Between Cosmology and Community: Religion and Sustainable Development

One of the three summer school HUBS in Cape Town is being initiated by the research area Religious Communities and Sustainable Development (www.rcsd.hu-berlin.de). The growing and relatively new research topic Religion and Development is setting up interdisciplinary perspectives in Master and Ph.D. contexts; the subjects of cosmology and community structure the course as overarching discursive spheres.

Religious communities are social units whose constitutive Factor is in their interaction between members and society in its broadest meaning, but religious communities also actively produce images of the world, form identities, and synthesize values. Religious actors emerge from communities and take action to influence sustainable development and transformation processes in the social, economic, ecological and cultural senses. Cosmology widens the gaze to include an ideological dimension. Sustainable development is often seen as being able to produce change in the long term perspective and the UN´s Sustainable Development Goals are often quoted as providing an important conceptual frame for the envisioned changes.

One of the goals of the summer school will be to examine participants´ own understanding of how religious communities should develop and what one´s own ideological concepts contribute to that understanding; the current discourse about religion largely takes place in this secular context without considering how development impacts them. The perspectives of religious actors themselves will contextualize the discussion.

The summer school will be subdivided into one lecture week and one research week. Students will be introduced to five areas by working with texts, group discussions and listening to expert presentations. The topics are: Religion and (Decolonial) Development, Religion and Ecology, Religion and Gender Equality, Religion and Peace, and Religion and Politics. Participants will visit religious communities and consider their contribution to sustainable development as well as listen to the reports of various leaders of religious communities on development topics. Students will enter into the field of research and work on their own field research. Methods will be introduced to prepare participants for research cooperation, master theses and authorship in scientific articles.

Please also consult https://hu-berlin.de/courses/details/322 for more information and to apply.