Religion, Violence and Cities: An Introduction

Abstract

The catalyst for this special issue was a symposium entitled Religion, Violence and Cities, held under the auspices of a five year inter-disciplinary research project on ethno-nationally divided cities.¹ While this project expressly addressed cities divided by ethno-national conflict, it was clear from the beginning that there was an important religious dimension to such conflicts in most, if not all, the cities being studied.² The rationale of the Special Issue is to examine how this religious dimension exacerbates (or moderates) urban violence within a broad comparative context. Although three of the following articles are informed by Project research, we draw the net wider to encompass a broader geographical spread from the Balkans, the Middle East, Nigeria and Japan.

Notes

1. Conflict and Cities and the Contested State: Everyday Life and the Possibilities of Transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and Other Divided Cities (2007–2013), ESRC Large Grant No. RES-060-25-0015. Principal Investigators were: Wendy Pullan (University of Cambridge), Liam O'Dowd and James Anderson (Queen's University, Belfast) and Mick Dumper (University of Exeter). The ‘Contested State’ of the title refers to states where the central political dynamic concerns the boundaries, or even the existence, of the state itself.

2. The two main cities studied were Belfast and Jerusalem while other cities researched by project personnel included Vukovar (see Baillie, 2013, this issue), Beirut, Kirkuk, Nicosia, Mostar, and Brussels.

3. Of course, urban violence is a highly differentiated phenomenon including homicide, gang violence, riots, violence arising from extreme poverty, state driven violence (including warfare), terrorism, and more organised, collective violence that is anti-state. As a category, it is highly heterogeneous, multi-causal, spatially uneven and typically episodic. Our focus here is on sustained and organised political violence (both pro- and anti-state) over the boundaries and existence of the state. This may overlap with, fuel, or be fuelled by, other forms of urban violence.

4. One of the key themes here is the changing relationships between cities and state formation and dis-integration (see, for example, Beall et al., 2013; Taylor, 2007; Therborn, 2011).

5. It is precisely this question which was at the core of the Conflict in Cities Project (see www.conflictincities.org).

6. Beck (2010, p. 26), for example, writing about religious change argues that the revitalisation of religiosity is based on the individualisation of subjective belief which is de-coupled from institutional religion which has suffered a cataclysmic decline in its power (most notably in Europe). He suggests that this individualisation of belief can lend itself to inflammatory events and spectacles (such as the burning of Koran, self-immolation) which can be instantly publicised worldwide through the new media, provoking violent conflict in what he terms the “universal neighbourhood without frontiers” (2010, p. 38).

7. One wave was associated with de-colonisation in Africa and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s and another with the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and 1990s.

8. Cavanaugh (2009), for example, argues that Muslims historically made no separation between religion and politics. Casanova (2006, p. 12) makes a similar point when he questions the Western classification of Confucianism or Taoism as a ‘religion’. He sees this as incoherent and contradictory as Confucianism lacks ecclesiastical organisation or a sense of tension with ‘this world’; in fact, in Western terms, it would appear to be ‘irreligious’ or ‘secular’ ideology.

9. According to Cavanaugh (2009) this allows the violence of secular western states to be presented as rational, peacemaking and necessary, promoting a dichotomy between ‘us’ and the religious fanatics of the Muslim world that have to be bombed into a higher rationality.

10. For examples see Juergensmeyer and Kitts (2011) and Juergensmeyer (2003)

11. Examples include: Beck (2010), Casanova (2006), Norris and Inglehart (2004) and Mouzelis (2012).

12. Here Cavanaugh (2009) is discussing how religion should be treated analytically. Of course, religious believers themselves do frequently understand religion as forms of organisation and practice that are clearly distinguishable from non-religious counterparts.

13. In an interesting discussion of how to study the complex relationship between religion and nationalism, Brubaker (2012) identifies four approaches in the literature: (1) the treating of religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena; (2) the use of religion to explain things about nationalism; (3) treating religion as part of nationalism, i.e., as interrelated or intertwined with it; and (4) the positing of a particular religious form of nationalism. He acknowledges that these approaches are not mutually exclusive; indeed they frequently overlap in this Special Issue. Interestingly, Brubaker himself makes a case in his conclusions for the integrity of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon. He pays little attention, however, to the spatial or territorial aspects of the religion-nationalism interface.

14. In Belfast this recognition and celebration is implicit rather than explicit. Nevertheless, it seems rather paradoxical given the high profile opposition to violence on the part of most religious elites and activists. However, in practice, this opposition is selective or qualified, generally distinguishing between legitimate (official) and illegitimate (unofficial) violence, and between legitimate and illegitimate forms of sacrifice and victimhood.

15. Casanova (2006, p. 7) usefully distinguishes three different connotations of secularisation: (1) the decline of religious beliefs and practices understood as a universal, human, developmental process; (2) the privatisation of religion often understood as pre-condition for modern liberal democratic politics; and (3) the differentiation of secular spheres of authority (state/politics, the economy, science) understood as emancipation from overarching religious institutions and norms. These forms of secularisation are amenable to empirical investigation and do not necessarily complement one another in any given context.