Toronto, Ontario.
Economic and religious imaginaries often merge in ways that affect how socieities and individuals operate. Relations of power, hierarchies of knowledge, and the circulation of ideas are all entangled intersections between the religious and the economic, affecting the social and the political. In the social sciences and in the humanities, the idea of the
‘neoliberal’ now rivals most any other reasoning behind the forces of social and political change. From anthropological study of debt forgiveness in the Occupy Movement, to historical analysis of Roman economies in early Christianity, scholarship across disciplines is beginning to recognize the longstanding relation between religious and economic forms.
In response, this graduate student symposium brings together research into how religions and economies overlap and co-constitute social and political worlds. How have different religious traditions engaged with the economic through history? Have contemporary economic practices, such as banking, consuming, and selling, conditioned the maintenance of religious sites? What are the implications of thinking religion through the purview of critical economic theory? What, indeed, are the practical implications for scholarship in light of global political economies in crisis?
In this conference, the organizers will address constellations of the economic and religious in ways that crack open the deceptively isolated worlds of political economy and religion in the public sphere. The organizers invite early career scholars and graduate students to explore the entangled production, circulation, and exchanges between the religious
and the economic. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Exchange, circulation, and production of the religious
- Credit and debt
- Religious economies
- Economies of Belief
- Religious forms of capital and accumulation
- Financialization
- Religion and political economy
- Ritual and the economic
- Charity and the logic of Giving/The Gift
- Theologies of money
- Economics of pilgrimage
- Austerity and the post-secular/ity
- Sacrifice
- Values, Value, Validity
- Accounting/ Accountability
- Communism, capital, and the religious
- Power, discipline, and the economies of the religious
- Austerity in the academy: Job precarity/decreased research funding
- Consuming religion/Religion and the market place
Deadline for proposals is January 15, 2016.
The organizers will accept paper proposals of 150-200 words. The organizers will also accept panel proposals for multi-person themed panels: please give a brief overview of the proposed panel theme and a 150-200 word abstract for each panel presenter in one document.
To submit an abstract or for further inquiries, please contact: 2016symposiumATgmail.com