Book Description

These papers, from the annual Summer/Spring School of the IRTG, revolve around the theme of “troubling the social”, exploring the complex relationships between religion, social worlds and transformation from the vantage point of the postcolony—not so much as a geographical location, but rather as a way to understand the world. The contributions examine the coloniality inherent within the academic enterprises related to religion, but also what, how, and why religious experiences, worldviews and engagements count as knowledge and the implications this has for understanding, examining, and activating social transformation processes. Processes of transformation have been prominent within the continent in the last decade and still animate crucial debates and knowledge production. In these, religion has figured paradoxically as the “blind spot” or occupied a default and marginal position. However, religion participates, through a complex assemblage of practices, subjectivities and meaning-making processes, in the creation of social worlds, social imagination and social transformations. They also explore how the decolonial renaissance is troubling the social and epistemic origins of religion and the social sciences, as well as its imagined relation to social transformation. Contributors are from Southern Africa and Germany, societies with histories of colonialism and segregation, both of which have experienced postcolonial transformations to the social fabric of their societies, and both have increasingly seen calls also for critical research on coloniality, religion and social transformation.