Call for Article: Religion and Poverty

Palgrave Macmillan invites papers, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, that consider the following overarching question: how can religion be used as a vehicle to overcome structures of poverty, and how does it sometimes hinder such processes?

Subject: Religion and Poverty

Editors: Dr Gottfried Schweiger and Dr Helmut P Gaisbauer (University of Salzburg), Prof Clemens Sedmak (University of Notre Dame)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions/proposals will be welcome throughout 2018. This special issue is run in collaboration with the 2017 Salzburg Conference on Interdisciplinary Poverty Research, organized by the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research of the University of Salzburg.

Poverty and religion are interrelated in different ways. On the one hand, for various religious traditions poverty is both an aspect of a particular faithful life (e.g. monastic communities) and giving to the poor is seen as a religious duty. Such traditions have evolved over time and expanded the role of faith-based organizations nowadays play in welfare provision and international development. Faith-based organizations play an important role in poverty alleviation both in rich and poor countries. These actions and practices, as well as their religious and theological underpinnings, deserve scrutiny.

On the other hand, religion plays an important role in the life of people living in poverty: how they experience and shape their living, and how they find their place in society and the communities in which they. The role of religion in justifying certain inequalities and processes of exclusion (e.g. in India) and thus contributing to the sustainability of poverty is another important theme worth reflection.

It invites papers, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, that consider the following overarching question: how can religion be used as a vehicle to overcome structures of poverty, and how does it sometimes hinder such processes?

Contributions from sociology, development studies, religious studies, economics, theology, and other social sciences and humanities are welcomed; as are insights from different geographical settings, forms of poverty, and religious traditions.

Palgrave Communications, published by Palgrave Macmillan, is a fully open-access, online journal publishing peer-reviewed academic research across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. The journal publishes research Articles, Reviews and short Comments, and features thematic article collection (‘special issues’). It began publication in January 2015.