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'Missionaries' in Bangladesh View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington Exploring the mission-development nexus through stories from Christian ‘missionaries’ in Bangladesh Anna Thompson 2012 A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Development Studies School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University of Wellington Abstract Over the past decade, development research and policy has increasingly paid attention to religion and belief. Donors and researchers have progressively engaged with faith-based organisations and recipients. However, Christian mission and ‗missionaries‘ remain underexplored aspects within religion and development discourses. In response, this research explores stories from eleven Christian ‗missionaries‘ in Bangladesh. Firstly, I assess how the changing non-governmental sector in Bangladesh influenced participants‘ activities. Secondly, I contextualise their stories within religion and development discourses with reference to analyses of development workers. Finally, I reflect on the significance of spirituality in participants‘ lives. I also describe how spirituality played a role in my research. I frame this research within feminist and poststructuralist ways of knowing. Methodologically, I conducted semi-structured interviews and ‗hung out‘ with participants. I ‗wrote myself-in‘ to this research to highlight how the process intersected with my own subject positions. I found that participants‘ engaged with development in similar ways to development workers as analysed by others. They reproduced discourses of modernisation, expertise, altruism, and the ‗third world‘. They additionally responded to Christian discourses, such as ‗calling‘. Participants‘ activities and subjectivities were shaped by these intersecting discourses, and were also shaped by the historic and current setting of Bangladesh. Missionaries‘ stories revealed some aspects of the ‗mission-development nexus‘ in Bangladesh (Fountain, 2012). Participants‘ stories and my own research experience, also demonstrated that engagement with belief in God can be difficult within development and within ‗the academy‘ (Shahjahan, 2005). Key words Religion and development; Christian missionaries; development workers; Bangladesh; spirituality and research. i Anna Thompson, 2012 Acknowledgments To the eleven generous people who agreed to be interviewed, thank you, obviously this research would not have happened without your contribution. Many thanks also to my hosts in Bangladesh for your hospitality and kindness. I want to thank my supervisor Sara Kindon, who coached me patiently through this research, without your support this thesis would never have been completed. You are a wonderful supervisor! Thank you for your belief in me, particularly when I doubted myself so much. I would also like to acknowledge Andrew McGregor who started me on this research journey and encouraged my interest in the subject. I want to especially acknowledge my flatmates, Colleen, Olivia, Kathryn, Julian, Warrick, Javier, Emily, Bronwyn, Brendan, Philippa, Emma, and Neal, and also the wider Stillwaters community who are another kind of family. I would not have completed this work without your support and kindness. Particular thanks to Bronwyn and Emma who engaged with my questions and debates, pushed me to think more clearly about what I said, sympathised, and most of all made me laugh. Emma, thank you also for the hours you spent proofreading and delicately suggesting changes. Special thanks also to Emily who picked up all my flat duties and supplied me with essential quantities of chocolate. This research comes from family. I want to acknowledge the wonderful heritage that my family have given me. My grandparents and great grandparents, for their convictions and adventures. My siblings, Emily, Philippa and Daniel, who are also my best friends, constant partners in adventure and argument, I love you three more than I can say. My parents, Adrienne and Paul, who still teach me how to be critical and loving, generous and kind. I strive to live up to your example. Thank you always. This research has revolved around the life and death of my very greatly loved niece, Hope. I want to dedicate this thesis to Hope. I somehow finished despite all the afternoons taken off to read stories, dress-up, dance round the living room, bake cakes or run down the hill to the playground, the zoo or te Papa. For Hope. I miss you. ii Anna Thompson, 2012 Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................... i Key words ...................................................................................................... i Acknowledgments ................................................................................... ii Table of Contents .................................................................................... iii List of Tables and Figures ................................................................................ v Glossary of terms and acronyms ..................................................................... vi Bible translation ...............................................................................................vii Chapter One: Introduction ...................................................................... 1 Background and rationale................................................................................. 1 Central research questions............................................................................... 3 Research approach and methods..................................................................... 4 Thesis structure ................................................................................................ 5 Chapter two: Religion in development and the people who do development ............................................................................................. 6 Part one: Religion and Development ................................................................ 6 Introduction ................................................................................................... 6 Historical relationship between religion and development ............................. 7 Religion as instrumental.............................................................................. 10 Faith-based organisations ........................................................................... 12 Mission as the ‗invisible‘ NGO..................................................................... 14 Engaging with the transcendental ............................................................... 15 Summary of religion in development ........................................................... 15 Part two: The development of an aid worker................................................... 16 Introduction ................................................................................................. 16 Who are development workers? ................................................................. 17 Agents of development: identity shapes aid ................................................ 18 The development expert ............................................................................. 18 Ethnography of development workers ......................................................... 19 Religion and development workers ............................................................. 21 Summary on development workers ............................................................. 22 Part three: Religious development workers .................................................... 23 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 24 Chapter three: Research Approach ...................................................... 26 iii Anna Thompson, 2012 Introduction .................................................................................................... 26 Epistemologies ............................................................................................... 26 How this research happened .......................................................................... 28 Why missionaries in Bangladesh? .............................................................. 28 To whom did I speak? ................................................................................. 29 How did I research? .................................................................................... 30 Reflecting on my subject positions .............................................................. 37 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 37 Chapter Four: Christian mission and Bangladesh .............................. 38 Introduction .................................................................................................... 38 The context of Christian mission ..................................................................... 38 Definitions of Mission .................................................................................. 38 Mission Paradigms ..................................................................................... 39 History of the church in mission .................................................................. 40 The Enlightenment, Colonialism, and Mission ............................................
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