One of the principle aims of Saturday 3rd of June's Hope and Hunger; Foodbanks and Theology is to bring together lay and expert voices in religious, academic and civil spheres to discuss the prospects for a sustainable food economy beyond emergency provision in the North East of England.
To achieve this aim, the conference will end with a panel to field questions from the audience and discuss the question: what comes after foodbanks? The first two members of the panel have been confirmed as Peter Maclellan, Chief Executive of Durham Christian Partnership, and Lorraine O'Donnell, Head of Transformations and Partnerships at Durham City Council. More panel contributors to follow.
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Conference organiser Charlie Pemberton is looking for questions from you to be put to Trussell Trust CEO David McAuley and the other food insecurity specialists that will be speaking at this event, and would love to hear from you at the conference email address [email protected]
What questions do you have on the topics of foodbanks, hunger, welfare and religion that you believe need to be more widely considered? He's looking forward to hearing from you. If you would like to attend this event, places can still be booked at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hope-and-hunger-foodbanks-and-theology-tickets-32043768775 If you or anyone you know would like to go to this event but have any problems with financial accessibility, please email [email protected] directly Hope and Hunger organiser Dr Charlie Pemberton has submit a paper for the forthcoming conference Religion and Poverty in Salzburg.
The conference website can be found here. Paper Title: Foodbank, Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism One of the most abiding challenges of Max Weber’s The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is his suggestion that a religious anxiety is at the heart of modern industriousness. For Weber, the good works of Protestant Christians (actions both ancillary to church participation and irrelevant in the economy of salvation) bear an elective affinity with the forms of labour and lifestyle stipulated by the maxims of capitalist profitability. Initially, applying Weber’s analysis to the current proliferation of British foodbanks, with their Protestant theological heritage, seems immediately viable. I.e. Foodbank volunteering is internal to a process of ‘moral selving’, rendered coherent by a larger plausibility structure, sacred canopy or religious cosmology. However, given the embeddedness of current foodbanks within the secular logics of labour, retraining and governmentalist welfare, along with the collaboration of members of many faiths and no faiths in the foodbank movement, is Weber’s analogical analysis of the theological and the social of abiding significance? This paper will suggest that the bridge from Protestant social service to humanitarianism and neoliberal governance is an example of what the American political theologian William Cavanaugh calls a ‘migration of the holy’. If this is correct, then Weber’s analysis remains a viable line of investigation: the foodbank phenomenon is not an example of contemporary instrumentalised, secularised politics or simply the return of an explicitly religious public ministry. Instead, following Weber, I will argue that foodbanks are an illuminating landmark in an emergent religious topography (with a concomitant geography of symbols, rituals, charismatic leaders and founding myths) which is outwardly secular but substantively religious. The paper will close by identifying a number of the key features of this new ‘religious’ landscape. Foremost amongst these (along with the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, the sacredness of the nation, the sovereignty of parliament, and the teleology of Gross Domestic Product) is a normative anthropology which associates social status with public contribution (primarily through forms of un/paid work) and the related disposability, or uncleanliness, of the undeserving poor. |
10:30am - 5:00pm. Saturday 3rd June, 2017.
Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RS For more information contact: [email protected]
Conference artwork generously donated by Lottie Stoddart and Lacuna magazine.
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