CFP: Religion and Welfare in the European Borderlands from the Late 19th Century to the Present

Co-organized by the ERC SOCIOBORD 882549 and “Who Cares in Europe?” COST Action 18119, the organizers of a conference on European religion welcome presentations in the fields of history, ethnography, anthropology, religious studies, sociology, and geography. Submissions are due by April 15, 2022.

The range of possible themes covered by a proactive dialog between the fields of borderland studies, religious studies and studies of European welfare is vast. The submission of the proposals of contextual and critical investigations could potentially evolve around the following research questions/themes:

• How did the tensions between the “modern” schemes of welfare provision and religious patterns of social assistance unfold in the European borderland regions? Did this conflict evolve along the same trajectory and periodization as established in the research in the “national” histories of welfare?
• What does the proximity of a political border do to religion, religious conviction, ways religious belonging is articulated through social assistance? In other word, how is religion made/alternated through the proximity of the existing or aspirational borders?
• Religion as a basis of ethnic or national precategorization in the patterns of social assistance
• How are the borders created/confirmed/reinforced/contested/transformed/experienced through religious pluralism and religiously motivated social provision? Alternatively, how is religion transformed through practices of social assistance in a proximity of a national border or by experience of border crossing?
• Investigations into border making and dismantling narratives and strategies in the everyday practices of religiously motivated social assistance
• The experience of border crossing reflected in the practices of religious providers and recipients of religious assistance
• Religiously motivated social assistance in the borderland regions as sites of contestations, spaces of possibility, political arenas, emotional communities, scenes of experience
• Religiously inspired social assistance in the borderlands as sites of confessional tensions between “majority” – “minority” churches as well as religious, ethnonational and political conflicts
• Borders, religion and welfare as mutually reinforcing or competing signifiers of power and instruments of governmentality