LUCE PROJECT ON RELIGION IN GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

 

A Three-year Project of the

Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies
Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation

                              

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

 

1. The importance of understanding religion in global civil society

This project shares the concern of the Religion and International Affairs Initiative of the Henry Luce Foundation that the study of religion has been disturbingly absent from the curricula of most international affairs programs. Even as international politics is increasingly challenged by national and transnational movements of religious politics, the study of religion has yet to gain a place in the established course structures of international studies and world affairs.

This lacuna of religious studies is found not only in international affairs programs that train students for careers in international diplomacy, business, and journalism, but also programs that prepare for leadership positions in humanitarian and service agencies associated with international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Increasingly graduates of international affairs programs are seeking positions in the international NGO field—some twenty percent of them in recent years. Although several international affairs programs have special tracks that provide training for careers in human rights and humanitarian service agencies, the new graduate program in global and international studies at UC-Santa Barbara is the first to focus on such training for these leaders in the global era.

For this reason, the proposed project will focus on the importance of understanding issues related to religion that are relevant to international human rights and humanitarian service agencies, including matters of cultural conflict and sensitivity that confront all humanitarian organizations working abroad. The project will focus on the role of religion in international NGOs operating in different areas of the world. 

The project will be concerned with the role of religion in several ways. One is the diverse cultural contexts that international NGOs might confront; another is the cultural assumptions—some of them related to religion—that NGO leaders bring to their assignments. Yet another dimension of religion in global civil society is the role of faith-based NGOs in social and economic change. Hence the project will deal with such matters as Islamic views of personal health, Buddhist attitudes towards justice, or Hindu ideas about social service that affect agencies working in cultures dominated by these religious traditions.
The project will also deal with the social and ethical assumptions that NGO staff members bring to their careers. For this reason the project will be concerned about how the role of religion in public life is perceived, and how this perception is colored by one’s cultural background. Here the intellectual discussion about secularism—a European and American project, as Charles Taylor portrays it—is a part of a world view that may clash with other world views. Talal Asad has effectively described these confrontations at a time when, as Jose Casanova puts it, religion’s private and public roles are being reconceived in many parts of the world. Hence the intellectual discussion of religion in public life has a direct bearing on how potential leaders of humanitarian and service organizations perceive their role in diverse cultural contexts.

 

2. Bridging the academic-practical divide

A second purpose of the project is to provide platforms for mutual learning between scholars and practitioners. The goal is to allow faculty associated with graduate teaching programs to interact with NGO leaders in order to identify the real-life issues relating to religion that are important in the field, and suggest ways of dealing with them. In the past, the Global and International Studies programs and projects at UCSB have benefited from visiting scholars and visiting professors who have had distinguished business and public service careers, including Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko’s International; Ann Louise Bardach, an international journalist; and Thomas Tighe, head of Direct Relief International. The involvement of practitioners provides a real-world frame of reference for intellectual discussions, and presents issues and ideas that contribute to academic points of view.

The project will involve the real world of international NGO experience in two ways. One will be through case studies of situations in which religion has played a critical role; this compilation of case studies will be useful for teaching materials and seminar discussions. The other form of involvement is through direct interaction with international NGO practitioners in the workshops that will be integral to the project. In these ways the project will encourage the continuation of practitioner-academic interaction. 

 

3. Infusing religion into the global and international studies curricula

The practical purpose of the project is to provide an enduring impact on international affairs programs by developing curriculum and resource materials that can be used by any academic program in the country, and by developing a model for incorporating religion into international NGO training in the Santa Barbara program that can be emulated by other programs.

In developing the curriculum resource materials, the project will consider the kinds of courses currently available in international affairs programs and attempt to provide resources that will be helpful to faculty planning such courses, and supply case studies and analytic materials that can be useful as part of the course structure; these will be available through printed handbooks and accessible online via the project’s website.

The new and revised courses that will be developed in UCSB’s own MA in Global and International Studies will provide a model for other international affairs programs that provide international NGO training. The ideas generated by the workshops and the materials developed by graduate teams will help to infuse the study of religion into the curriculum of UCSB’s own graduate program in a way that might be a useful example elsewhere.