Doing Religious Space in the Mediterranean City: Towards a Historical Sociology of Urban Religion

Abstract

Departing from the analysis of religious events, this chapter aims to understand historical and contemporary religious uses of public spaces in Mediterranean cities. Taking our cues from the sociology of knowledge, we develop the concept of doing religious space and use it to analyse processes of the eventisation of religion amidst broader processes of the eventisation of urban landscapes. Through the analysis of the evolution and transformation of the Barcelona religious landscape, we show that religious events are privileged sites for understanding the spatialisation of religion, the ritualisation of religion in urban space, and the enactment of governmental regulations over public religious expressions. We also argue that one of the hallmarks of doing religious space is that it always involves references to places beyond the city proper, such as the transcendent, the global, the diasporic, or the historical. Exposition: Phenomenon or process addressed, agents, media Religious uses of public spaces in Mediterranean cities Mediterranean cities have historically been described as places 'where the Orient and Occident cohabit' (Camus 1937) and recognised as sites of religious innovation and interreligious exchange. In recent years, rising levels of transnational migration and the growth and reconfiguration of new religious movements have contributed to the diversification of religious landscapes and the emergence of vibrant new forms of urban religion. Despite narratives of secularisation, streets, parks, and squares have increasingly become stages for the performance of collective religious rituals across Mediterranean cities in the last few decades. Occasions such as the Islamic procession of Ashura (Astor et al. 2018), the Jewish ritual of the lighting of the hanukkiah (Endelstein 2017), the Sikh procession of Vaisakhi, or the many and diverse Easter processions (Fernández-Mostaza and Muñoz 2018) are some of the events, among many others, that are held annually in cities throughout the Northern Mediterranean. Departing from the analysis of religious events, this chapter aims to understand historical and contemporary religious uses of public spaces in Mediterranean cities. Taking our cues from the sociology of knowledge, we develop the concept of doing religious space and use it to analyse past and present processes of the 'eventization of faith' (Pfadenhauer 2010). We suggest that religious events are privileged sites for understanding the spatialisation and ritualisation of religion and the enactment of governmental regulations over religious expressions in urban space. At the same time, we argue that the importance of events for understanding urban religion is not limited to the contemporary period. On the contrary, inspired by William Sewell's call for an eventful sociology (1999), we suggest that as elementary forms of doing religious space, events are particularly fruitful analytic lenses for a historical sociology of urban religion. Through the analysis of the evolution and transformation of the Barcelona...

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