Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia
Based on:
Book (2020)
A critical/decolonial analysis of gender and development theory and practice in religious societies of Africa through the presentation of an ethnographic study of conjugal violence from Northern Ethiopia.
Brief by:
Content
The book is concerned with the effectiveness of mainstream gender theories and approaches cross-culturally and especially in religious societies of Africa. The author examines closely the gender and development paradigm mainstreamed in the 1990s and the backlash that this has seen in many religious and tradition-oriented societies of Africa. The author draws attention to the fact that gender and development paradigms were historically constructed in reference to western feminist metaphysics of subjectivity and gender as these emanated from Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinking and the secularisation of the western sciences and are, therefore, unequipped to provide a complete understanding of gender-related realities and behaviours in non-western contexts and knowledge systems. The author argues that these can also contradict local belief systems, and especially in religious societies of Africa that fall outside of western epistemology. As an alternative, the author argues for a decolonial approach to gender-sensitive research and practice embedded in the insiders’ conceptual repertoires and understandings for theorising gender, assessing the possible gendered underpinnings of local issues and designing alleviation strategies without making assumptions about the nature of gender relations in the local society.
The author advances this argument by focusing on intimate partner violence (IPV), a topic that has received extensive gender and development interest in the recent decades. The author demonstrates how this sub-sector has displayed similar ethnocentric and secular tendencies, with IPV being analysed almost invariably through preconceived gender-based violence (GBV) aetiologies generally neglectful or limited in their understanding of the role of local religious knowledge and spirituality in the manifestation and experience of IPV or attitudes about it. To demonstrate both the theoretical argument and an alternative approach to gender-sensitive research the author presents a long-term participatory study of conjugal abuse in the Eastern Orthodox Täwahәdo community of Ethiopia that employed a gender-sensitive analytical framework integrative of the local religio-cultural cosmology as embodied by the local people.
The study connects the theoretical and the practical, and clearly demonstrates the theoretical argument of the book through research in a real-life context. This research tries to do away with ethnocentric and top down assumptions that have colonial legacies by being inclusive of the local people, engaging with the community in Tigrigna and Amharic directly and capturing diverse perspectives of both laity and clergy of different circumstances in life. The book also employs an intersectional and multidisciplinary approach that integrates feminist, post-colonial/decolonial, sociological and psychological insights.
The book presents multiple points of originality and makes unique contributions to gender, religions and development studies. Due to its context-specific approach it also makes valuable contributions to Ethiopian and domestic violence studies.
Key findings
Makes an unprecedented decolonial critique of gender and development with the prospect of raising reflexivity in this field and changing current paradigmatic thinking that hinders gender and development effectiveness abroad and especially in religious African societies.
This argument has yet to be made in a way that combines theoretical rigour and ethnographic evidence. It also moves beyond the existing argument for simply incorporating anthropological methodologies in gender and development, but makes an epistemological proposition for enlarging the conceptual repertoire through which gender issues are fundamentally conceptualised and understood in the cross-cultural context and the role of local populations in this process. Overall, the work can expand current perspectives in gender and development, providing new directions that can lead the field outside of current theoretical and practical stalemates.
Addresses the domestic violence literature in regards to international/African development that has favoured generic typologies and aetiologies of domestic violence and has neglected religion or assessed this through western epistemological frameworks, ignoring local people’s conceptualisations and experiences.
The study demonstrates why approaching domestic violence through the lens of a single GBV aetiology misses intricacies on the ground. GBV aetiologies, as applied on African societies, have not generally accounted for religious parameters and the interplay of gendered social norms and religious idiom. The study in the book shows that attitudes and realities of conjugal abuse had gendered underpinnings, but these were embedded in more profound local understandings of human individuality, psychological and spiritual parameters, people's location in a society that constrained individual ability to depart from perceived pernicious folklore norms and practices often couched in religious idiom, and other parameters. The study evidences that remedial interventions have to be informed by local knowledge systems and religious beliefs, if these interventions are to be relevant and speak to people's own worldviews and rationalisations with the potential of changing pernicious norms and attitudes.
Addresses the current lacuna in Ethiopian domestic violence scholarship and sheds more light on the role of religious parameters studied in a specific cultural context.
An important motivation for this study has been the tendency in Ethiopian domestic violence scholarship to blame culture or religion for conjugal abuse and its societal tolerance. However, this scholarship has not been supported by substantive ethnographic evidence from local societies of Ethiopia that could demonstrate convincingly linkages between folklore practices, theology and gender standards and conjugal abuse in the local society. This study provides a unique window into people’s vernacular realities and contributes an unprecedented look into the mechanisms that have perpetuated social norms, gender ideals and attitudes contributing to conjugal abuse, adding considerable complexity to the analysis of the problem not currently captured in population and other qualitative studies on/from Ethiopia.
Enhances current knowledge of ‘Oriental Orthodox’ Churches and provides a decolonial approach to engaging with non-western faiths resourcefully within development praxis.
This study is important for understanding the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahәdo faith (one of the five Churches known as ‘Oriental Orthodox’) from an insiders’ perspective that incorporates both a theological and an ethnographic analysis. This is a departure from current paradigms in religious studies that have generally neglected theology or have tended to appraise non-western Christian traditions in reference to western experience with Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity. The book provides an unprecedented look into Church articulations/teachings of gender and conjugal violence as these evolved historically, as well as ethnographic insights into the clergy’s discourses, marriage practices and their interplay with folklore norms. By integrating theology and juxtaposing theological understandings to the fluid discourses of the laity, the study not only evidences the need to account for the theological premises of non-western Christian traditions, but also demonstrates that this theology could become resourceful in the alleviation of local gender-related issues.
Evidences the importance of integrating religious traditions and spirituality in current discussions of sustainable development in Africa
This is especially relevant in current times, with scholars of development and religions increasingly interrogating how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), introduced by the predominantly secular development industry as global development objectives, have engaged with faith-based actors and organisations (FBOs). It is also relevant since the SDGs agenda has provided one of the main platforms through which gender-based aetiologies of IPV have been transposed cross-culturally. This project evidences the importance of integrating religious parameters and spirituality in current understandings of sustainable development and ensuring that the language of the SDGs on gender-based violence is reconsidered in view of the intricate intersections between gender and religious parameters in the local knowledge system.
Proposed action
Local people’s justifications of folklore practices and norms were couched in an authoritative religious discourse, but many of these deviated from the complete theology of the Church/were innovations introduced over-time
An Orthodox Apostolic theology of marriage (e
More critical embodiments of religious norms seemed to align with a better understanding of New Testament theology
Fundamental conceptualisations of the abusive personality informed by the people’s religio-cultural worldview suggest that employing religious discourses to cultivate counter-discourses about the possibility of improving oneself/overcoming sin might be resourceful and appropriate
Such approaches would need to be combined with more systematic efforts by the Church to improve New Testament literacy among the clergy and the laity and to help the clergy understand the effects of their discourses on the laity
It is important to consider that the clergy might hesitate to innovate in ways that could appear ‘heretical’, providing them with the appropriate incentives and tools to encourage their integration in alleviation efforts
More concrete but concise and easily comprehensible guidance written in the local languages could offer much-needed resource for priests to use routinely (currently priests limited to Mäşhaf Täklil and Fәtha Nägäśt)
Given that people related to the faith in different ways, the clergy will need to be more prepared to counsel individuals who might not exactly fit the religious ideals, such as couples in irregular unions who were also affected by conjugal abuse but were oftentimes without a spiritual father
Helpful resources
Publication: One of my related journal articles [Access resource]
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Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia
Cite this brief: Istratii, Romina. 'Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia'. Acume. https://www.acume.org/r/adapting-gender-and-development-to-local-religious-contexts-a-decolonial-approach-to-domestic-violence-in-ethiopia/
Brief created by: Dr Romina Istratii | Year brief made: 2022
Original research:
- Istratii, R., Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia London: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003006992. – https://www.taylorfrancis.com/search?context=sdgo&productType=sdgo_all&key=istratii
Research brief:
A critical/decolonial analysis of gender and development theory and practice in religious societies of Africa through the presentation of an ethnographic study of conjugal violence from Northern Ethiopia.
The book is concerned with the effectiveness of mainstream gender theories and approaches cross-culturally and especially in religious societies of Africa. The author examines closely the gender and development paradigm mainstreamed in the 1990s and the backlash that this has seen in many religious and tradition-oriented societies of Africa. The author draws attention to the fact that gender and development paradigms were historically constructed in reference to western feminist metaphysics of subjectivity and gender as these emanated from Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinking and the secularisation of the western sciences and are, therefore, unequipped to provide a complete understanding of gender-related realities and behaviours in non-western contexts and knowledge systems. The author argues that these can also contradict local belief systems, and especially in religious societies of Africa that fall outside of western epistemology. As an alternative, the author argues for a decolonial approach to gender-sensitive research and practice embedded in the insiders’ conceptual repertoires and understandings for theorising gender, assessing the possible gendered underpinnings of local issues and designing alleviation strategies without making assumptions about the nature of gender relations in the local society.
The author advances this argument by focusing on intimate partner violence (IPV), a topic that has received extensive gender and development interest in the recent decades. The author demonstrates how this sub-sector has displayed similar ethnocentric and secular tendencies, with IPV being analysed almost invariably through preconceived gender-based violence (GBV) aetiologies generally neglectful or limited in their understanding of the role of local religious knowledge and spirituality in the manifestation and experience of IPV or attitudes about it. To demonstrate both the theoretical argument and an alternative approach to gender-sensitive research the author presents a long-term participatory study of conjugal abuse in the Eastern Orthodox Täwahәdo community of Ethiopia that employed a gender-sensitive analytical framework integrative of the local religio-cultural cosmology as embodied by the local people.
The study connects the theoretical and the practical, and clearly demonstrates the theoretical argument of the book through research in a real-life context. This research tries to do away with ethnocentric and top down assumptions that have colonial legacies by being inclusive of the local people, engaging with the community in Tigrigna and Amharic directly and capturing diverse perspectives of both laity and clergy of different circumstances in life. The book also employs an intersectional and multidisciplinary approach that integrates feminist, post-colonial/decolonial, sociological and psychological insights.
The book presents multiple points of originality and makes unique contributions to gender, religions and development studies. Due to its context-specific approach it also makes valuable contributions to Ethiopian and domestic violence studies.
Findings:
Makes an unprecedented decolonial critique of gender and development with the prospect of raising reflexivity in this field and changing current paradigmatic thinking that hinders gender and development effectiveness abroad and especially in religious African societies.
This argument has yet to be made in a way that combines theoretical rigour and ethnographic evidence. It also moves beyond the existing argument for simply incorporating anthropological methodologies in gender and development, but makes an epistemological proposition for enlarging the conceptual repertoire through which gender issues are fundamentally conceptualised and understood in the cross-cultural context and the role of local populations in this process. Overall, the work can expand current perspectives in gender and development, providing new directions that can lead the field outside of current theoretical and practical stalemates.
Addresses the domestic violence literature in regards to international/African development that has favoured generic typologies and aetiologies of domestic violence and has neglected religion or assessed this through western epistemological frameworks, ignoring local people’s conceptualisations and experiences.
The study demonstrates why approaching domestic violence through the lens of a single GBV aetiology misses intricacies on the ground. GBV aetiologies, as applied on African societies, have not generally accounted for religious parameters and the interplay of gendered social norms and religious idiom. The study in the book shows that attitudes and realities of conjugal abuse had gendered underpinnings, but these were embedded in more profound local understandings of human individuality, psychological and spiritual parameters, people’s location in a society that constrained individual ability to depart from perceived pernicious folklore norms and practices often couched in religious idiom, and other parameters. The study evidences that remedial interventions have to be informed by local knowledge systems and religious beliefs, if these interventions are to be relevant and speak to people’s own worldviews and rationalisations with the potential of changing pernicious norms and attitudes.
Addresses the current lacuna in Ethiopian domestic violence scholarship and sheds more light on the role of religious parameters studied in a specific cultural context.
An important motivation for this study has been the tendency in Ethiopian domestic violence scholarship to blame culture or religion for conjugal abuse and its societal tolerance. However, this scholarship has not been supported by substantive ethnographic evidence from local societies of Ethiopia that could demonstrate convincingly linkages between folklore practices, theology and gender standards and conjugal abuse in the local society. This study provides a unique window into people’s vernacular realities and contributes an unprecedented look into the mechanisms that have perpetuated social norms, gender ideals and attitudes contributing to conjugal abuse, adding considerable complexity to the analysis of the problem not currently captured in population and other qualitative studies on/from Ethiopia.
Enhances current knowledge of ‘Oriental Orthodox’ Churches and provides a decolonial approach to engaging with non-western faiths resourcefully within development praxis.
This study is important for understanding the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahәdo faith (one of the five Churches known as ‘Oriental Orthodox’) from an insiders’ perspective that incorporates both a theological and an ethnographic analysis. This is a departure from current paradigms in religious studies that have generally neglected theology or have tended to appraise non-western Christian traditions in reference to western experience with Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity. The book provides an unprecedented look into Church articulations/teachings of gender and conjugal violence as these evolved historically, as well as ethnographic insights into the clergy’s discourses, marriage practices and their interplay with folklore norms. By integrating theology and juxtaposing theological understandings to the fluid discourses of the laity, the study not only evidences the need to account for the theological premises of non-western Christian traditions, but also demonstrates that this theology could become resourceful in the alleviation of local gender-related issues.
Evidences the importance of integrating religious traditions and spirituality in current discussions of sustainable development in Africa
This is especially relevant in current times, with scholars of development and religions increasingly interrogating how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), introduced by the predominantly secular development industry as global development objectives, have engaged with faith-based actors and organisations (FBOs). It is also relevant since the SDGs agenda has provided one of the main platforms through which gender-based aetiologies of IPV have been transposed cross-culturally. This project evidences the importance of integrating religious parameters and spirituality in current understandings of sustainable development and ensuring that the language of the SDGs on gender-based violence is reconsidered in view of the intricate intersections between gender and religious parameters in the local knowledge system.
Advice:
Local people’s justifications of folklore practices and norms were couched in an authoritative religious discourse, but many of these deviated from the complete theology of the Church/were innovations introduced over-time
- More awareness around this and an improved theological acumen among the clergy/laity could create the space for re-considering pernicious or unhelpful practices.
An Orthodox Apostolic theology of marriage (e
- g. informed by John Chrysostom’s homilies) articulated with sensitivity to culture-specific gender expectations could counteract ‘traditional’ mentalities associated with the continuation of a gender-based division of labour and expectations facilitating sexual coerciveness.
More critical embodiments of religious norms seemed to align with a better understanding of New Testament theology
- Such individuals, who included learned clergy and members of the laity, could act as examples to others.
Fundamental conceptualisations of the abusive personality informed by the people’s religio-cultural worldview suggest that employing religious discourses to cultivate counter-discourses about the possibility of improving oneself/overcoming sin might be resourceful and appropriate
Such approaches would need to be combined with more systematic efforts by the Church to improve New Testament literacy among the clergy and the laity and to help the clergy understand the effects of their discourses on the laity
It is important to consider that the clergy might hesitate to innovate in ways that could appear ‘heretical’, providing them with the appropriate incentives and tools to encourage their integration in alleviation efforts
More concrete but concise and easily comprehensible guidance written in the local languages could offer much-needed resource for priests to use routinely (currently priests limited to Mäşhaf Täklil and Fәtha Nägäśt)
- A participatory format might offer a more effective approach to encourage reflective learning.
Given that people related to the faith in different ways, the clergy will need to be more prepared to counsel individuals who might not exactly fit the religious ideals, such as couples in irregular unions who were also affected by conjugal abuse but were oftentimes without a spiritual father