Religion in Extractive Zones

Dear Colleagues,

Religion proliferates in extractive zones. Minerals and petrochemicals are hoped for (Asmussen 2016), conjured (Tsing 2005), and narrated as redemptive (Dochuk 2019, Rowe 2022, Grau 2023). Magic (Petrocultures Research Group 2016, Wenzel 2006, Coronil 1997) and alchemy (Han forthcoming) are evoked. Race is constructed through religious discourse surrounding the “proper management” of extracted matter (Smith 2022) and new religions assemble around counter-extractive modes of relation (Rivera 2021, Wynter 1962), while persisting lifeways resist human, mineralogical, and transnational petrochemical extraction (Estes & Dhillon 2019, Serje 2003, da Silva 2022). 

Even in the theorization of religion, extraction zones have played a significant but under-recognized role. The fetish, formerly theorized as a primitive form of religion, emerged as an early theory of the history of religions in West African zones of human and mineralogical extraction (Pietz 1985, Matory 2018). More recently, religion has been theorized as emerging in contact zones—contexts of intercultural exchange, conflict, and exploitation that have proven transformative for each contact culture (Long 2018a), or, relatedly, as dynamic, in flux across national and cultural boundaries and spaces (Tweed 2006). Those contact zones often turn out to be embedded in wider spheres of extraction, imbricated with coloniality and racialization. What theories of religion—religion and ecology, religion and economy, coloniality and secularization, religion and racialization—might emerge if religiously productive contact zones are identified more specifically as extractive zones (Gómez-Barris 2017)? 

The extractive zone elicits the emphasis theorists of religion have put on space/place, but should not be seen as limited to a particular geographical region. Indeed, extractivism describes the systems and practices whereby humans, data, customs, beliefs, minerals, or other “resources” are removed in high volume from a locale of constitutive relations and transported across oceans, national borders, neighborhoods, or cultures, transforming that relationally constituted matter into a commodity for the profit of an elite, exceptional few (Gudynas 2020, Tsing 2013). 

A religious surplus in extractive zones remains referenced but insufficiently analyzed among the extraction humanities and petroculture studies which have otherwise made remarkable strides in foregrounding what has been backgrounded in extractive cultures. The study of religion has much to offer in terms of methodologies and critical approaches. While the studies of religion and environment, ecotheologies, or religion and nature have predominantly focused on the preservation of green spaces, sustainability, or the conservation of resources, decolonial, postcolonial, and political theological approaches to the study of religion are examining the religious imaginaries of matter (Long 2018b, Crockett 2022, Carter 2023), the logics of property, possession, human/nature, and human/land relations (An & Craig 2021, Jennings 2016) and extraction in particular (Rowe 2022).

This issue invites a more robust theorizing of religion in extractive zones. It aims for new approaches but also calls for reflection on the ways religion has already been theorized out of a backgrounded extractive zone. The questions considered might include (but need not be limited to) the following:

• How might such an approach change religion and ecology or religion and economy discourse?
• How might such an approach change narratives about, framings of, and responses to climate change—so often theorized as an “emissions” problem while profoundly obscuring roots in extraction?
• What human and more-than-human modes of resistance emerge in extractive zones? What counter-extractive modes of relation assemble here and what is their proximity to the sacred? 
• What new insights might be gained into the ways religious and scientific knowledge is drawn from methodological or material extractive zones?
• What ethical and religious issues emerge in the extraction of human or other-than-human genetic material? 
• How is race produced in relation to religion in extractive zones (in relation to mineralogical metaphysics (Bentancor 2017), geological histories (Yusoff 2018), or legal guardianship (in the case of the Osage and African Americans in OK))?
• What are the gender dynamics employed in resistance to, or support of, extractivism?
• What modes of coloniality are resisted or reinforced through religious practice in extractive zones? 

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it by 15 December 2023 to the guest editors ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] ) or to the /Religions/ editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References:

Yountae, A.; Craig, E. Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality and Philosophy of Religion; Duke University Press: Durham, NC, USA, 2021.

Asmussen, T. The Kux as a Site of Mediation: Economic Practices and Material Desires in the Early Modern German Mining Industry. In Sites of Mediation: Connected Histories of Places, Processes, and Objects in Europe and Beyond, 1450–1650; Burghartz, S., Burkart, L., Göttler, C., Eds.; Brill: Boston, MA, USA, 2016; pp. 159–182.

Bentancor, O. The Matter of Empire: Metaphysics and Mining in Colonial Peru; University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2017.

Carter, J.K. The Anarchy of Black Religion: A Mystic Song; Duke University Press: Durham, NC, USA, 2023.

Coronil, F. The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, USA, 1997.

Crockett, C. Energy and Change: A New Materialist Cosmotheology; Columbia University Press: New York, NY, USA, 2022.

da Silva, D.F. Unpayable Debt; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2022.

Dochuk, D. Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America; Basic Books: New York, NY, USA, 2019.

Estes, N.; Dhillon, J., Eds. Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement; University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, 2019.

Gómez-Barris, M. The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives; Duke University Press: Durham, NC, USA, 2017.

Grau, M. “State of Happiness”? Petroreligion and Petromelancholia in Norway. Dialog 2023, 62, 173–183.

Gudynas, E. Extractivisms: Politics, Economy, and Ecology; Fernwood Publishing: Black Point, Cananda, 2021.

Han, L.Y. Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor; University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, forthcoming, 2024.

Jennings, W.J. Binding Landscapes: Secularism, Race, and the Spatial Modern. In Race and Secularism in America. Kahn, J., Lloyd, V., Eds. Columbia University Press: New York, NY, USA, 2016; pp. 207–238.

Long, C. The Religious Implications of the Situation of Cultural Contact. In Ellipsis: The Collected Writings of Charles H. Long; Bloomsbury: New York, NY, USA, 2018; pp. 157–170.

Long, C. Mircea Eliade and the Imagination of Matter. In Ellipsis: The Collected Writings of Charles H. Long; Bloomsbury: New York, NY, USA, 2018; pp. 117–127.

Matory, J.L. The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make; Duke University Press: Durham, NC, USA, 2018.

Petroculture Research Group. After Oil; West Virginia University Press: Morgantown, WV, USA, 2016.

Pietz, W. The Problem of the Fetish, I. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 1985, 9, 5–17.

Rivera, M. Embodied Counterpoetics: Sylvia Wynter on Religion and Race. In Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion; Yountae, A., Craig, E., Eds.; Duke University Press: Durham, NC, USA, 2021; pp. 57–85.

Rowe, T.S. Of Modern Extraction: Experiments in Critical Petro-theology. Bloomsbury: New York, NY, USA, 2022.

Serje, M. ONGs, Indios y Petróleo: El Caso U’wa a Través de los Mapas del Territorio en Disputa. Bull. De L’institut Français D’études Andin. 2003, 32, 101–131.

Smith, M. 2022. The Changing Muslim World: Biopolitics, Energy, and the Racialization of Islam in Protestant Missions. Energy, Extraction and Religion Seminar. AAR, Denver, CO, USA.

Tsing, A. Prosperity. In Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA, 2005; pp. 21–80.

Tsing, A. Sorting out Commodities: How Capitalist Value Is Made through Gifts. HAU: J. Ethnogr. Theory 2013, 3, 21–43.

Tweed, T.A. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2006.

Wenzel, J. Petro-magic-realism: Toward a Political Ecology of Nigerian Literature. Postcolonial Stud. 2006, 9, 449–464.

Wynter, S. Hills of Hebron; Randle: Kingston, Jamaica, 1962.

Yusoff, K. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None; University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, 2018.

Dr. Terra Schwerin Rowe
Prof. Dr. Lisa Sideris
Dr. Christiana Zenner
Dr. Devin Singh
Guest Editors

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• extractivism
• energy humanities
• petroculture studies
• colonization and coloniality
• race and religion
• ecotheology
• religion and ecology
• religion and economy