Workshop 68
Sacralising Urban Space
Convenors:
Nicholas Harney,
University of Western Australia
Karsten
Pærregaard, University of Copenhagen
karsten.paerregaard@anthro.ku.dk
Pnina Werbner,
University of Keele
This session examines the
processes, politics and practices
associated with sacralising
urban space in plural cities. The
term plural city conjures
up an urban imaginary of immigrant
quarters and ethnic
enclaves. The visibility of ethnic restaurants,
commercial strips and
vernacular architecture provides material
grist for exoticising
processes in contemporary cities and evidence
for multicultural advocates
of the benefits of diversity for the
consumer desires of an
urban bourgeoisie and the enhanced
economic strength of the
city. These structures also calibrate
degrees of exclusion and
inclusion by their spatial arrangements
within the urban terrain.
Another form of visibility either in its
periodic form exhibited by
processions linked to religious calendars
or its monumentalising form
in the foundation of sacred places of
worship intensifies these
reactions to and processes associated
with difference in the
urban landscape. How do we consider the
scared city ˆ Catholic
and Pentecostal religious processions, Sufi
cult practices, and scared
rites of passage? The liberal modernist
desire for orderly, secular
and homogenized urban landscapes
is disrupted by the
dramatic presence and lived practices of
migrants enmeshed in
transnational practices and the sacred
arena of the diasporic
public sphere. By performing in and
acting on urban space
migrant sacralising practices subvert the
singular modernist
narrative and force researchers to consider
the translocal and
diasporic imaginary that animate these
sacred activities. What
effect do the specific features of urban
space have on collective
practices of religiosity? What are the
processes involved in
making urban space sacred? How does the
sacralising of urban space
intersect with other processes such as
racialisation,
commodification and aestheticisation? How might
we consider the influence
of diasporic connections, debates and
imaginaries on the
sacralising of urban space?
Church, Mosque and
Nation in Scout Participation in Urban
Religious Processions in
the Israeli-Occupied Territories
Glenn Bowman, University of
Kent
Matonge Fresco or the
Ethics of the Public Display in an African
Neighbourhood of
Brussels
Adina Ionescu-Muscel, Free
University of Brussels
Sacralising Hotels:
Religious Encounters in Tenerife, Spain
Eva Evers Rosander,
University of Uppsala
Good Friday, Good
Espresso and the Inscription of Urban Space
by Italians in Toronto
Nicholas Harney, University
of Western Australia