Three dimensions of religious place making in diaspora

Abstract

In this article, we explore comparatively how migrant minorities draw from their religious resources to carve out spaces of livelihood in three global cities – Kuala Lumpur, which includes Kajang, Johannesburg and London. We also examine the spatial regimes through which the state and its apparatuses seek to manage the migrants' presence and visibility or invisibility within these urban spaces. In particular, we focus on three of the most salient dimensions of migrants' religious place making – embodied performance, the spatial management of difference and belonging, and multiple embedding across networked spaces. Although these three dimensions intersect in dynamic, often tensile ways to constitute the fabric of the life world of migrant minorities, we separate them for heuristic purposes to highlight the richness and texture of religious place making.

Migraciones y comunicación intercultural: una mirada interdisciplinar

“…Siguiendo a autores como Vázquez y Knott (2014) o , Gianluca Gaias complejiza la mirada simple y estereotipada que existe en Occidente con respecto a las migraciones africanas atendiendo a cómo la comunidad de los mouride senegaleses de Touba construye territorio en la diáspora a través de las redes sociales. Además, estos no lo hacen en wolof, la lengua nativa de este colectivo, sino en italiano, como muestra de apertura ante la sociedad sarda y para las nuevas generaciones nacidas en Italia producto de la migración.…”

Iconic Religion in Urban Space

“…An application for planning to extend or change the function of a building or to hold a public procession constitutes just such a claim (Kong 2005). The first signals a group's commitment to religious place-making, and its intention to grow and put down roots (Vásquez and Knott 2014); the second, to reproduce cultural traditions in a new location, to draw the public gaze and invite questions (Garbin 2012). In contemporary secular societies, religious claims, by their very nature, are contested.…”

Inventing Sacred Places: Wooden Sculptures and Placemaking of Contemporary Landscape

“…This paper examines wooden sculptures -energy pillars, which have been created since the 1990s and are consecrated with an initiation rite as places of special power. The most wellknown examples include the large wooden pillar in Otepää, southern Estonia, and the one in the Tuhala karst area near Tallinn. Materiality and placemaking have been examined in anthropology, folkloristics, and in religion studies for approximately thirty years (Mazumdar & Mazumdar 2006;Orsi 1999;Vásquez & Knott 2014;Sofield et al 2017). Sofield remarks that placemaking as a result of a community-led organic process invents emic, organic, folkloric, and community-driven initiatives that differ markedly from the formal 'industry' of place-making.…”