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Domestic Religion: Why Interreligious Dialogue in Kenya Conserves Rather Than Disrupts Power

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A Requiem for Peacebuilding?

Part of the book series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies ((RCS))

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Abstract

Religious actors are often portrayed as critical protagonists in efforts at peacebuilding and it should therefore come as no surprise that they have been engaged in and by International Peacebuilding too. In this chapter, Atalia Omer seeks to extend the discussion of religion and the practice of peacebuilding beyond the instrumental capacity of official and nonofficial religious actors to influence the outcomes and moves toward an analysis of how religiosity is (re)shaped when it is incorporated into internationally organized peacebuilding efforts—in casu: the organization of interreligious dialogue in Kenya. She observes that such processes foreclose internal hermeneutical innovations and critiques from the margins and privilege abstracted, ahistorical, and conservative accounts of tradition. Omer further emphasizes how the inclusion of religion into peacebuilding processes brings about the sectoralization of religion, whereby the ‘religious’ is added as a sector along with others invited to cultivate the ‘buy-in’ and ‘ownership’ of various policies. These various processes lead Omer to doubt the emancipatory effects of liberal peacebuilding. This research was enabled through an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship awarded to the author in 2017.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. South Bend, IN, USA

    Atalia Omer

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  1. Atalia Omer
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Correspondence to Atalia Omer .

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  1. Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Jorg Kustermans

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Tom Sauer

  3. University Centre Saint-Ignatius Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Barbara Segaert

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Omer, A. (2021). Domestic Religion: Why Interreligious Dialogue in Kenya Conserves Rather Than Disrupts Power. In: Kustermans, J., Sauer, T., Segaert, B. (eds) A Requiem for Peacebuilding? . Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56477-3_4

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