Full Description
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.
Contents
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
