PhD om kirker og udvikling i Uganda

Time: Friday, 15th October at 2:00 p.m.

Venue: Department of Anthropology (Institut for Antropologi), CSS, 25.01.53, Øster Farimagsgade 5 (det gamle kommunehospital), 1353 Kbn K

Assessment committee:
* Professor Paul Gifford, University of London
* Professor Maia Green, University of Manchester
* Associate professor Helle Samuelsen, University of Copenhagen

Resume

Time: Friday, 15th October at 2:00 p.m.

Venue: Department of Anthropology (Institut for Antropologi), CSS, 25.01.53, Øster Farimagsgade 5 (det gamle kommunehospital), 1353 Kbn K

Assessment committee:
* Professor Paul Gifford, University of London
* Professor Maia Green, University of Manchester
* Associate professor Helle Samuelsen, University of Copenhagen

Resume

This thesis explores church development and the effects of engagement in development aid on church trajectories in Uganda. Whilst the roles churches play in public domains in Africa are relatively well known and well researched, the implications that churches’ engagement in development aid have on these churches are not well understood.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Uganda in the period 1998-2008, the thesis explores the trajectories of the main churches: the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Pentecostal Churches.

At one level of analysis, the data displays a common process of aspiration, disillusion and more sceptical commitment across the ecclesiastical field.

By situating this process in the context of neoliberalist tendencies and increased access to international aid, the thesis explains the growing scepticism towards the churches as part of and reflecting a general discontent with the privatisation of basic social services and the failure of the state and development actors to provide the desired social changes.

At another level of analysis, the thesis illuminates how each of the three churches in question followed their own particular trajectory by focussing on the organisational principles, institutional history, internal differentiation, and human actors.

The argument of the thesis is twofold: first, that the churches’ pastoral activities and development activities operate according to different modi operandi, and second, that the ways in which the churches engage in development activities have different effects on their trajectories.

The thesis demonstrates the relevance of development and organisational theory for the understanding of church trajectories in an African context. The thesis contributes to anthropology through its approach to institutional trajectories and putting forward a way of making Christianity an object of mainstream anthropological inquiry. It suggests that an ethnography of churches can contribute to an anthropology of contemporary Africa.

Yderligere oplysninger hos:
Line Diemer Lyng Jørgensen
E-mail: [email protected]