A Seat at the Table
The Evolution of African Witchcraft as a Response to Misfortune: African Spirituality in Nairobi, Kenya and Black Diasporic Communities in London, United Kingdom
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bidi Broderick
Today’s large cities contain a diversity of peoples and religions. This study seeks to give voice to alternative visions in the public sphere. In my paper I show that what is known as ‘witchcraft’ has power and relevance for many African people in the modern world today and how such beliefs manifest in practices and rituals. My PhD thesis investigated the survival and spread of African-originated spiritual beliefs and rituals among African and African-Caribbean communities in London. I counter the misunderstandings and stereotypes surrounding African witchcraft, often depicted negatively by Christian churches, the media, popular culture and public discourse. The study challenges the portrayal of African witchcraft as inherently 'evil', recognising the importance of understanding Africa-derived/Africa-centred religious traditions and spirituality as a lived religion that promotes good health and good fortune and directs misfortune away. I argue that these beliefs have no single moral direction, used as they have been for millennia, as a tool to explain predict and control (Horton 1975) events affecting the wellbeing of the community and its individual members. The core of this research centres on the voices of respondents and how people’s everyday lives are shaped by belief and spirituality.
“What You Running From?” : Black Women’s Well-Being and Religious Discourses as Discipline
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shanice Cameron
Discourse is one of the central ways that power and resistance are enacted. Discourse produces our social world, establishes and enforces disciplinary norms, and creates subjects. Hence, the meanings and definitions associated with Black individuals provide insight into the latitude that people of African descent may be granted to engage with health, religious, and spirituality practices that are contemporarily associated with whiteness. In the United States, well-being practices such as long-distance running, seeking therapy, and eating a vegan diet are often associated with white people. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to explore how religious and spiritual discourses, particularly discourses about Christianity, intersect with Black women’s health and well-being practices. Based on 28 semi-structured interviews with Black women in the United States who distributed health content through three well-being focused Instagram hashtags (i.e., #blackgirlsrun, #therapyforblackgirls, and #blackvegan), the interview data indicated that the participants navigated a combination of religious discourses and racialized discourses that served to discipline them into embracing more traditional forms of spirituality and conceptions of health. Participants noted that their Black friends, family members, and acquaintances used Bible verses and Biblical teachings to discourage them from engaging with long distance running, therapy, and veganism on the grounds that it was “ungodly” and inappropriate for Black people. Despite this disciplining, the participants harness the affordances of social media to construct and maintain vibrant online health communities for Black women, and Black people more broadly, dedicated to the pursuit of well-being.
Vulnerability and Resilience Towards Life, Marriage and Family: Eliasian Reading of the March for Live and Family’s Narrative about LGBT+ People
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Agnieszka Laddach
The March for Life and Family has taken place annually in Poland since 2006, inspired by similar events like the Paris March for Life, the Prague March for Life, the Washington, D.C. March for Life, and marches in many other American cities and the Walk for Life West Coast. In Poland, the March promotes a traditional Catholic view of life, sacramental marriage between a man and a woman, and large multigenerational families. It simultaneously opposes abortion and the rights of non-heteronormative individuals. In my paper, I show that the March advances an ambivalent agenda: affirming the family while excluding LGBT+ individuals. I use Norbert Elias’s sociological theory of (de)civilizing offensives to evaluate this agenda. Consequently, I highlight how the religious pro-life and pro-family movement may contribute to limiting the social integration of sexual minorities.
The Challenging Parallelism of Rights Claims Based on Religious Identity and Sexual Identity in Canada
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marie-Eve Melanson
In recent years, some scholars of law and religion in Canada have argued that only objective characteristics of oneself that “cannot be changed” (e.g., race), as opposed to “deeply personal characteristics or feelings” (i.e., sexual orientation and gender identity), should be considered as a valid basis for an equality claim (Benson, 2013; Buckingham, 2018; Bussey, 2020). This argument is regularly mobilized to weaken the equality claims of LGBTQ+ people when they conflict with the religious practices of a group. This paper contends that this argument is unlikely to succeed in Canadian courts and, more generally, explores why claims for religious freedom tend to fail when cast against the right to equality of LGBTQ+ people. Drawing on Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence, I show that religion is construed analogously to sexual orientation and gender identity in law; that is to say, it is constructed as a category of identity that is primarily dependent on a self-assessment. Viewed in this way, not only is religion less likely to be robustly protected in law but arguments seeking to diminish the value of “deeply personal characteristics or feelings” are likely to weaken the protection of religion itself.
