Pub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.1177/12063312221134572
Irene Becci, J. Hafner
In postsocialist Potsdam, religious diversity has risen surprisingly in public life since 1990 although more than 80% of the residents have no religious affiliation. City and state authorities have actively embraced issues around immigration and integration as well as the promotion of religious diversity and interreligious dialogue and have linked this to the agenda of rejuvenating the city’s religious heritage. For years, negotiations have been going on about the need of a mosque, the reconstructions of a synagogue and the so-called “Garrison Church,” a landmark military church building. These initiatives have been dominating the public space for different reasons. They implied, beyond religion, questions of memory, identity, immigration, and culture. This article puts these three cases into perspective to offer a nuanced understanding of the importance of religious spaces in secular contexts considering city politics.
{"title":"A New Synagogue, a Garrison Church, and a Mosque: How Religious (Re)Building Animates Religious and Secular Life in Postsocialist Potsdam","authors":"Irene Becci, J. Hafner","doi":"10.1177/12063312221134572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221134572","url":null,"abstract":"In postsocialist Potsdam, religious diversity has risen surprisingly in public life since 1990 although more than 80% of the residents have no religious affiliation. City and state authorities have actively embraced issues around immigration and integration as well as the promotion of religious diversity and interreligious dialogue and have linked this to the agenda of rejuvenating the city’s religious heritage. For years, negotiations have been going on about the need of a mosque, the reconstructions of a synagogue and the so-called “Garrison Church,” a landmark military church building. These initiatives have been dominating the public space for different reasons. They implied, beyond religion, questions of memory, identity, immigration, and culture. This article puts these three cases into perspective to offer a nuanced understanding of the importance of religious spaces in secular contexts considering city politics.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"215 - 228"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45532270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-21DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130240
Linda van de Kamp
The central focus of this article is the interaction between religious actors and urban regeneration in the former industrial area of Amsterdam North. While there is extensive literature on the structural, sociocultural, and economic impact of urban regeneration and related processes of gentrification, the role of religious groups in these processes of neighborhood change has largely been ignored. Based on ethnographic research, I examine how different Christian movements interact with their changing neighborhood in varied forms. The redevelopment of industrial buildings and the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods in Amsterdam North enable different but particular forms of Christian place-making. I focus on two forms of engagement with urban spaces: (a) the reuse of industrial buildings by Pentecostal movements and (b) the transformation of traditional Protestant church buildings into socially mixed neighborhood centers. These two different forms of urban place-making highlight how Christian organizations bring the active agency to urban regeneration and cocreate urban neighborhoods materially and socially.
{"title":"Churches and Urban Regeneration in Postindustrial Amsterdam","authors":"Linda van de Kamp","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130240","url":null,"abstract":"The central focus of this article is the interaction between religious actors and urban regeneration in the former industrial area of Amsterdam North. While there is extensive literature on the structural, sociocultural, and economic impact of urban regeneration and related processes of gentrification, the role of religious groups in these processes of neighborhood change has largely been ignored. Based on ethnographic research, I examine how different Christian movements interact with their changing neighborhood in varied forms. The redevelopment of industrial buildings and the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods in Amsterdam North enable different but particular forms of Christian place-making. I focus on two forms of engagement with urban spaces: (a) the reuse of industrial buildings by Pentecostal movements and (b) the transformation of traditional Protestant church buildings into socially mixed neighborhood centers. These two different forms of urban place-making highlight how Christian organizations bring the active agency to urban regeneration and cocreate urban neighborhoods materially and socially.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"204 - 214"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42668583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-21DOI: 10.1177/12063312221136995
Silke Steets
As an epilogue to the essays in this special issue, the article revolves around the question of the specificity of urban religious experiences. In addressing this question, I will first elaborate on the conceptual notion of the city that fruitfully frames the essays, in order to show, by a second step, its strengths but also some blind spots. Finally, ways to illuminate the blind spots are suggested which at the same time may stimulate further research in the field of urban religion.
{"title":"Epilogue: Spatializing Cities, Exploring Urban Religion, Re-Imagining Urbanity","authors":"Silke Steets","doi":"10.1177/12063312221136995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221136995","url":null,"abstract":"As an epilogue to the essays in this special issue, the article revolves around the question of the specificity of urban religious experiences. In addressing this question, I will first elaborate on the conceptual notion of the city that fruitfully frames the essays, in order to show, by a second step, its strengths but also some blind spots. Finally, ways to illuminate the blind spots are suggested which at the same time may stimulate further research in the field of urban religion.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65366754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-21DOI: 10.1177/12063312221134576
Weishan Huang
This essay examines the relationship between the processes of urban change and the politically and commercially constructed nature of Buddhism since 1978 in Shanghai. After examining data from 120 temples together with ethnographic research in two downtown temples, the author finds two key changes in urban Buddhism: First, political constructions cause an increasing divide between the city center and suburban areas in the religious spaces of Buddhism. The mainstreaming of Buddhism in the downtown areas has emerged with the new trend of economic and cultural gentrification that has generated different physical and social neighborhoods. Second, not confined to being iconized as tourist sites, Buddhist temples led by powerful abbots are engaged in “niche-switching” between attracting commuters and visitors and attending to temple-based devotees. With new spatial strategies, such as the development of cultural philanthropy and interprovincial pilgrimages, temple-based clergy have to negotiate their social positions in the commercial zones. The results indicate how the neighborhood has become less important once temples extend their members’ nongeographic ties.
{"title":"Secularity and Urban Gentrification: An Spatial Analysis of Downtown Buddhist Temples in Shanghai","authors":"Weishan Huang","doi":"10.1177/12063312221134576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221134576","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the relationship between the processes of urban change and the politically and commercially constructed nature of Buddhism since 1978 in Shanghai. After examining data from 120 temples together with ethnographic research in two downtown temples, the author finds two key changes in urban Buddhism: First, political constructions cause an increasing divide between the city center and suburban areas in the religious spaces of Buddhism. The mainstreaming of Buddhism in the downtown areas has emerged with the new trend of economic and cultural gentrification that has generated different physical and social neighborhoods. Second, not confined to being iconized as tourist sites, Buddhist temples led by powerful abbots are engaged in “niche-switching” between attracting commuters and visitors and attending to temple-based devotees. With new spatial strategies, such as the development of cultural philanthropy and interprovincial pilgrimages, temple-based clergy have to negotiate their social positions in the commercial zones. The results indicate how the neighborhood has become less important once temples extend their members’ nongeographic ties.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"229 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43875365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-16DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130241
Obvious Katsaura
This article examines Pentecostal architecture as an expression and apparatus of “Pentecostal power.” Referencing the “new” auditorium of the Deeper Christian Life Ministries in Gbagada, Lagos, the article analyzes the “architecturations”—expressions, materializations, and activations through iconic Pentecostal buildings—of Pentecostalism’s spatial, political, corporeal, symbolic, and economic power. This article coins and develops the concept of architecturations of Pentecostal power by predominantly undergirding it with Bourdieu’s conceptual tripartite of field, habitus, and capital. It contributes to embryonic sociology of Pentecostal architecture against a backdrop of its relative neglect in the literatures that have begun to recount Pentecostalism as an urban signifier.
{"title":"Architecturations of Pentecostal Power: Contribution to a Sociology of Pentecostal Auditoriums","authors":"Obvious Katsaura","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130241","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Pentecostal architecture as an expression and apparatus of “Pentecostal power.” Referencing the “new” auditorium of the Deeper Christian Life Ministries in Gbagada, Lagos, the article analyzes the “architecturations”—expressions, materializations, and activations through iconic Pentecostal buildings—of Pentecostalism’s spatial, political, corporeal, symbolic, and economic power. This article coins and develops the concept of architecturations of Pentecostal power by predominantly undergirding it with Bourdieu’s conceptual tripartite of field, habitus, and capital. It contributes to embryonic sociology of Pentecostal architecture against a backdrop of its relative neglect in the literatures that have begun to recount Pentecostalism as an urban signifier.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"268 - 278"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42153880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-10DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130245
Leilah Vevaina
Mumbai is one of the world’s megacities often depicted through its intensely crowded suburban trains and hours-long traffic jams. The city is now in the midst of a huge transport infrastructural scheme to build a north-south underground metro seen as vital to relieve the congestion of the colonial-era commuter train, which carries seven million passengers every day. Yet, the backlash against the construction has been virulent, from environmental groups and particularly from one micro community, the Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), who learnt that the Metro line was planned to run beneath two of their oldest and most sacred temples. This article will explore the claims, legitimating narratives, and legal authority of these competing civic and sacred urban infrastructures.
{"title":"Two Fire Temples and a Metro: Contesting Infrastructures in Mumbai","authors":"Leilah Vevaina","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130245","url":null,"abstract":"Mumbai is one of the world’s megacities often depicted through its intensely crowded suburban trains and hours-long traffic jams. The city is now in the midst of a huge transport infrastructural scheme to build a north-south underground metro seen as vital to relieve the congestion of the colonial-era commuter train, which carries seven million passengers every day. Yet, the backlash against the construction has been virulent, from environmental groups and particularly from one micro community, the Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), who learnt that the Metro line was planned to run beneath two of their oldest and most sacred temples. This article will explore the claims, legitimating narratives, and legal authority of these competing civic and sacred urban infrastructures.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"242 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48410465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-10DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130242
M. Oosterbaan
This article discusses the growth of Pentecostal churches in favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The author pleads for a systemic inclusion of religious ideas and practices in theoretical reflections on citizenship in the urban contexts of Brazil. Concretely, scholars need to include the explosive rise of Pentecostalism in their reflections on insurgent citizenship this religious movement fuels rights discourses and supports feelings of pride and dignity in the face of structural spatial exclusion. The author highlights two important relations between favela building practices and Pentecostalism. One concerns the affinity between the bottom-up organizational and doctrinal structure of the biggest Pentecostal denomination in Brazil (the Assemblies of God) and the informal building practices of favela residents. The other concerns the elective affinity between autoconstruction in terms of Pentecostal projects of self-fashioning and self-governance and autoconstruction in terms of favela building practices.
{"title":"Rights and Stones: Pentecostal Autoconstruction and Citizenship in Rio de Janeiro","authors":"M. Oosterbaan","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130242","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the growth of Pentecostal churches in favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The author pleads for a systemic inclusion of religious ideas and practices in theoretical reflections on citizenship in the urban contexts of Brazil. Concretely, scholars need to include the explosive rise of Pentecostalism in their reflections on insurgent citizenship this religious movement fuels rights discourses and supports feelings of pride and dignity in the face of structural spatial exclusion. The author highlights two important relations between favela building practices and Pentecostalism. One concerns the affinity between the bottom-up organizational and doctrinal structure of the biggest Pentecostal denomination in Brazil (the Assemblies of God) and the informal building practices of favela residents. The other concerns the elective affinity between autoconstruction in terms of Pentecostal projects of self-fashioning and self-governance and autoconstruction in terms of favela building practices.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"253 - 267"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46259975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130246
Uta Karstein
The article discusses the urbanization process of the 19th century against the background of the theory of functional differentiation. It is assumed that functional differentiation is an essential prerequisite for today’s forms of urban religion. For this purpose, the urbanization process of the 19th century is understood as an arena in which major social upheavals and changes were negotiated. This also applies to the changing social status of religion. The challenges this posed for the major Christian denominations in Western Europe are described here on the basis of three fundamental problems of reference: (1) the issue of material presence in the urban space; (2) the pursuit of symbolic significance, and (3) the question of social inclusion. Using contemporary source material, the spatial and material aspects of these challenges in particular will be discussed.
{"title":"Urban Space, Functional Differentiation, and Conditions of Religious Place-Making in 19th-Century German and British Cities","authors":"Uta Karstein","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130246","url":null,"abstract":"The article discusses the urbanization process of the 19th century against the background of the theory of functional differentiation. It is assumed that functional differentiation is an essential prerequisite for today’s forms of urban religion. For this purpose, the urbanization process of the 19th century is understood as an arena in which major social upheavals and changes were negotiated. This also applies to the changing social status of religion. The challenges this posed for the major Christian denominations in Western Europe are described here on the basis of three fundamental problems of reference: (1) the issue of material presence in the urban space; (2) the pursuit of symbolic significance, and (3) the question of social inclusion. Using contemporary source material, the spatial and material aspects of these challenges in particular will be discussed.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"155 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46431151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130244
U. Rao
Inspired by recent debates in material religion, and using the example of the central Indian city of Bhopal, this article characterizes an informal Hindu religious geography that flourishes in the interstices of India’s planned urbanity. The small wayside shrines that dot Indian cities usually arise spontaneously, created by believers who discern divine manifestations and begin to worship these. Traces of ritual activities animate others to follow suit and express their devotion, thus reinforcing the sites’ sacredness. The daily repetition of myriad minor ritual gestures maintains a dynamic religious geography, which in a recursive mode ties together devotees in an anonymous ritual community, whose members share a visual language and are inclined to take seriously the desire of deities to live among humans. With a focus on minor religion, and by concentrating on the social life of a cosmos of informal shrines, the text highlights a less-studied dimension of urban religion. It draws attention to the cumulative effect of lived practices and human–material entanglements, and complements discussions that frequently engage with omnipresent politics of formalization as well as competition of communities for attention and recognition in multireligious spaces.
{"title":"Making Informal Sacred Geographies: Spiritual Presence, Sensual Engagement, and Wayside Shrines in Urban India","authors":"U. Rao","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130244","url":null,"abstract":"Inspired by recent debates in material religion, and using the example of the central Indian city of Bhopal, this article characterizes an informal Hindu religious geography that flourishes in the interstices of India’s planned urbanity. The small wayside shrines that dot Indian cities usually arise spontaneously, created by believers who discern divine manifestations and begin to worship these. Traces of ritual activities animate others to follow suit and express their devotion, thus reinforcing the sites’ sacredness. The daily repetition of myriad minor ritual gestures maintains a dynamic religious geography, which in a recursive mode ties together devotees in an anonymous ritual community, whose members share a visual language and are inclined to take seriously the desire of deities to live among humans. With a focus on minor religion, and by concentrating on the social life of a cosmos of informal shrines, the text highlights a less-studied dimension of urban religion. It draws attention to the cumulative effect of lived practices and human–material entanglements, and complements discussions that frequently engage with omnipresent politics of formalization as well as competition of communities for attention and recognition in multireligious spaces.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"192 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44868420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1177/12063312221130248
M. Burchardt
This article draws on the infrastructural turn in urban studies to explore the profane materialities that enable particular forms of urban religion. Assuming that cities are configurations of spaces, actors and materialities characterized by dominant modes of belonging, hegemonic definitions of public space, and hierarchical orderings of spatial uses, infrastructures are a central element of cities’ material bases. Based on ethnographic research in Cape Town, I develop the notion of “infrastructuring religion” as a new modality of the spatialization of religion. Practices of infrastructuring draw religious life into the profane realm of ordinary urbanism in which religious meanings run up against machines of bureaucratization, divergent investments in scarce space, and criminal economies. I argue that infrastructuring is an important addition to architecture and place-making as the hitherto dominant concepts for the analysis of urban religion.
{"title":"Infrastructuring Religion: Materiality and Meaning in Ordinary Urbanism","authors":"M. Burchardt","doi":"10.1177/12063312221130248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130248","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws on the infrastructural turn in urban studies to explore the profane materialities that enable particular forms of urban religion. Assuming that cities are configurations of spaces, actors and materialities characterized by dominant modes of belonging, hegemonic definitions of public space, and hierarchical orderings of spatial uses, infrastructures are a central element of cities’ material bases. Based on ethnographic research in Cape Town, I develop the notion of “infrastructuring religion” as a new modality of the spatialization of religion. Practices of infrastructuring draw religious life into the profane realm of ordinary urbanism in which religious meanings run up against machines of bureaucratization, divergent investments in scarce space, and criminal economies. I argue that infrastructuring is an important addition to architecture and place-making as the hitherto dominant concepts for the analysis of urban religion.","PeriodicalId":46749,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"180 - 191"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48149972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：