CFP: Panel on ‘In Search of Faith: Itinerant Religiosities and Negotiated Moralities in Asia’
Conference: Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society, Melbourne, Australia, 1-4 December 2015
Conference Website: https://www.nomadit.co.uk/aas/aas2015/cfpan.shtml
Deadline for Abstracts: Friday, 12 June 2015
We would like to invite paper proposals to our AAS panel. Focusing on the ritual, missionary and pastoral dimensions of religion in the context of migration, this panel aims to explore how Asian migrant communities interpret religious commitments, grapple with alternative moralities and refashion narratives of displacement. A detailed panel abstract is appended below.
Please email your abstracts (max. 250 words) to the Co-Convenors of this panel by Friday, 12 June 2015. Our contact details are as follows:
- Sin Wen Lau, University of Otago (sinwen.lau@otago.ac.nz)
- Bernardo Brown, Asia Research Institute (aribeb@nus.edu.sg)
We look forward to hearing from all interested parties.
Panel Abstract:
Religious observance in a foreign country is not merely an effort to uphold traditional values and to connect to the homeland, it is an important way of negotiating alternative moralities, generating new meanings, re-signifying the experience of migration, and increasingly, extending the global reach of formerly regionally bounded religious traditions. This panel aims to unpack the religious innovations of Asian migrant communities in order to explore the lines of connection that emerge between transnational flows and religious identities. We focus on understanding how migrant communities pursue their religiosity when unfastened from local settings, and explore what spatial displacements do to religious experiences, practices and duties, and how the affective dimensions of migration are addressed by old and new religious commitments. In doing so, this panel examines the multiple ways in which migrant communities negotiate new and old moralities and how these activities factor in the quality of the migratory experience.