Religion and Economy Unit

This Unit welcomes individual papers, paper sessions, and roundtable proposals related to the group's mission. We strongly encourage the submission of pre-arranged paper and roundtable sessions, which are more likely to be accepted. Proposals for individual papers are most successful if proposed in relation to one of the themes listed below, due to the higher probability that they might complement other individual submissions.

Successful proposals not only will reflect theoretical and methodological rigor and clarity but also will engage existing scholarship around the study of religion and economy. A successful pre-arranged session also must incorporate gender and racial/ethnic diversity. Diversity of academic rank, theoretical method, and field are also highly encouraged and more likely to be successful.

Potential themes include but are not limited to the themes listed below. We welcome proposals on these themes, but we also invite proposals on any other themes that contribute to the Unit’s work or push it in new directions.

Themes: 

• AAR Theme - “Futures” 
  • Of the Field and Higher Ed - How does the study of religion and economy help us understand and approach the future of our work in and around institutions of higher education? Amid increased precarity of labor, program closures, political challenges, high tuition, AI-incursions and innovations, and debt and austerity as structuring contexts for education, we invite papers and panels that take up the future(s) of our field. 
  • Divination Markets and Speculative Practices - How do religious and economic forms offer resources for people to grapple with futures unknown and manage associated risks? We seek panels and papers that confront divination and speculation practices, dowsing, fortune-telling, futures-markets, venture capital, insurance, and related endeavors.
  • Fiction and Fabula - How might attention to literary and genre renderings of alternative worlds–in speculative fiction, sci-fi, cli-fi, fabula, and the like–help us think anew about religion and economy in our own world? What can scholars of religion and economy learn from and/or offer to writers, cartoonists, filmmakers, and others in the creative arts? We especially invite interdisciplinary, field-crossing papers and proposals that consider together analytical, empirical, literary, performative, artistic, and other creative approaches to this topic.
  • No Future? - What does it look like to understand and analyze an ending? How do religious and economic systems name, narrate, schematize, envision, or seek to prevent or advance an end? From apocalyptic writings to end-of-life care to theories of end-stage capitalism and lots more, papers and panels might consider any number of topics around closing, conclusion, cessation, finishing, finality, and related ways of remitting, resisting, or refusing a future. 
• Multispecies Relations in Extraction: We seek papers and panels that focus on the political economies of nonhuman species and on the histories and logics of extraction. Papers may explore practices and politics on the ground, as well as the metaphoric and performative language of texts and stories.  
• The Political Economy of Emerging Technologies: We invite papers and panels that examine emerging technologies within constellations of multibeing relations shaped by political economy. The contributions may address not only the dominating logics of leading technology companies, but also the use and creation of these technologies by startups and small-scale enterprises, as well as religious leaders, chaplains, and grassroots organizers. 
• Gospels of Health and Wellness - Scholars have long chronicled the ways that health, wellness, and embodiment have been religious projects. We invite new work on this and related studies that consider how ‘health’ and ‘wellness’ are being understood and approached today and the role of religion therein, especially in conversation with prominent and prosperous pharmaceutical and fitness economies.
• Mutual Aid, Currency, and Rituals of Exchange - How do religious and economic forms help conceive, mark, systematize, and manage exchange? We invite papers on ritual economies and political theologies of all types, from mutual aid programs, gifting practices, and sacrificial systems to monetary policies and financialization to crypto and shadow economies. 
• Teaching Religion and Economy - How do we teach the study of religion and economy? What aims, questions, key terms, materials, techniques, and assignments help structure the work we do on these topics in the classroom? Where and when does this teaching happen (classrooms, podcasts, websites, etc), and how do these locales, chronologies of encounter, associated structures of financing, management, and relationality impact learning?