Learning Morality, Inequalities, and Faith
Christian and Muslim Schools in Tanzania

Examines how learning and teaching morality in Tanzania's faith-oriented schools is inextricably interwoven with the complex power relations of an interconnected world.

Hansjörg Dilger (Author)

9781009077972, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 July 2024

282 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.5 cm, 0.42 kg

'Dilger's book makes a noteworthy contribution to the study of religions in Africa, highlighting the role religion plays in the pursuit of excellent modern education and the formation of individual and collective moral belonging in contemporary Tanzania. The book shows that religion is not an alternative and in opposition to secular formation, but that it forms an integral part of the processes of globalisation, neoliberalisation, modern education and urban transformation. The book demonstrates that religion in Africa is not merely a private act of piety and belief but a force of social morality and a collective sense of belonging and being in the world.' Ala Rabiha Alhourani, Anthropology Southern Africa

Christian and Muslim schools have become important target points in families and pupils' quests for new study opportunities and securing a 'good life' in Tanzania. These schools combine secular education with the moral (self-)formation of young people, triggering new realignments of the fields of education with interreligious co-existence and class formation in the country's urban centres. Hansjörg Dilger explores the emerging entanglements of faith, morality, and the educational market in Dar es Salaam, thereby shedding light on processes of religious institutionalisation and their individual and collective embodiment. By contextualising these dynamics through analysis of the politics of Christian-Muslim relations in postcolonial Tanzania, this book shows how the field of education has shaped the positions of these highly diverse religious communities in diverging ways. In doing so, Dilger suggests that students and teachers' religious experience and practice in faith-oriented schools are shaped by the search for socio-moral belonging as well as by the power relations and inequalities of an interconnected world.

1. Introduction: The Quest for a Good Life in Faith-Oriented Schools
Part I. (Post-)Colonial Politics of Religious Difference and Education: 2. Entangled Histories of Religious Pluralism and Schooling
3. Staging and Governing Religious Difference in the Haven of Peace
Part II. Moral Becoming and Educational Inequalities in Dar es Salaam: 4. Market Orientation and Belonging in Neo-Pentecostal Schools
5. Marginality and Religious Difference in Islamic Seminaries
6. Privilege and Prayer in Catholic Schools
7. Conclusion: Politics, Inequalities, and Power in Religiously Diverse Fields.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH], Regional & national history [HBJ], General & world history [HBG], History [HB], Humanities [H]