Cand. philol. Karina Hestad Skeie (post-doctoral project)

Skeie has submitted her doctoral thesis in February 2005 and plans this research as a post-doctoral project. The understanding that everyone irrespective of sex and race had a right to and a responsibility for their own personal relationship to God, justified the Norwegian mission’s massive educational effort in the highlands from the 1880s, since it was paramount for good Lutherans to be able to read his and her own Bible. Already from 1872, the Norwegian mission began to educate Malagasy clergy. The 4-year theological study greatly resembled the theological education which the (male) Norwegian missionaries had received at the mission-school in Stavanger. Within a decade after the Norwegian mission’s start in the Malagasy highlands, these men had become irreplaceable, carrying the daily missionary-work at the grassroots (Skeie 2005). While mission-education for women started at the same time as for Malagasy men, its impact on Malagasy women has not yet been systematically studied. Targeting the interplay between mission-education and Malagasy culture in this post-doctoral project, Skeie will examine and compare women's education and women's formal and informal roles and positions in the Malagasy Lutheran church (FLM), and in the all-Malagasy awakening movement (Ny Fifohazana) respectively. Because the awakening-movement is inter-denominational, women (and men) often take part both places simultaneously. From the beginning, the seminary for educating Malagasy Lutheran pastors also provided a separate education for pastor-wives-to-be. Later, lower and higher theological education has been open for men and women on equal terms. However, the Malagasy Lutheran church does not yet ordain women to pastors. In contrast, women have traditionally had leading positions in the awakening-movement, which places more emphasis on divine inspiration and personal calling than on formal (religious) education. Are there different notions of gender and gender-roles in the FLM and the Fifohazana respectively? And if there are, can some of these differences be traced back to mission-education? Has Christianity in the church and in the awakening empowered women differently? Since Christianity has been state religion since 1869 and an integral part of every-day life in these central and most densely populated areas in Madagascar, this study will provide insight into the situation for women in the Malagasy society more generally.
          The material for this project will be collected through a field-work in Madagascar, where Skeie will draw upon her substantial professional and personal knowledge of Malagasy society and culture. (Skeie was brought up in Madagascar, and wrote her Hovedfag and Dr. art. Thesis on the religious encounter between Malagasy people and Norwegian missionaries.)The field-work will in turn be contextualized with historical background material drawn from the NMS/FLM archives in Stavanger and Antananarivo, archives which Skeie used extensively for her doctoral work.