Abstract
The role of faith and religion in international development cooperation is hotly debated today. The legitimacy of this role remains, however, often confided to instrumental reasons. Yet, thinking about faith and religion only in instrumental terms leaves unquestioned the possibility of a religious background of development cooperation as a practice itself and the potential role of faith through individual practitioners that operate within secular NGOs, and research and policy institutes. The aim of the present paper is therefore to consider the structural role of faith and worldview in relation to agricultural development, moving beyond the discourse of instrumentality. We do this by focusing on Giller and Andersson’s political agronomy analysis of the promotion of Conservation Agriculture in Zimbabwe by the faith-based organisation ‘Foundations for Farming’. We argue that a distinction should be made between religion as a practice of believers and faith functioning as a worldview in every practice. In addition, we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between different kinds of practices involved in agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa, namely farming practice, agronomic scientific practice, and faith practice. The value of this philosophical analysis is that it challenges a dichotomous model of ‘science-based versus faith-based’ approaches to agricultural development. Furthermore, specific kinds of normativity are identified as always already functioning inside practices, rather than practices being neutral spaces that are (subjectively) infused with normativity by applying external ethical standards.
Highlights
There is a debate in the development studies literature about the role of faith and religion in international development cooperation.1 This debate ranges from the role of so-called faith-based organisations (FBOs)2 within international development cooperation practice (Clarke 2006, 2007; McDuieRa and Rees 2010; Tomalin 2012) to diverging epistemologies and worldviews due to different religious or secular starting-points of actors within international development cooperation theory and practice (Ellis and ter Haar 2007; Jones and Petersen 2011; Lunn 2009)
Several scholars have argued that mainstream international development cooperation, with its belief in progress and improvement, can be seen as a religious endeavour (Plant 2009; Rist 2014; Salemink 2015)
It must be clear that what is needed to evaluate the claim that international development cooperation is a religious practice, is a philosophical analysis of the structure of international development cooperation
Summary
There is a debate in the development studies literature about the role of faith and religion in international development cooperation. This debate ranges from the role of so-called faith-based organisations (FBOs) within international development cooperation practice (Clarke 2006, 2007; McDuieRa and Rees 2010; Tomalin 2012) to diverging epistemologies and worldviews due to different religious or secular starting-points of actors within international development cooperation theory and practice (Ellis and ter Haar 2007; Jones and Petersen 2011; Lunn 2009). As Andersson and Giller (2012) aptly write, CA has captured the imagination of an impressive array of organisations, including donors like the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DfID) and the European Union (EU), international research and development institutes like the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), policy institutes like the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and numerous non-governmental organisations (NGOs) Binding those different actors together is the promotion of CA “as a potential solution to the production problems faced by smallholder farming families in sub-Saharan Africa” It is broader than CF as it “is not just a technology but a well balanced [sic] biblical, management and technological solution for the agricultural domain, to equip the poor to come out of poverty, with what God has put in their hands and to reveal the fullness of His promised abundant life” (Dryden 2009, p. 7)
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