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In this paper I argue that the liberal problem of religion, which defines religion in terms of dogmatism or opaque justifications based on ‘revealed truth’, needs to be rethought as part of a broader problem of dialogue, which does not define religion as uniquely problematic.

Habermas argues for religious positions to be translated into ‘generally accessible language’ to incorporate religious citizens into democratic dialogue and resist the domination of instrumental rationality by enhancing ‘solidarity’. I contrast this with Rowan Williams’ and Gadamer’s work.

Williams conceptualises religion in terms of recognising the finitude of our being, rather than dogmatism or opacity. This recognition, he argues, allows people to transcend the ‘imaginative bereavement’ of seeing others as means. Using Williams, I argue that Habermas misdefines religion, and reinforces the domination of instrumental rationality by treating religion as a means. I then use Gadamer to argue that the points Williams makes about religion can apply to secular positions too by recognising them as traditions subject to finitude.

This is original because it argues that the liberal problem of religion misdefines both religion and secular positions, by not recognising that both are traditions defined by finitude. To reach, dialogically, a ‘fusion of horizons’, where religious and secular people are understood non-instrumentally in their own terms of reference, will take time and not trade on immediately manifest – ‘generally accessible’ – meanings.

This chapter uses discourse analysis to explain why entrepreneurship has become a primary response to Africa’s youth employment challenge. It analyses almost 20 years of academic literature and publications from one of the world’s foremost authorities on entrepreneurship: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The study found that youth were positioned within a discourse of entrepreneurial essentialism; where entrepreneurship was narrativised as the only option for youth employment; and youth were framed as entrepreneurship being the natural solution for them. Youth were concurrently framed within numerous contradictory entrepreneurial discourses which were used to elevate and legitimise entrepreneurship as the key pathway for addressing Africa’s youth employment challenge. An important finding in this study was that the dominant model of entrepreneurship being promoted by GEM to address the challenge is a mainly skills-based pathway to self-employment and low-growth microenterprise development. This is concerning for two reasons: firstly, global evidence does not demonstrate much support for such an approach, and secondly, it undermines other responses to youth unemployment, particularly those which seek to address more structural, demand-side barriers to employment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse scholarly subjectivity in the context of citation practices in interdisciplinary PhD research.

The paper provides an analysis of longitudinal series of qualitative interviews with PhD students who write scholarly articles as dissertation components. Conceptualizations of subjectivity within practice theories form the basis for the analysis.

Scholarly argumentation entails a rhetorical paradox of “bringing something new” to the communication while at the same time “establishing a common ground” with an audience. By enacting this paradox through citing in an emerging interdisciplinary setting, the informants negotiate subject positions in different modes of identification across the involved disciplines. In an emerging interdisciplinary field, the articulation of scholarly subjectivity is a joint open-ended achievement demanding knowledgeability in multiple disciplinary understandings and conducts. However, identifications that are expressible within the informants’ local site, i.e. interactions with supervisors, other seniors and peers, are not always expressible when negotiating subject positions with journals.

This paper contributes to research on citation practices in emerging interdisciplinary fields. By linking the enactment of citing in scholarly writing to the negotiation of subject positions, the paper provides new insights about the complexities involved in becoming a scholar.