Religious identity, social space, and discourses of religious education reform in Scotland and Malawi: a Bourdieusian analysis

Yonah H Matemba

doi:10.1007/s40839-021-00139-5

Abstract

This article analyses the complexities of religious identity and stakeholder discourse concerning religious education (RE) reform in Scotland and Malawi. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘social space’, it explicates the extent to which religious identity and conflicts over symbolic power in the social space of RE reform engender polarised debates imbricated by entrenched ideological positions because agents’ discourse in the social space draw on elements of their particular culture, tradition, spiritualties, and theologies. A comparative analysis of qualitative data from Scotland and Malawi reveals stakeholders’ reflections, frustrations, and insights on the conflicting nature of religious identity in the discourse of RE reform in a social space where symbolic struggles are inimical to the production of common sense. Despite the data arising from two countries with different socio-cultural contexts—one African and religiously conservative (Malawi), the other European and secular-liberal (Scotland)—the findings reveal similar challenges regarding how agents engage with RE reform in the social space, and the complications that religious identity engenders in that dynamic.

Highlights

In post-secular liberal societies, religious education (RE) is a contested part of the curriculum, in its attempt to respond to powerful socio-cultural forces in society, such as liberalism, secularism, democracy, multiculturalism, and religious diversity (Horton, 1993; Parker & Freathy, 2011; Skeie, 2001; Wardekker & Miedema, 2001)
The present study found that participation in or invitation to the social space of RE reform in Scotland and Malawi related to those involved in stakeholder consultation
This article has demonstrated that the battle for religious identity through RE emerges when, in the struggle for dominance in social space (Bourdieu, 1989), assertive religious groups like Islam or Catholicism begin to challenge marginalisation and demand inclusion in the common educational ‘space’

Summary

Introduction

In post-secular liberal societies, religious education (RE) is a contested part of the curriculum, in its attempt to respond to powerful socio-cultural forces in society, such as liberalism, secularism, democracy, multiculturalism, and religious diversity (Horton, 1993; Parker & Freathy, 2011; Skeie, 2001; Wardekker & Miedema, 2001). These forces engender debates on whether RE in public schools should be approached from an exclusivist (single religion/confessional) or inclusivist (phenomenological/non-confessional) position, and for the inclusivist approach, which religions should be studied, why, and how. It is one of the few curriculum areas not confined to the ‘internal dynamics of the classroom or even the school’ but is crucially impacted by ‘a more complex set of [external] forces, confirmations, disconfirmations, encouragements and discouragements’ (Conroy et al, 2013, p. 58)

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion