Doctoral Dissertation Research: Why Media Collaboration Flourishes Despite Interreligious Conflict

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Scientists have long tried to understand the conditions that are necessary to produce mutual tolerance and understanding within contexts where different groups of people practice highly varied religions. Within these debates, there is a school of thought that suggests that certain kinds of religious interactions are likely to give rise to conflict, and there is another that suggests that some religions tend to be more malleable and adopt ideas from a range of different secular and religious practices. It is often claimed that there are certain religions make their practitioners less inclined to cooperate with individuals outside their religion. This research, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous empirical fieldwork, examines a case where individuals from religions that have historically been in conflict with one another engage collaboratively to produce media in which cultural and religious differences are a major theme. The project asks what circumstances and relationships give rise to these kinds of collaboration. Mr. Brian Smithson under the supervision of Dr. Charles Piot of Duke University will investigate the strategies human beings use to overcome religious and international tensions in order to accomplish collaborative endeavors. He will pursue this inquiry by exploring media production along the border of Bénin and Nigeria. This is an ideal context within which to investigate this question for several reasons: there are vast cultural and religious differences within a relatively small geographic space, as participants practice three different religions; the participants are highly variable in their media expertise, suggesting that collaborative media production is voluntaristic, rather than driven by mutual economic or logistical benefit. The project will test theories in the social sciences that assume that religious interactions necessarily give rise to religious clashes or religious hybridization. Classic ethnographic data collection methods, including participant observation and interviews with various stakeholders in media production will be used. This project will explore what roles national identity, religious affiliation, and professional prestige play in negotiations over religious attitudes and conceptions of community, as well as what methods of media production allow for a broader debate about religious content, iconography, and aesthetics in media. The findings of this study promise to benefit policymakers as they struggle with increasing religious tensions in their countries and fears that inter-religious strife may spill across borders.