Philip Fountain—Religious Studies

Humanitarian autobiographies provide compelling windows for analysing the locations of religion within the international aid and development sector. Free from the genre constraints of fundraising appeals or development scholarship, religion and spirituality are frequently given considerable space in these narrations, in multiple different ways. These thick narrations present valuable spaces for reconsidering the cultural dynamics of Aidland. This paper examines the ‘confessions’ of humanitarians in books such as Three Cups of Tea, Emergency Sex, and Zen Under Fire. I argue that the critical study of autobiography is especially productive when the texts are brought into conversation with ethnography.

Philip Fountain is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. He has published extensively on religion and development, humanitarianism, and disaster relief. His most recent book is Political Theologies and Development in Asia: Transcendence, Sacrifice and Aspiration, edited with Giuseppe Bolotta and R. Michael Feener.