Call for Abstracts

The 6th International Conference and Consolidation on Indigenous Religions

 “Performing Democracy”

23 – 25 October 2024; IAKN Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia

The 2024 election marked one quarter century of Indonesian democratic Reformation. However, the implementation of the 2024 democratic election forces us to again raise basic questions: what is democracy, its essence, and its purpose; and can it function in a way that achieves its ideals?

We have worked to promote democracy as a set of values that center on engaging citizens as a key strategy for social welfare and equal access to justice. Yet our vulnerable citizens, such as Indigenous Peoples, religious minorities, women and other gender identities, children, people with disabilities, the displaced, and many others, keep wishing for a seemingly utopian hope. Our people continue playing structured roles as merely “clients”, who depend on brokers mainly working to maintain the status quo.

ICIR 6 invites to go beyond the electoral processes of 2024, let alone their results. Learning from previous ICIRs, we have observed that democracy, a set of values of socio-political governance and living together ethically, is not alien to the people and to the vulnerable. All people including the vulnerable, though treated as clients or even as objects by those in power, variously and richly perform their ideas and imaginations by adopting, and sometimes challenging, democratic values in their everyday lives. They variously perform all dimensions of life, and they form collectivities both embodying their ideals into practices and responding to those who supposedly engage with them as “subjects” of democracy.

ICIR 6 specifically invites scholars, researchers, practitioners, CSO activists, and community members to share cosmic and everyday ideas and practices of democracy. These ideas and practices are performed in multiple ways, individually or collectively, socio-politically or religious-culturally, artistically or directly, and so forth; and they address various issues which may include (inter)religious dialogue, conflict and peace, visual and performing arts, human dignity and rights, climate change and ecological justice, traditional and creative economies, indigenous and modernized education and health, and so forth. Performed cosmic and everyday ideas by the people, especially the vulnerable, are worth being counted, not as the target of, but as the basis for democratic/citizenship engagement. ICIR 6 envisions engaged knowledges and wisdoms for effective and sustainable citizenship engagement, especially for the vulnerable.

Themes

“Performing Democracy” as the theme of ICIR 6 will address the following sub-themes:

1. Performing Democracy as theme of ICIR 6 will address the following sub-themes:
   Civil society consolidation as performing democracy
   a. Intersectional andrelational engagement for everyday democracy
   b. Engaging everyday democracy, fighting polarizing democracy
2. Freedom of religion or belief
   a. Living laws as everyday democracy
   b. Interreligious dialogue, moderation and education
3. Religious Moderation, arts, and democracy
   a. Performing religious moderation through art
   b. Performing arts for everyday democracy
4. Democratic resilience, economic sovereignty, and community engagement
   a. Engaging the vulnerable for resilient democracy
   b. Sexual violence, gender differences, and democratc resilience
5. Digital democracy, rights, and inclusion
   a. Fighting the digital divide for inclusive democracy
   b. engaging everyday democracy for digital rights and inclusion of the vulnerable
6. Ecology, development, and everyday democracy
   a. Creative sovereign economies, development for the people and all living beings
   b. Engaging everyday democracy for ecocracy and planetary communities

Time and venue

The 6th ICIR will be held both online and onsite on 23-25 October 2024 in IAKN Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia.

Key dates

Registration

Submit your abstract here.

Registration is free.

Participants are responsible for their own airfare and accommodation.

Contact Person

Laila: +62 81290747656
Makrus: +62 8112669933