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Religious Pluralism and the City: Inquiries into Postsecular Urbanism

Publisher:
, 2018
ISBN: 9781350037700
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Religious Pluralism and the City challenges the notion that the city is a secular place, and calls for an analysis of how religion and the city are intertwined. It is the first book to analyze the explanatory value of a number of typologies already in use around this topic – from "holy city" to "secular city", from "fundamentalist" to "postsecular city". By intertwining the city and religion, urban theory and theories of religion, this is the first book to provide an international and interdisciplinary analysis of post-secular urbanism.

The book argues that, given the rise of religiously inspired violence and the increasing significance of charismatic Christianity, Islam and other spiritual traditions, the master narrative that modern societies are secular societies has lost its empirical plausibility. Instead, we are seeing the pluralization of religion, the co-existence of different religious worldviews, and the simultaneity of secular and religious institutions that shape everyday life. These particular constellations of "religious pluralism" are, above all, played out in cities.

Including contributions from Peter L. Berger and Nezar Alsayyad, this book conceptually and empirically revokes the dissolution between city and religion to unveil its intimate relationship, and offers an alternative view on the quotidian state of the global urban condition.

Using international case studies, this volume provides innovative theoretical and empirical research on the relationship and interplay between religion and the city.

Features case studies from London, Rio de Janeiro, Bangalore, Jerusalem and Berlin
Contains contributions from renowned scholars including sociologist Peter L. Berger (Boston University) and urban planner Nezar Alsayyad (UC Berkeley)
Helps readers to negotiate religious pluralism in cities, moving beyond the modernisation-secularization paradigm

List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Filling the Void? – Religious Pluralism and the City (Helmuth Berking, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany and Jochen Schwenk, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany and Silke Steets, Leipzig University, Germany)
Part One: From Secularization to Pluralization
1 Urbanity as a Vortex of Pluralism: A Personal Reflection about City and Religion (Peter L. Berger, was Professor emeritus at Boston University, USA)
Part Two: Between Fundamentalism and Postsecularism: Conceptualizing the Relations between City and Religion
2 The Death and Life of the Fundamentalist City: A Prelude to a Medieval Modernity (Nezar AlSayyad,University of Berkeley, USA)
3 Postsecularity and a New Urban Politics – Spaces, Places and Imaginaries (Christopher Baker, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
4 Religion of the City: Urban-Religious Configurations on a Global Scale (Stephan Lanz, Europa-Universita¨t Viadrina, Germany)
Part Three: Religious Pluralism: Conflicts and Negotiations in the City
5 Religious Super-Diversity and Urban Visibility in Barcelona and Turin (Marian Burchardt, Leipzig University, Germany and Irene Becci, University of Lausanne, Switzerland and Mariachiara Giorda, University of Turin, Italy)
6 Capturing Carnival: Religious Diversity and Spatial Contestation in Rio de Janeiro (Martijn Oosterbaan, Utrecht University, Germany)
7 Migration and Morality: Secular and Religious Considerations among Romanian and Bulgarian Migrants in and around London (John Eade, University of Roehampton, UK)
8 Marketplace, Fallow Ground, and Special Pastoral Care: What Christian Churches in Germany Know about the City – an Inter-denominational Comparison (Veronika Eufingerm,Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany)
Part Four: Changing Urban Imaginaries
9 Worlds within Worlds: Vernacular Pluralism, Publics of Belonging, and the Making of Modern Bangalore (Tulasi Srinivas, Emerson College, USA)
10 Jerusalem's Imaginaries in the Neo-Liberal City: Re-Visiting Visual Representations in the “Holy City” (Tovi Fenster, Tel Aviv University, Israel)
11 “The Sumerian Tempelstadt”: The Modern Making of an Ancient Urban Concept (Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
Index

This book provides a wonderful addition to the grow­ing field of urban religion, religion(s) in cities, and surely religion in the postmodern era.

A remarkably innovative theoretical intervention. This scintillating book goes beyond existing work in the burgeoning field of urban religion by focusing on religious pluralism in cities. Based on the recognition of cities' inherent pluralism, it explores how this pluralism has evolved historically, is reconfigured in our era of intensified mobility, and shapes religious life in major metropolitan centers across the world. The book magisterially unpacks new religious-secular cleavages and is highly recommended for students of social sciences, urbanism, and religion.

A timely and highly relevant book examining religious-secular dynamics in contemporary cities. By combining cutting-edge theoretical developments on space, power and religion, with rich empirical cases, the authors offer a comprehensive understanding of the nature and transformation of religious pluralism in urban contexts across the world. A must read for anyone interested in learning about the changing role of religion in times of pluralism.

Helmuth Berking, Silke Steets and Jochen Schwenk deserve kudos for publishing this wideranging, provocative and empirically engaging collection examining religious pluralism and urban life today. The contributions are diverse and smart, both in their theoretical orientations and in their approaches to different cities and religious communities. Anyone interested in a multitude of pressing contemporary sociological and political issues will find this book both intriguing and of great value.

Helmuth Berking is Professor of Sociology and Fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

Silke Steets is a Heisenberg Fellow at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy at Leipzig University, Germany.

Jochen Schwenk is Lecturer and Post-doctoral Researcher at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany.

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