An introductory Q&A with the Frontiers of Faith: Religion in the China-Africa Space network
Q: How did Frontiers of Faith come about?
Mainly by looking for an alliteration! But more seriously, we felt that Frontiers of Faith: Religion in the China-Africa Space was a good way to sum up the scope of the network and the seminar series. Religion has not featured much in China-Africa scholarship, and the China-Africa encounter has not featured in discussions of religion – making this a frontier in two areas of scholarship! We knew a handful of scholars working on these topics and decided it was time to bring them together. More conceptually, our use of the term ‘frontier’ is partly inspired by Igor Kopytoff’s African Frontier, which argued that frontiers between groups were places of ethnogenesis. In this very different historical moment, we may well see a new multidimensional frontier, spanning two continents and likely to produce new social phenomena worthy of academic attention.
Q: By definition, a CRASSH Research network has an interdisciplinary question at its core. What is yours?
What can the religious spaces on the multidimensional China-Africa encounter contribute to our understanding of religious identity formation, dialogue, pluralism, and cross-cultural encounters? To unpack this question there is a lot of empirical ground to cover, and that will take us across the African continent and to greater China, hearing about communities of religious people who are engaging across the China-Africa cultural frontier. We are also interested in how religious groups relate to the political and economic actors in these spaces, and how religion augments interpersonal relations. Finally, we want to ask how an observer’s own identity shapes their perception of these phenomena? What are the historical narratives that these encounters evoke in people from different places, and how do such historical consciousnesses shape our scholarly and public discourse?
Q: Could you tell us a bit more about this year’s convenors and speakers, and the perspectives they bring to the discussion?
Our speakers come from a wide variety of disciplines and research backgrounds. All have conducted extensive fieldwork in the China-Africa space, covering religious traditions including Buddhism from Taiwan (Stefania Travagnin, Yasmin Cho, Matthew Orsborne, Wu Di), and mainland China (Theo Stapleton, Hangwei Li, Qiu Yu), Christianity (Heidi Haugen), Yiguandao (Nicholas Broy & Naomi Fastovsky), Guandi worship (Xuefei Shi), Jehovah’s Witnesses (Justin Haruyama), and Islam (Qiuyu Jiang). African Traditional Religions of course feature in most of these papers as a common theme. When engaging with such a complicated frontier between a continent and a country, we are convinced that an interdisciplinary approach is the only way forward, and as such our scholars come from fields including anthropology, history, religious studies, and politics.
The conveners and advisers also represent a broad range of faculties (Anthropology, Divinity, FAMES, History, POLIS) and expertise. One of the conveners is completing his PhD in social anthropology, which investigates a Chinese Buddhist mission in Tanzania. The other is Professor of Global Christianity with a special emphasis on Pentecostal movements in Africa and their global connections, along with a wide supervisory expertise that includes research on East Asian Christianity. Our advisors are Professor David Maxwell, a historian of Christianity in Africa, who has made important contributions to rethinking global Christian flows, Professor Adam Yuet Chau, an anthropologist of China whose work has explored many aspects of Chinese religion, Dr Devon Curtis, who studies post-conflict governance and humanitarianism in the African Great Lakes region with a special interest in transnational connections, and Professor Emeritus James Laidlaw, whose work on religion, ritual and ethics has been highly influential in Social Anthropology.
Q: What audiences will your network events be aimed at?
We hope to engage an interdisciplinary audience of students and scholars who have an interest in China-Africa, religion, and cross-cultural encounters more generally. We also hope that members of the general public may join us for these discussions that will go beyond the stock narratives about China-Africa engagements.
Q: What can we expect from Frontiers of Faith in 2024-25?
In 2024-25 we are hosting a fortnightly seminar during term time, in which our speakers will deliver papers on various topics related to religion in the China-Africa nexus. Each paper will receive a response by an invited expert before a wider discussion. The seminars will be hybrid to broaden our reach and connect as many scholars together as possible. Through the series and our mailing list we hope to build up a network of scholars working in this area with the hope that further initiatives might emerge in this space.
Q: How can people learn more about your network?
Sign up for our email list for updates about our latest events, and download the term card from our website page.
CRASSH welcomes the free expression of views within the law. Opinions expressed in this, and all other interviews and blogs published on our website are not necessarily shared by CRASSH or the University of Cambridge.
The post Meet the network | Q&A with Frontiers of Faith: Religion in the China-Africa Space first appeared on CRASSH.