The Mission of Development: Religion and Techno-Politics in Asia - Paperback

by Catherine Scheer (Volume Editor), Philip Fountain (Volume Editor), R. Michael Feener (Volume Editor)

The Mission of Development interrogates the complex relationships between Christian mission and international development in Asia from the 19th century to the new millennium. Through historically and ethnographically grounded case studies, contributors examine how missionaries have adapted to and shaped the age of development and processes of 'technocratisation', as well as how mission and development have sometimes come to be cast in opposition. The volume takes up an increasingly prominent strand in contemporary research that reverses the prior occlusion of the entanglements between religion and development. It breaks new ground through its analysis of the techno-politics of both development and mission, and by focusing on the importance of engagements and encounters in the field in Asia.

Author Biography

Catherine Scheer, Ph.D. (2014), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, is Lecturer at the Institut für Ethnologie, Universität Heidelberg. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

Philip Fountain, Ph.D. (2011), Australian National University, is Teaching Fellow in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. His publications include Religion and the Politics of Development (Palgrave, 2015), edited with Robin Bush and R. Michael Feener.

R. Michael Feener, Ph.D. (1999), Boston University, is the is the Sultan of Oman Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and Islamic Centre Lecturer in the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. His publications include Sharia and Social Engineering (OUP, 2014).