CALL FOR PAPERS

Panel on Distinguishing “Religious” from “Economic”

for an inter-disciplinary conference on Religious-Secular Distinctions

14 ­ 16 January 2010 at the British Academy, London

Conference website: http://religioussecular.ning.com

Contact: Trevor Stack ([log in to unmask]) or Tim 
Fitzgerald ([log in to unmask])

We are looking for speakers from any discipline 
who could contribute to a panel on Distinguishing 
“Religious” from “Economic” at a major conference 
on Religious-Secular Distinctions at the British Academy on 14-16 January 2010.

Panel 4. Distinguishing “Religious” from “Economic”

How does “religious” get distinguished from 
“economic” in historical and contemporary 
contexts, and to what effect? The distinction is 
far from obvious ­ the value of capital may 
depend, for example, on collective acts of faith. 
But economists, businesses, workers, consumers, 
politicians and lawyers all invest heavily in 
religious-economic distinctions. It was proposed 
in a previous conference that the category of 
“religion” understood as other-worldly faith and 
supernaturalism has served to set in relief the 
“secular” rationality of individual 
self-interest, commodity exchange and capital 
accumulation. That may indeed be a crucial 
chapter in the history of religious-secular 
distinctions. But it also seems that different 
people make different religious-economic 
distinctions in different contexts. The panel 
will examine a range of contexts in which 
“economics” gets marked off from “religion”, 
including in the history of the discipline of Economics.

Please download the draft programme from 
http://religioussecular.ning.com. Briefly, the 
conference as a whole has the following focus:

How and why do people ­ politicians, academics, 
teachers, journalists, clergy, lawyers, 
entrepeneurs ­ distinguish between “religious” 
and “non-religious” or “secular”? And what 
happens when they make such a distinction? It 
matters, after all, whether a museum exhibit is 
considered cultural or religious; a crucifix on a 
necklace is deemed an expression of faith or a 
fashion accessory; shari’a law is regarded as 
integral to Islam or as another lawcode; a 
particular state is classified by Europe as 
secular or not; a minority is viewed as religious 
or ethnic; and a PhD thesis is considered 
religious or just about religion. The fact that 
religious-secular distinctions are contextual 
raises the tricky question of whether scholars 
should use “religious” and “secular” as 
analytical categories. However, we decided to 
focus instead on a different question - how 
religious-secular distinctions work in particular 
contexts. The conference builds on a series of 
workshops and related events that have brought 
together scholars from religious studies, 
anthropology, history, theology, philosophy, 
sociology, political science, economics, education and legal studies.

Email Trevor Stack [log in to unmask] as soon as 
possible if you are interested or can suggest 
someone else to approach. Abstracts of 200-500 
words should be submitted by the deadline of Friday 25 September.

Please forward this call to anyone who you think might be interested!

Dr Trevor Stack