Postcolonial Cultures of Corruption: Towards a Comparative Framework

Series Convenors: Jonathan Saha and Will Gould

Corruption is not exclusive to the Global South, but is often identified as a particular problem to postcolonial systems of governance. It is used by the news media, non-governmental organisations, international development programmes and academic studies as a both marker of, and contributing factor in, underdevelopment. As a result of the political import of these concerns, much of the scholarship on corruption in the Global South focuses on the present. Few studies have investigated corruption as a set of historically-conditioned practices embedded in and structured by local contexts. Nor have historical antecedents or local norms been conceptualised as factors in comparative studies. In short, relatively few social scientists have located corruption in the deeper histories and cultures of postcolonial states. Doing so is urgent. It is our contention that methodologies that are more attentive to change over time and local contexts can be effective in uncovering and evaluating past attempts to fight corruption, in tracing the shifting meanings of corruption, and in discovering how corruption has been, and is, actually practiced in every-day life.

These seminars will bring together researchers at the University of Leeds—particularly those working on governance in Asia and Africa—to develop interdisciplinary methodological approaches. The seminars will explore three interlinked processes:

1. How strategies to combat corrupt practices have evolved;
2. How definitions of corruption change over time and space;
3. How practices identified as corrupt have shifted.

In addressing these processes, we want to encourage participants to excavate the normative assumptions that implicitly structure both academic research and anti-corruption policies. At the same time, we are hoping to facilitate a discussion of how researchers might be able to document corrupt practices across different times, spaces and scales without reifying historically and culturally contingent definitions of corruption.

Religions and Public Health: bridges and barriers to improving global health outcomes

Series Convenor: Emma Tomalin

This seminar series will interrogate methodological and theoretical questions about the complex ways that religious world-views and institutions shape understandings of and outcomes related to health. We will ask:

• How can we develop better translations across different paradigms for thinking about wellbeing (e.g. from the spiritual/holistic to the biomedical)? What are implications/consequences for health providers and health seekers?
• Where desired, how can we increase PH awareness amongst religious actors, including with respect to contributions they already make, as well as linking them more effectively to PH systems in their localities?
• How can we be open about the difficulties/chasms between religious and ‘secular’ actors – where can these be reconciled, and where can they not?

Through careful selection of contributors, both academic and non-academic, and drawing upon the UoL’s strong traditions in the study of health, the research agenda we develop will clearly focus on the most relevant questions to enable us to understand the opportunities and limits for engagements between religions and public health globally, incorporating qualitative as well as quantitative methods.

Events

Semester 1

Seminar 1 – Religions and Public Health: Outlining an Agenda

Date: Thursday 27 October 2016, 2-4 pm

Seminar 2 – The Multiple World View Encounter: Health, Religions and HIV

Date: Wednesday 9 November 2016, 1-3 pm

Semester 2  

Seminar 3 – Religions and Public Health: Sharing and Learning across Diverse Geographical Settings (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 4 – Religions and Public Health: Austerity, Neo-liberalism and welfare – shifting roles for faith actors (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 5 – Religions and Public Health: Bridging gaps, Recognising Barriers (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 6 – Religions and Public Health: Mental Health (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 7 – Religions and Public Health: Social Isolation and its Impact on Health (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 8 – Religions and Public Health: End of Life Care (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 9 - Religions and Public Health: Developing and Integrating Quantitative, Spatial and Qualitative Methods (Date/location TBC)  

Seminar 10 – Places of Worship as ‘Healthy Settings’ (Date/location TBC)

For further information please contact:

Dr Joanna Sadgrove - [email protected]

Professor Emma Tomalin- [email protected]

Remapping World Cinemas for the Digital Age

Series Convenor: Paul Cooke

The aim of this Sadler Seminar is to explore the seismic shifts that have taken place in the global audio-visual sector in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as a result of changing global power relations on the one hand, and the acceleration of technological development on the other.

Focussing in particular on the film industry, the seminar series will draw together colleagues from across Leeds, major international scholars and key industry professions to explore how changes in the production, distribution and consumption of audio-visual texts reflect a series of broader economic, legal, political and cultural concerns. On a ‘macro’ level, these concerns range from the impact that the recent growth in the Chinese market has had not only on the global film economy but also on the aesthetics of the films that are being produced by Hollywood (which remains the largest film industry in financial terms), to the ways in which national governments increasingly use film as a tool for the generation of ‘soft power’ in order to gain a whole host of economic and political benefits.

On the ‘micro’ level, we will explore the rapid growth of ‘digital activism’ and the grass-roots production and consumption of digital films, along with the way individual producers of audio-visual content negotiate a multiplatform world to find an audience and to challenge the continuing hegemony of the West in the digital sphere. In the process, we will draw on latent synergies across Leeds to create a network of film, media, humanities, legal, business and international development scholars to develop a series of major funding applications to the AHRC, ESRC and Horizon 2020.

The series is also timed to tie in with the launch of a major new book series the Centre is editing with Routledge, Remapping World Cinemas.

Schooling Islam: Criticality, Identity, Change

Series Convenors: Mustapha Sheikh and Taj Islam

If education is meant to promote both identity formation (socialisation) and change (the realisation of the unfolding potential of the individual), then in no sphere of education is this more urgent or more challenging than in Religious Studies. However, against the backdrop of growing pressure from the government for education to be an active agent in the promotion of British values and the prevention of radicalisation, the situation becomes potentially complex and murky, and the unpacking of the ethical, sociological and political considerations involved in instrumentalising education for both identity and change becomes both important and urgent.

The purpose of this Sadler Seminar series is to begin a long term commitment towards engaging with key questions around the theme of criticality, identity and change in Religious Studies, taking the teaching of Islam in Higher Education as a starting point. There is arguably no better case-study since the ‘Muslim problem’ has been the impetus for much policy formulation in the UK since at least the 7/7 bombings, and is a constant subtext to debates around terrorism and extremism, integration and ‘British values’. Building on the important work of Hefner and Zaman on madrasas (Muslim seminaries) and identity politics, a 2012 conference organised by Sheikh and Islam on the teaching of Islamic Studies in higher education, and the teaching experience of Sheikh and Islam in AIMES which has raised a number of questions to be probed in the seminars, the Sadler series will enable a number of interdisciplinary conversations exploring the implications of its overarching question:

What are the ethical implications associated with teaching Islamic Studies for the purposes of promoting criticality, identity and change?

The following research questions shall be probed:

1. What is meant by criticality, identity and change in the context of Religious Studies?
2. What are the distinct ethical questions that separate the teaching of Islam from the teaching of other religious traditions?
3. What kind of dynamic is created in the classroom where identity/ummah politics is represented through the academic staff/student body?
4. What impact do initiatives like PREVENT have on the academic freedom of both lecturers and students?

Drawing on the large body of expertise at Leeds and AIMES’ wider national network, this Sadler Seminar series will constitute six round table meetings at which the recent or work-in-progress papers by seminar members will be discussed writings, and with the aim of establishing an academic network that will develop a major AHRC funding bid to examine the same theme from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

Seminars and Related Events

Being Human 2016 Festival-- From Canon to Critique: the Future of Islamic Education 

Date: Saturday 19 November, 2016

Time: 11.00 - 13.00

Location: Bait ul Aman Mosque, Bradford, West Yorkshire

This event also served as the public launch of the Iqbal Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam. A video of the lecture by Dr Tajul Islam (University of Leeds) and the dialogue between Dr Islam and Dr Mustapha Sheikh (University of Leeds) which followed can be viewed here.

Seminar 1 - The Ethics of Schooling Islam: Deploying Religious Education for Identity and Change

Date: Tuesday 6 December, 2016

Time: 14:00 - 16:00

Attendance by invitation only.

Seminar 2 - Transnational Imaginary Islamic Communities: The Ummah as vehicle for or obstacle to learning and change.

Date: Monday 13th March, 2017

Time: 15:00 - 17:00

Location: Michael Sadler SR LG.17

Attendance by invitation only.

Black Lives Matter: Bilal and the Formation of the Early Islamicate

Date: 20 March, 2017

Time: 18:30 - 20:30

Sheikh Dr. Tajul Islam (Iqbal Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam), Professor S. Sayyid (Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies) and Sheikh Ahmed Haneef (Islamic Centre of England) discussed the role of Bilal in disrupting racial and social hierarchies and underwriting the egalitarianism in Muslim societies. A video of the discussion can be viewed here.