Abstract
I must state at the beginning of this review that this was one of the most interesting books I have read in recent years. This edited volume, Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces, deals with some of the most important issues in the fields of sociology of religion, anthropology of religion and urban sociology. Religious groups, religious minorities, modernity, secularization, Islam in Western societies, social exclusion, religion in public space and others are subjects included in this volume. The three editors – Irene Becci, assistant professor at the University of Lausanne; Marian Burchardt, research fellow at the Max Plank Institute; and José Casanova, professor of sociology at Georgetown University – have managed to include all the aforementioned topics in this well-structured book and reach some interesting conclusions. The book consists of an introduction and three parts, which include 11 chapters. The chapters are written by a fruitful combination of senior and younger scholars from various backgrounds: from cultural geography (Murat Es) to anthropology (Peter van der Veer), and from ethnography (Synnove Bendixsen) to sociology of religion (José Casanova). All the contributors present their current work, either completed or in process, in a very informative way.
As stated in the authors’ acknowledgements, the book is a product of a series of reflections carried out among the editors and authors over the last few years (p. vii). Maybe it is because of these thorough discussions prior to publication that the book is so well-organized, covering all the major themes on the subject. Even though many have argued that secularization is a linear process and that religion would face extinction in the 21st century, current evidence from around the world shows, if not the opposite, that at least this is not the case. People are migrating in great numbers, especially in Western societies and in large cities. Europe and the United States are receiving great numbers of Muslim immigrants who face many problems, from social exclusion to racist attacks. Although, in some cases, religion is visible in public space, in other cases it is invisible. In that sense, the book addresses major issues in contemporary societies throughout the world. As should be obvious, the construction of large cities did not minimize the presence of religion. Rather, it changed its character and led to other forms of religious practice. To mention an example from my own sociological experience, it would be impossible for someone in the late 1980s to imagine that so many Muslims would live in Athens, Greece, a dominant Orthodox Christian city at that time, and that a debate about the construction of an Islamic mosque in Athens would cause serious conflicts among political parties, extremist neo-Nazi groups and the Muslim community.
As Irene Becci and Marian Burchardt write in their introduction, one aim of this volume was to subject the religious and cultural dynamics of megacities of the regions being examined to cross-cultural comparison, as well as to interrogate the conceptual space opened up by modernist theories of religion and the new prominence of urbanity as a site of social change (p. 2). With that in mind, I would agree with their intuition that urban and religious change can be addressed comprehensively if it is linked to the social and political controversies over secularization and secularism that are currently the subject of intense international scholarly debate (p. 2).
The chapters of the volume provide the reader with thorough analyses on a variety of issues regarding religion in urban public spaces. As a consequence, we read about Alevis in Turkey (Murat Es), Somalis in Johannesburg (Samadia Sadouni), urban aspirations in Mumbai and Singapore (Peter van der Veer), Zoroastrians in Mumbai (Leilah Vevaina), Falun Gong in New York (Weishan Huang), Muslim youth in Berlin (Synnove Bendixsen), religious involvement in a postsocialist urban space in Berlin (Irene Becci), Muslim–Hindu demarcation and crossings in Delhi (Ajay Gandhi), Pentecostalism in Nigeria (Godwin Onuoba) and religious vitality in Cape Town (Marian Burchardt), as well as a more general chapter about religion in contemporary global cities with a special focus on a comparison of Canada and Brazil (José Casanova).
All the chapters are well-grounded and based primarily on first-hand research conducted by the authors. It is not easy to critically analyze all of them in this review. However, what I want to emphasize is the common ground that I think exists beneath almost all of the chapters. The main outcomes could be summarized as follows. Religion is still present in urban spaces, even in huge cities such as New York, Mumbai, or Delhi, in various forms, explicitly or implicitly. Secularization is not an evolutionary and linear process that leads necessarily to the extinction of religious faith. Of course, in today’s modern cities religious pluralism is the rule and dominant religions interact dialectically with religious minority groups and with secular forces within the same social environment.
As Es argues in his chapter, it should not be taken for granted that a rural community, like the Alevis, ‘melts’ in the face of modernization or simply ‘becomes modern’ by leaving its traditional baggage behind. What actually happens is a process through which shifting categories of religion and secularism, and modernity and tradition are constantly negotiated by Alevi communities in their urban struggles (‘Alevis in Cemevis: Religion and secularism in Turkey’, p. 39). In that sense, religious identities are not deconstructed and/or eliminated, but reshaped within the city frame. Sadouni (‘Somalis in Johannesburg’, p. 57) also argues that the case of Somalis shows how local histories of Somali migrations, the urban context and transnational identities intersect. According to these views, the city is not a secular place and this is supported by other authors as well. Van der Veer (‘Urban aspirations in Mumbai and Singapore’, pp. 70–71) contends that even though Mumbai and Singapore are often imagined as secular cities, it is striking how in both cases political designs are inspired by notions of religion and civilization that originated in the imperial encounter. In both cases, the religious imaginings of majoritarian belonging are crucial to the formation of multiple forms of secularity and secularism. This is extended in an interesting manner by Bendixsen, who argues that in Berlin it is possible to choose in which of the variety of religious spaces one wants to participate (‘Powers of a religious youth organization in Berlin’, p. 110). Becci comes to a similar conclusion (‘Religious involvements in Berlin’, p. 164). She argues that a Baptist congregation’s involvement in a Berlin urban space shows that there can be different ways for a religious community to relate to a secular urban environment. It is clear that all the authors share some common ideas about contemporary global cities. These are seen as topographies of faith, not as secular places. Of course, we should not neglect the fact that atheism and non-belief also exist in urban spaces – in some cases following a very active way of living and communicating their ideas.
Topographies of Faith offers a unique and compelling analysis of contemporary religious dynamics in global cities and it draws creatively on perspectives from urban studies to study the spatiality of religion in modern cities. It is certain that the book does not cover the whole field. For example, it would be interesting to read about case studies from England, France, Scandinavia and southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Portugal, or Greece), to mention but a few. I realize that it is not possible to include every form of urban religiosity in a single volume, but I mention it for a possible second book. Furthermore, I would have liked to have had some biographical information on the authors included in the book rather than having to search for information on their backgrounds on the Internet. However, I think that the book gives the reader the opportunity to learn about an interesting topic of research, read some illuminating studies undertaken in recent years, and make him or her reflect about issues such as globalization, secularization and migration. It will help everyone interested in the sociology and anthropology of religion to ask important questions – and organize their own work – using the ideas and analyses included in this volume.