Four stories about faith-based humanitarianism: Situating story telling in a sociology of craftsmanship and practice

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 10. Religion, Social Movements, and NGOs

Abstract

In the context of faith-based humanitarianism, we explore the embeddedness of individual life stories within larger stories of the Christian church and the deep story of God’s salvific plan. Within a sociology of development, this work matters because faith-based international development is on the upswing with upwards of 17% of all global humanitarian aid flowing through faith-based organizations. These stories enable us to go beyond the conventional treatment of religion as a variable or a category label in sociology by demonstrating how different levels of storytelling are mutually constitutive. In contrast to the critical discourse analysis that predominates the sociology of humanitarianism, we seek to promote a sociology that engages constructively as well as deconstructively within a world of increasing fracture, tribalism and division (while not being blind to ideological positions, religious tropes and real consequences for people’s lives). Linking theories of craft and social practice, we disclose the skillful work of our storytellers – work that engages richly and creatively with specific life events while also being rooted deeply and explicitly in broader Christian narratives of human and societal development. Skillful story telling allows these humanitarian workers to formulate ways to engage in humanitarian work, consider hardship, think about time, and encounter the distant other, modalities that are strongly culturally inflected. Attending to stories enables us to step away from the “unmasking” imperative in some sociological accounts of humanitarianism and towards a more complex understanding of the world of people who do this work. We do not want to abandon politically charged interrogation of the ideas that underlie the work of our participants, but we want to treat them as more than just overdetermined carriers of practice or nodes of discourse. This paper offers theoretical and empirical pathways to undertake this work.

Authors

• Amy Kaler, University of Alberta

• John R Parkins, University of Alberta