Abstract deadline extended to April 8, submit to Tatiana Rabinovich (trabino@ncsu.edu).
Please consider submitting an abstract for the proposed panel “Laboring Hearts: Religion, Humanitarianism, and Volunteering in Uncertain Times” at the AAA Meetings in St. Louis, MO, Nov 18-22, 2020.
This panel is organized by Dr. Tatiana Rabinovich (North Carolina State University) and Dr. Alisa Perkins (Western Michigan University). Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words. Please send your abstract to Tatiana Rabinovich (trabino@ncsu.edu) by April 8. We will let you know if your paper has been selected for inclusion in the panel by April 13. Please see description below. We would be happy to answer any questions about the panel as it develops.
In times when many states are redefining their social responsibilities and embracing austerity, individuals are often called upon to help vulnerable populations by giving their time, money, and labor to help those in need. Some who respond to these calls are driven by faith. This proposed panel studies intersections between religion, social justice, and power to understand the kinds of ethical subjectivities that are constituted through faith-driven volunteering, charity, and humanitarian work, broadly defined. The goal is to theorize how faith-inspired giving of time, resources, expertise, and labor illuminates the exigencies of late capitalism, as it pertains to citizenship, belonging, justice, and collective life. We will examine how political mobilizations, moral economies, and social imaginaries emerge from faith-inspired social justice work. We will analyze how those who give in the name of faith carve out spaces and resources for themselves and precarious others in ways that forge connections between the material and affective; the personal and political; and the intimate and global. We are interested in faith-driven giving practices that are structured by religious institutions or faith traditions, as well as those shaped within secular contexts and agencies. We welcome papers from scholars working on a wide range of topics across the globe.