Revisiting Urban Secularism:Critical Points, New Questions

In this piece, I revisit my work in Urban Secularism by addressing the main critical points raised by five generous critics. These concern issues about the theoretical framing of the book, its methodological design and implementation as well as points concerning the findings of the book and some aspects that would have required more attention, such as the relevance of the far-right, race and class in urban secular politics. In the last section of this piece, I take on the invitation of two of the commentators to explore new questions that arise from their reading of the book

Jewish spatial practices in Barcelona as claims for recognition

In this article, I argue that the spatial practices of the contemporary Jewish organisations in Barcelona’s medieval Jewish neighbourhood represent claims for public recognition. As a small and quite invisible minority within the diverse city population, Jewish groups increasingly claim that their presence in the city should be recognised by political authorities and ordinary citizens alike. They do so through a series of spatial practices around the medieval Jewish neighbourhood, which include (1) heritage production, (2) the renaming of streets and (3) the temporary marking of urban spaces with Jewish symbols. I have grouped these practices under the umbrella concept of ‘place-recovering strategies’ because all of them attempt to ‘recover’ the lost urban environments inhabited by their Jewish predecessors before they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By recovering I do not mean a mere passive restoring of urban spaces and places but rather a creative process in which historical narratives and myths of the past play a crucial role. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, I argue that these place-recovering strategies are part of a quest for the visibility, legitimacy and recognition of Jews

L'Acomodació de la pràctica funerària a Barcelona: diferències entre comunitats islàmiques i jueves

El respecte a la pràctica funerària és un dels aspectes que explícitament es recullen en el marc de reconeixement de les tradicions religioses minoritàries amb acord de cooperació amb l'Estat espanyol. Prenent com a punt de partida aquest marc de reconeixement comú, ens proposem indagar les diferències en la gestió i pràctica funeràries de les comunitats islàmiques i jueves a la ciutat de Barcelona. Partint d'una aproximació qualitativa, basada en entrevistes en profunditat amb els diferents actors implicats, tractarem d'explicar les similituds i diferències en els resultats i la capacitat de negociació de totes dues comunitats religioses. Seguint com a línia interpretativa la teoria de mobilització de recursos, l'article s'articula a partir de la hipòtesi següent: les diferències en els resultats i la capacitat de negociació de tots dos grups religiosos pel que fa a la gestió funerària a Barcelona es poden explicar a partir d'un factor principal, que és la capacitat organitzativa i de mobilització de recursos desigual de cadascuna.Through cooperation agreements the Spanish Government grants recognition to the different funeral rites practiced by different religious minority groups. These same agreements also recognise the right of these religious minorities to create their own denominational plots within municipal cemeteries and guarantee the observation of their funeral practices. In our article, we compare the funeral practice and management of Barcelona’s Muslim and Jewish communities. Based on a qualitative approach, and by using different arguments, including the theory of resource mobilisation, we attempt to explain the similarities and differences in the results and the negotiating capacity of both religious communities

Making religion fit:negotiating the limits of “good” and “bad” minority religious expressions in urban contexts

Throughout Europe we observe a significant trend of increasing state intervention in the governance of religious practices and expressions. A growing number of policies and procedures seek to define and regulate how religion can, and cannot, be expressed in the public domain. In this article we explore how ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion are translated into policies in urban contexts. We disentangle the social imaginaries that underlie the symbolic boundaries that distinguish between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ expressions of religiosity, and the repertoires of justification used to enforce them. Drawing on empirical research in cities in France and Spain, we argue that public expressions of religion are more likely to be deemed ‘acceptable’ in public as long as they meet a series of criteria, namely being perceived as: a) aesthetic and festive, rather than outrageous, b) discrete/decent/decorous rather than interpellating and, more importantly, c) exceptional rather than ordinary, d) freely chosen rather than imposed, e) cultural rather than pious, f) being legible with existing reference frameworks and categories rather than unintelligible. In other words, religious expressions are accepted, and considered to be acceptable, if they ‘fit’ or can be made ‘fit’ certain social expectations

Introduction:The Sites, Materialities and Practices of Interreligious Encounters in Europe

This introduction asks about the multiple forms, power effects, fragility and contested nature of interreligious encounters in Europe from various social science perspectives. With ‘interreligious dialogue’ initiatives being promoted in many societies, research on the topic has expanded. Attention has been devoted to dialogue as a tool to promote social cohesion and integration in societies marked by migration-driven religious diversity. However, research on the intertwined effects of the sites, materialities and practices of ‘the interreligious’ is scarce, especially with regard to the production and contentious transformation of identities, mechanisms of belonging and power relations in local contexts. To address this gap, the contributions to Interreligious Encounters in Europe: Sites, Materialities and Practices focus on the situated articulations of interreligious encounters and dialogues by examining how different encounters are framed, expressed and practised. Drawing on 9 empirical case studies from various countries, the contributions (a) shed light on the subjectivities, relations and modes of behaviour produced, negotiated and contested in and through locally embedded interreligious encounters and dialogue-oriented practices; (b) observe the power dynamics that shape those practices and encounters; and (c) discuss their implications for the place(s) of religion in the public sphere. The volume provides insights into the commonalities and specificities of interreligious encounters, politics and practices across different settings

Afterword

As an afterword to the volume Interreligious Encounters in Europe: Sites, Materialities and Practices,this chapter highlights two main take-away messages from the contributions of the book: the productivity of interreligious encounters, and the power relations and power effects of the practices and politics of interreligious encounters and dialogues. The practices and politics of interreligious encounters and dialogues often display both hopeful movements towards overcoming differences and exclusion and a (re-)production of power inequalities. The afterword reflects on these tensions and identifies paths for future research

Why do some cities adopt more diversity policies than others?:A study in France and Germany

An increasing sociocultural heterogeneity of populations and vocal demands for the recognition of diversity have become common features of, in particular, cities in Western Europe. Do cities reshape policies in response to such developments? And to what extent do they implement policies that accommodate difference? We use data from an original survey of urban policy actors in the twenty largest cities of France and Germany to identify city-level diversity policy instruments. In both countries, such instruments are widespread, contradicting assumptions of dominant assimilationist paradigms. And yet, the degree of adoption across cities varies. Drawing on institutionalist theory, we investigate what might explain differing adoption rates. The main finding is that key determinants at the urban level differ between the two countries. In France, the political constellation is crucial; higher numbers of diversity policies are associated with centre-left dominance. In contrast, in German cities, political consensus around diversity policies seems to prevail and higher adoption rates are associated with higher population diversity. Our findings provide a first wide-ranging account of the adoption of diversity policy instruments in European cities. They demonstrate that such policies exist at a relevant scale. They further help explain why the adoption of diversity policy instruments is uneven

The Accommodation of religious diversity in prisons and hospitals in Spain

The religious sphere in Spain is changing substantially, becoming simultaneously more diverse and more secular. However, empirical research on the processes of adaptation and response of public institutions to the new religious environment is still very scarce. This paper analyses the ways in which public institutions respond to transformations in the religious sphere, and how the Catholic legacy is negotiated within such contexts. By combining a legal and policy perspective with an ethnographic approach to everyday practices within hospitals and prisons in two Spanish regions, we shed light on the institution-specific and the contextual factors that condition the de-confessionalization and the accommodation of religious diversity in Spanish institutions. The findings show some internal incoherence in the implementation of legal-political measures and in the attitude of the Catholic Church