Global Prayers. Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City. Book Excerpt by Global Prayers

Lars MĂźller Publishers

Edited by Jochen Becker, Katrin Klingan, Stephan Lanz, Kathrin Wildner

GLOBAL PRAYERS Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City

GLOBAL PRAYERS

Urban studies as well as artistic productions have long viewed religion and urbanity as mutually exclusive. Global Prayers, in contrast, puts the case for just such UHFLSURFDO LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHV 7KH SXEOLFDWLRQ LV EDVHG RQ WKH ZRUN of an international network of researchers as well as artists, focusing on diverse urban assemblages and religious FRPPXQLWLHV 7KH FRQWULEXWLRQV UHFRUG WKHLU PRYHPHQWV and critically engage with them. 7KH UHVHDUFK DQG FXOWXUDO SURMHFW Global Prayers examines questions of redemption and liberation in the cities of the world. New religious practices permeate public spaces and the cultural scenes of these metropolises. Religious communities inscribe themselves into urban life acoustically, W\SRJUDSKLFDOO\ DQG DUFKLWHFWXUDOO\ 7KH\ JHQHUDWH WKHLU own aesthetics and forms of consumption. metroZones 13

Becker | Klingan | Lanz | Wildner (Eds.)

Lars MĂźller Publishers

GLOBAL PRAYERS Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City

metroZones 13 Edited by Jochen Becker, Katrin Klingan, Stephan Lanz, Kathrin Wildner A book by metroZones, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Europa-Universit채t Viadrina Lars M체ller Publishers

Forms of Knowledge Production An Introduction BERND M. SCHERER, DIRECTOR OF THE HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT

Anyone entering the foyer of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) at the end of February

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TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY COLIN SHEPHERD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

198

AYĹ&#x17E;E Ă&#x2021;AVDAR

Negotiation as a Research Methodology 5

BERND M. SCHERER

Forms of Knowledge Production. An Introduction 12

216

Editorial Notes 226

STEPHAN LANZ

Assembling Global Prayers in the City: An Attempt to Repopulate Urban Theory with Religion 48

WERNER SCHIFFAUER

Global Prayers, Migration, Post-migration 64

244

258

274

KATRIN KLINGAN AND JOHANNES ISMAIEL-WENDT

5 XLQV DQG &RQVWUXFWLRQ &UXFLÂż[HV DQG )ODJV 7KH 3ROLWLFDO 6HFWDULDQ 6SDWLDOLW\ of a Frontier in Beirut DAVID GARBIN

GERDA HECK

Worshiping at the Golden Age Hotel: Transnational Networks, Economy, Religion, and Migration of the Congolese in Istanbul

Dramaturgies of Spatial and Temporal Interferenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or, How to Curate a Forum for the Global Prayers Research Project 92

HIBA BOU AKAR

Global Prayers in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Global Citiesâ&#x20AC;?: Notes on Afro-Christian Spatiality in Atlanta and London

KATHRIN WILDNER

On Research with Global Prayers

JOSEPH RUSTOM

Multi-Religious Societies and the Right to the City: The Case of the Mosque of al-Khandaq al-Ghamiq in Beirut

EDITORIAL ESSAYS 16

HIDAYET TUKSAL IN CONVERSATION WITH CANDAN YILDIZ

Religious Women in Istanbul

JOCHEN BECKER

VISUAL ESSAYS 1

Stripped Religion Industries: Nigerian Perspectives on Las Vegas, and Back Again

292

PAOLA YACOUB, SURABHI SHARMA, SEVGI ORTAĂ&#x2021;, KATJA REICHARD, CHRISTIAN HANUSSEK, MAGDALENA KALLENBERGER / DOROTHEA NOLD

Global Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Posters 122

SABINE BITTER AND HELMUT WEBER

300

Lagos Strip

CLUSTERS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is no answer to any of these thingsâ&#x20AC;?: Religious Street Politics in Tehran 1978ff. 314

DECONSTRUCTING THE FUNDAMENTALIST CITY? 144

NEZAR ALSAYYAD

HENGAMEH GOLESTAN AND SANDRA SCHĂ&#x201E;FER

FILIP DE BOECK

Cemetery State 322

PAOLA YACOUB

How to Fabricate Heroes?

The Arab â&#x20AC;&#x153;Springâ&#x20AC;? and the Rise of the Fundamentalist City 328

JOSEPH RUSTOM

156

ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE

5 HOLJLRXVO\ 8UEDQ DQG )DLWK LQ WKH &LW\ 5HĂ&#x20AC;HFWLRQV RQ WKH 0RYHPHQWV of the Youth in Central Africa and Southeast Asia

164

WERNER SCHIFFAUER

STAGING STREET POLITICS

Secular Resistance and First Post-Secular Steps: How Berlin Deals with Global Prayers

338

178

ARYO DANUSIRI

Performing Crowds: The Circulative Urban Forms of the Tariqa Alawiya Youth Movement in Contemporary Indonesia

ASONZEH UKAH

Redeeming Urban Spaces: The Ambivalence of Building a Pentecostal City in Lagos, Nigeria

7Ĺ&#x2026;ÂśLID

352

BRIAN LARKIN

Techniques of Inattention: The Mediality of Loudspeakers in Nigeria

368

ADĂ&#x2030; BANTU IN CONVERSATION WITH SABRINA DITTUS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When you are in an environment like Lagos, you need a connection to something higher, to make meaning out of all the madness around you.â&#x20AC;? 376

392

558

Observing Religion, Performing Politics: The Chhath Puja and the Ganpati Mahotsav in Mumbai

566

ANNE HUFFSCHMID

574

ALEXA FĂ&#x201E;RBER

Unfold = Negotiate, Localize, and Assemble. How Urban Studies &DQ ([DPLQH 5HOLJLRQ

582

REGINA BITTNER

VISUAL ESSAYS 2 CAMILO JOSĂ&#x2030; VERGARA

Cities Between Heaven and Hell 590

SURABHI SHARMA

Mass-Produced Faith 438

BIRGIT MEYER

Lessons From â&#x20AC;&#x153;Global Prayersâ&#x20AC;?: How Religion Takes Place in the City

DAVID SPERO

Churches: A Photographic Record of Secular Buildings Converted into Places of Worship in the Greater London Area 430

YASMEEN ARIF

The Pious City: Comments on the Unusual Urban

The Vision God Gave the Pastor 420

FILIP DE BOECK

Global Prayers: How the Academy and the Arts Circumambulate the City

GEORGE JOSE TALKS TO STEPHAN LANZ, KATHRIN WILDNER, AND JOCHEN BECKER

From Padre Mugica to Santa Muerte? Liberation Spirits and Religious Mutations in Urban Space in Latin America

410

COMMENTARIES

ATLAS 602

RONALD DĂ&#x153;KER AND STEFANIE PETER

Atlanta, Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, Istanbul, Jakarta, Kinshasa, Lagos, 0H[LFR &LW\ 0XPEDL 5LR GH -DQHLUR 7HKUDQ

609

INCLUDING A VISUAL ESSAY:

AERNOUT MIK

Speaking in Tongues: Crowds, Assistants, and Miracles

STEPHAN LANZ

Religiously Urban

POPULAR CULTURES OF CONVERSION 448

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN

Religion, Popular Culture, and the City: Pentecostalism, Carnival and Carioca Funk in Rio de Janeiro

464

2Q Âł6SHDNLQJ LQ 7RQJXHVÂ´ ([SHULHQFHV RI 5HVHDUFKLQJ 5HOLJLRXV 3UDFWLFHV

AERNOUT MIK AND MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN IN CONVERSATION WITH JOCHEN BECKER

480

FERDINAND MBECHA

5HEUDQGLQJ )DPLOLDU ,PDJHV ,QWHUWH[WXDOLW\ LQ &KULVWLDQ 1ROO\ZRRG

494

AMANDA S. A. DIAS

%H\RQG WKH &LW\ 8UEDQ ([SHULHQFHV RI 0XVOLP &DULRFDV

514

Ă&#x2013;ZGE AKTAĹ&#x17E; AND EDA Ă&#x153;NLĂ&#x153;-YĂ&#x153;CESĂ&#x2013;Y

The Renegotiation of Boundaries between Islam and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Modernâ&#x20AC;?: Perceptions of Religious Women in Istanbul 528

THOMAS BURKHALTER

Christian Hymns and Noises in Beirut 542

JOHANNES ISMAIEL-WENDT

Gheee-Zuss: The Sonic Materialities of Belief

APPENDIX 644

The Editors

645

The Contributors

652

Image Credits

655

Acknowledgments

656

Colophon

Editorial Notes JOCHEN BECKER, KATRIN KLINGAN, STEPHAN LANZ, KATHRIN WILDNER

This book explores Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City from a trans-

Global Prayers, create cross-references between individual studies, and clarify the epistemic

disciplinary urban studies perspective, focusing on the interactions and interrelations

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between the urban sphere and those religious movements that have grown to become

These clusters and formats are supplemented by an essayistic atlas that presents all the cities

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researched, highlighting characteristic patterns in the way the urban and the religious are

approaches of research and representation that inform the project Global Prayers: Redemp-

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The multi-perspective introductions, visual essays, commentaries following the thematic

disciplines (social and cultural sciences, ethnography, geography, religious studies, archi-

chapters, and the essayistic atlas, all aim to create connections between the narrations of

tecture, and sound studies) that are transgressed here, but also those between the sciences

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The book, structured to form several layers, contains theoretical, empirical, and essayistic texts, several interviews, and visual essays of different lengths and in various â&#x20AC;&#x153;languagesâ&#x20AC;?:

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Introductory theoretical and conceptual texts by the editorial and supervisory team of

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positioned within urban theory? What concepts guide its methodological transdisciplinari-

cussing the complexity of ways in which the city and religion, urbanity and religiosity, are

Global Prayers RXWOLQH WKH ÂżHOG RI UHVHDUFK IURP YDULRXV SHUVSHFWLYHV KRZ LV WKH ERRN

seeks to create a conceptual, methodological, and empirical basis for recording and dis-

ty? What artistic and curatorial strategies are applied? What institutional settings charac-

LQWHUWZLQHG DW WKH SUHVHQW GD\ ZLWKRXW UHFRXUVH WR VLPSOLVWLF FRQFHSWV DQG GLVFRXUVHV

terize the Global Prayers laboratory?

The complex structure of the book and the diverse formats of the contributions to it, thus,

chapters: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Deconstructing the Fundamentalist City?,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Staging Street Politics,â&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;PopXODU &XOWXUHV RI &RQYHUVLRQ Â´ 'XO\ WDNLQJ LQWR DFFRXQW WKH GLIIHULQJ VFDOHV RI SURGXFWLRQ RI

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shows how, at a global level, any distinct boundaries between the secular and the sacred

the urban in Lagos, Kinshasa, Istanbul, Beirut, Mumbai, Jakarta, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico

that were once established in the modern city are now becoming increasingly unstable,

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City, Buenos Aires, Atlanta, Amsterdam, and Berlin, and on the routes between these cities,

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the case studies consistently examine the question both of an urban religion in the making

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DQG ZKHUH LW HQGV

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research projects of Global Prayers.

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6HWWLQJ RXW IURP YDULRXV ÂżHOGV RI NQRZOHGJHÂ˛XUEDQ WKHRU\ UHOLJLRXV VWXGLHV DQG SRVW

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JULY 2013 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY TIM JONES

Editorial Essays

Assembling Global Prayers in the City: An Attempt to Repopulate Urban Theory with Religion STEPHAN LANZ

For decades, urban theoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prevailing point of reference was the patterns of development in â&#x20AC;&#x153;a few wealthy citiesâ&#x20AC;? (Robinson 2006: 167) in North America and Western Europe. As a way of distancing itself from this approach, Space//Troubles (Becker and Lanz 2003), the

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K\SRWKHVHV DQG WKHRULHV QRW RQO\ SURYLGLQJ DQ DQDO\WLFDO EDVLV IRU PHWUR=RQHV EXW DOVR

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research design of Global Prayers: Redemption and Liberation in the City. 2XU ÂżQGLQJV DUH QRZ SUHVHQWHG LQ WKLV ERRN WKH WKLUWHHQWK YROXPH RI WKH PHWUR=RQHV VHULHV DQG KHUH

I would like to offer an overview and discuss the basic assumptions, theoretical positions, research strategies, and results so far. PROGRAMMATIC BASIS OF THE METROZONES SERIES

$V ZH QRWHG LQ WKH PHWUR=RQHV VHULHV IRXQGLQJ ZRUNVKRS DQG WKH ÂżUVW YROXPHÂśV LQWURGXFtion (see Lanz 2003), urban developments in the cities in the Global South cannot be analyzed separately from those in the Global North, and vice versa. This has been the case, at the latest, since the age of colonization when European city planning was forcibly globalL]HG DV UDFLVW XUEDQ VWUXFWXUHV DQG WKH JURZLQJ Ă&#x20AC;RZV RI SHRSOH FDSLWDO JRRGV DQG FXOWXUDO practices were linked in the cities of the colonizers and the colonized around the world. For example, informal urban economies and the production of space or division of urban social spaces in â&#x20AC;&#x153;feudal-like islands of governanceâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 23), where each is subject to

WKHLU RZQ UXOHV RU DIÂżOLDWLRQV DUH QRW D VSHFLDO SKHQRPHQRQ LQ WKH DOOHJHGO\ FKDRWLF FLWLHV of the South. Instead, these can be found as characteristic features in the present forms of 16

urbanization on a global level. For this reason, cities in the Global North and South are not incommensurable, but need to be regarded as â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;neighborsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in a single metropolitan spaceâ&#x20AC;?

this process? Which rationalities, imaginations, and aspirations form the basis of this process? And what is the framework of power relations around it? Finally, what urban con-

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ON RELIGIONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ALLEGED DISAPPEARANCE IN WESTERN INDUSTRIAL CITIES

6HFRQG ZH SRVLWHG WKDW XUEDQ VRFLHWLHV LQ WKH *OREDO 6RXWK FDQQRW EH GHÂżQHG DV LQ PDLQ-

to the Global North. Rather, they follow independent paths to modernization, which do

$V ZH FRQWLQXHG ZLWK WKH PHWUR=RQHVÂś UHVHDUFK DQG SXEOLFDWLRQ SURMHFWV RQ WKH EDVLV RI

not culminate in some catch-up sense with the model of a Western or even European city.

these analytical assumptions and strategic maneuvers, we found â&#x20AC;&#x153;religionâ&#x20AC;? emerging as a

Traditionally, urban studies analysis, based on modernization theories, focuses on issues

RI JRYHUQDQFH DQG LQIUDVWUXFWXUH GHÂżFLWV SRYHUW\ DQG YLROHQW FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFW WKH G\QDPLFV RI rapid urbanization and environmental problems. Such a focus, though, constructs cities

priority topic in the focus of our urban analyses. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Religionâ&#x20AC;? was increasingly evident in a

YDULHW\ RI FRQVWHOODWLRQV DQG D UHFXUULQJ WKHPH DFURVV WKH PRVW GLYHUVH FLWLHVÂ˛LQ WKH ÂżUVW

PHWUR=RQHV VWXGLHV IRU H[DPSOH DV XUEDQ IRUPV RI JRYHUQDQFH LQ 0XPEDL LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHG E\

RI WKH 6RXWK DV WKH GHÂżFLHQW Âł2WKHUÂ´ WR WKH QRUPDOLW\ RI :HVWHUQ FLWLHV ZKLFK E\ GHÂżQL-

Hindu nationalists (Eckert 2003), the boom in revivalist churches in the favelas of Rio de Ja-

tion, is deemed to be a worthy goal. In particular, the normative transfer of Western con-

neiro (Martins 2004), multi-faceted urban Islamism in Istanbul (cf. Tugal 2005), and â&#x20AC;&#x153;street

ceptsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;development, modernity, state, civil societyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to African cities results in an image of

politicsâ&#x20AC;? in the wake of the Iranian Revolution in Tehran (Bayat 2006). With critical urban

an irrational urban Africa falling back from colonial modernity into pre-colonial barbarism

studies largely concentrating on the political and economic logics of urbanization in cities

(Mbembe and Nutall 2004). However, as overlapping â&#x20AC;&#x153;palimpsests of colonization, de- re-

in the North, such processes had hardly been considered at that time. Where critical urban

and neo-colonizationâ&#x20AC;? (De Boeck 2002: 244), these cities are pursuing their own paths of

studies did deal with religion, it was usually discussed as the practice of supposedly back-

modernization where seemingly contrary rationalities between â&#x20AC;&#x153;modernityâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;traditionâ&#x20AC;?

ward migrants or the urban poor and located within a conceptually contained urban space,

are interlinked in many diverse ways. Hence, in principle, we fully subscribe to Ananya

WUHDWHG DV DQRWKHU PDUJLQDO IRRWQRWH WR XUEDQ SURFHVVHV RU FRQVLGHUHG DV D VSHFLÂżF IHDWXUH

Royâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2009: 828) later apodictic statement that â&#x20AC;&#x153;[t]he study of the 21st century metropolis

of â&#x20AC;&#x153;sacredâ&#x20AC;? or â&#x20AC;&#x153;fundamentalistâ&#x20AC;? cities.

is inevitably a study of modernity.â&#x20AC;?

At that time, though, to a certain extent in the wake of Western critical urban studies and

7KH PHWUR=RQHV VHULHV DGRSWHG WKLUG WKH VWUDWHJLF PDQHXYHU RI VKLIWLQJ WKH PDLQstream perspective to enable us to adequately record present global forms of modernization, describe them, and learn to understand them. The objective was to avoid taking the

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hardly noticed by it, various scholars interested in the agency of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;urban subaltern in the global Southâ&#x20AC;? (Bayat 2000) had already highlighted the growing importance of religion in the context of everyday urban practices in Middle Eastern cities such as Tehran or Cairo (Bayat 1997), in diverse African cities (Simone 1994, 2001) or in (Latin) American metropolises such

ity. Rather, our urban analyses looked back to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Northâ&#x20AC;? from the incomparably more

as New York or Rio de Janeiro (Orsi 1999a; Birman 2003). Nonetheless, it was a paper by

dynamic urban realities discursively bound to the Global South and which determine

Mike Davis tellingly entitled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Planet of Slumsâ&#x20AC;? (2004) which brought the growing importance

the conditions of the majority of the global population. As a â&#x20AC;&#x153;tactical maneuverâ&#x20AC;? (Sim-

of new religious movements in the cities of the Global South to the attention of urban studies,

one 2010: 279), this shift in perspective does not, of course, equate with assuming that

though his focus was less on them as religious, than as political and social actors. Given the

the urbanism of the global South exists in some ontological sense. The valid comparison

traditional assumptions in urban theory, Davisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dramatic hypothesis of God dying in the cit-

here is far closer to AbdouMaliq Simoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s notion of â&#x20AC;&#x153;black urbanismâ&#x20AC;? understood as

ies of the industrial revolution and only then resurrecting in the post-industrial cities of devel-

an â&#x20AC;&#x153;inventive methodologyâ&#x20AC;? aimed at bringing â&#x20AC;&#x153;certain dimensions of urban life from

oping countries (ibid.: 30) seemed quite cogent, as did his notion of religious groups replacing

the periphery into a clearer view.â&#x20AC;? Here, too, rather than arguing that blackness consti-

left-wing movements in the global slums. However, Davisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s apocalyptic approach posited a

tutes â&#x20AC;&#x153;a particular kind of urbanism,â&#x20AC;? the central dimension in this conceptual approach

problematic causal link between the observed urban manifestations of the religious and the

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amongst different cities and urban experiences that otherwise would have no readily available means of conceptualization,â&#x20AC;? (ibid.). Not only are South and North just as little

politico-economic transformations of the cities of the South in the wake of global neoliberalism, thus associating such manifestations with the urban poorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideological seduction. Hence,

XOWLPDWHO\ KH VWLJPDWL]HG WKHP DV PDQLSXODWHG YLFWLPV LQ WKH VSLULW RI WKH YXOJDU 0DU[LVW GHÂż-

essentialist categories as â&#x20AC;&#x153;blackness,â&#x20AC;? but neither should be principally understood as

nition of religion as opium for the people.

geographical. Instead, following Stuart Hallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1992) notion of â&#x20AC;&#x153;the West and the rest,â&#x20AC;?

However, the history of early industrial cities shows that even the radical phase of modern-

they should be regarded as mutually conditioning relational elements in one single discourse formation. Hence, starting from everyday urban life beyond the model of the

(XURSHDQ FLW\ PHWUR=RQHV VHW RXW WR LQYHVWLJDWH WKH IROORZLQJ TXHVWLRQV LQ UHODWLRQ WR

ization fueled by industrialization where, according to Davis, God had â&#x20AC;&#x153;died,â&#x20AC;? was charac-

WHUL]HG E\ D UHOLJLRXV G\QDPLF ZKRVH HIIHFWV VWLOO KDYH DQ LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFH WRGD\ 7KH HDUO\ LQGXVtrial cities in the United States and Britain, particularly, served as laboratories for religious

individual concrete urban settings: how is the city (re-)produced â&#x20AC;&#x153;on the groundâ&#x20AC;? in a

innovations of all possible political, cultural, and social nuances certainly comparable to

continuous process? What are the forces, practices, materials, and actors interacting in

those nowadays. For example, middle-class fears in the rapidly growing migrant United

States cities in the nineteenth century generated the reactionary â&#x20AC;&#x153;charity movement,â&#x20AC;?

has necessitated, encouraged, or simply made possible a tremendous explosion of religious

which set out to discipline the supposedly dangerous proletarian masses through the power

innovation and experimentationâ&#x20AC;? (Orsi 1999b: 45). In a certain sense, this development

of religion. On the other hand, religious idealists became involved in the progressive â&#x20AC;&#x153;social

seems to be repeated in the major change from the industrial to post-industrial city starting

gospelâ&#x20AC;? movement, active in calling for structural improvements in the catastrophic condi-

from the last third of the twentieth century (see Beaumont and Baker 2011a).

tions in the overcrowded working-class districts. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;black churches,â&#x20AC;? in turn, developed into a location for religiously motivated political activism in the struggle against the racist

BLIND SPOTS IN URBAN THEORY

exclusion of Afro-American communities from public spaces (Brooks-Higginbotham 1993).

Urban theory, then, considers that modern urbanity, as the end product of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s long

Two Christian organizations which still exist today were also founded in mid-nineteenth

spiritual decline, can be equated with secularity. However, this general assumption is less

century London, and quickly spread in the United States. The Young Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Christian As-

the result of empirical analyses, and more the product of the two formative â&#x20AC;&#x153;theoretical

sociation (YMCA) was established to create a moral bastion protecting young men from

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the temptations of the cities, and even today remains a model for connecting religion and

since the urban theories of Georg Simmel or Louis Wirth, a selective association between

business, since it set up and derived an income from a variety of businesses (such as hotels) (Goh 2011: 56). In contrast, the Salvation Armyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theology sought to sacralize all as-

the city and modernity; the second maneuver, dubbed â&#x20AC;&#x153;developmentalismâ&#x20AC;? by Jennifer

5RELQVRQ FRQFHSWXDOL]HV FLWLHV RXWVLGH WKH 1RUWK DV XQGHUGHYHORSHG DQG GHÂż-

pects of everyday life. In order to conduct missionary work among the non-churchgoing

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masses on the city streets and in public spaces, the Salvation Army, with its spectacular

trial countries were considered to be privileged locations of innovation and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;cultural

parades and popular music, explicitly competed with the attractions of urban consumer

experiences of modernityâ&#x20AC;? (Robinson 2010: 3). Second, urbanity was, in some way, equa-

culture (Winston 1999).

ted with modernization so that cities â&#x20AC;&#x153;elsewhereâ&#x20AC;? in the world, where traditions and the

Nowadays, this practice of sacralizing urban consumer culture has been adopted especial-

allegedly â&#x20AC;&#x153;primitiveâ&#x20AC;? continued to exist, were regarded as â&#x20AC;&#x153;un-modern placesâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.), and

ly by Pentecostalism, which is presently growing faster globally than any other religious

thus ultimately non-urban.

movement. Originating in the early twentieth century in Los Angeles, Pentecostalism goes back to a three-year-long prayer marathon known as the Azusa Street Revival, which start-

THE SECULARIST GAZE OF WESTERN URBAN RESEARCH Similarly to urban theory, sociology is also

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2008: 38) notes: â&#x20AC;&#x153;we forgot about [religion]. We thoughtâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and sociology told usâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that sec-

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generally founded on the theory of secularization. For example, Stuart Hall (in MacCabe ularization is an unstoppable process. All our notions of modernity and of progress are har-

tecostal churches were already engaging in missionary work in Latin American and African

nessed to secularization, the secular. â&#x20AC;Ś With the defeat of secular alternatives, it became

cities, where Pentecostalism experienced a dramatic growth in the 1980s. Today, to a cer-

the focal point of resistance in some of the less developed parts of the world.â&#x20AC;?

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The secularization theory, following Max Weber, assumed that religion in the rational mod-

back into the Global North. From the outset, the Pentecostal faithful and preachers were

ern world epitomized by the large city could only survive in reclusive communities, and

drawn from all ethnicities. In Los Angeles especially, Pentecostalism became a spiritual

that â&#x20AC;&#x153;secularization as the rationalization of the worldâ&#x20AC;? (Gabriel 2008: 10) would spread

home for the black and poorer urban migrants marginalized by the racism of traditional

from Europe across the entire globe. But ever since the establishment of industrial cities

â&#x20AC;&#x153;whiteâ&#x20AC;? churches (Cox 1995: 45ff.).

in the nineteenth century, the prevailing social discourse also regarded the large city as

Karl Marxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and Friedrich Engelsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; assumption that urbanization would secularize the work-

the antipode of the religious. For conservative and religiously motivated urban critics es-

ing class (see Davis op. cit.) could best be applied to Berlin, which grew dramatically to be-

pecially, industrial cities were amoral sinks of iniquity. Even in Berlin during the Weimar

come the third largest industrial city and, as early as the 1880s, was regarded as the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Republic, one radical criticism of the large city frequently had recourse to the biblical topos

most a-religious city. In Berlin, even liberal middle-class milieus rejected the Lutheran

of the Whore of Babylon. In the United States, too, the dominant idea was that religion had

Church due to its close ties with the monarchic elites. In working-class quarters, domin-

disappeared from the city, or even that religion as such was alien to the nature of the city.

ated by social democratic and communist beliefs, enmity to the churches was part of every-

For Roberto Orsi (1999b: 42â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3), this was not only why urban religion has hardly been re-

day political culture (see McLeod 1996). Berlin, then, proves to be a special case of urban

searched, but also why it is regarded as a contradiction in terms.

irreligiosity in the early Western industrial city.

As concerns the (Islamic) city of the caliphs or the sultan as well as the medieval (Chris-

As the above shows, in the course of urban industrialization, rather than religion disappear-

tian) cities in Europe, scholars are agreed that religious rulers â&#x20AC;&#x153;wielded policing and ad-

ing from Western industrial cities, it has undergone a transformation process which has

ministrative powers,â&#x20AC;? and the entire â&#x20AC;&#x153;idea of citizenship, of civitas, was synonymous with

reacted creatively to new forms of urban life and, in times of radical deep-rooted change,

religious ruleâ&#x20AC;? (AlSayyad and Roy 2006: 4). In contrast, a nexus between the modern

produced innovative religious movements and practices: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The world of the modern city

city and religion has only been granted for special cases such as Jerusalem, already de-

scribed as the urban utopia of â&#x20AC;&#x153;heavenly Jerusalemâ&#x20AC;? in the Book of Revelation of St. John

a tribal society propounded by Western orientalists and Turkish modernists, and proving

the Divine and still regarded today as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;city of longingâ&#x20AC;? (Goldhill 2008) by the faithful

WKDW ,VODP LV LQGHHG DQ XUEDQ UHOLJLRQ 7XJDO 7KLV ZDV HYHQ PRUH VLJQLÂżFDQW JLYHQ

of three religions. Beyond this, urban religion was seen as a social reminiscence, a sign

that since the 1980s, partially as the result of a massive rural exodus, the social basis and

of urban backwardness, linked to (poverty) zones in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Third World citiesâ&#x20AC;? captive to their

the production of meaning of Islamism had shifted from the rural areas to the informal mi-

traditions, or to migrant milieus not yet fully urbanized. Even here, urban theory over-

grant settlements within large cities (see Schiffauer in this volume). Since then, opposing

looked, for example, the major importance of liberation theology on the intellectual level,

notions of the Islamic city have been competing with one another. In the municipal ad-

as well as for their grassroots congregations, as religious, social, and political actors in

ministrations newly created from the informal gecekondu settlements on the periphery

Latin Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poor urban districts. As a â&#x20AC;&#x153;theology of revolutionary social changeâ&#x20AC;? (Cox

RI ,VWDQEXO ZKHUH WKH ,VODPLVWV HQMR\HG WKHLU ÂżUVW HOHFWLRQ YLFWRULHV ORFDO SROLFLHV ZHUH

1990: 95), liberation theory, which condemned the â&#x20AC;&#x153;misuse of religion by ruling elites to

initially informed by religiously motivated ideas of a modest urban structure and society

litical post-colonialism. At the same time, under the military regimes, their grassroots

vailing notion of the city as an Islamic â&#x20AC;&#x153;expression of imperial power and splendor,â&#x20AC;? with

VDFUDOL]H WKHLU SULYLOHJHVÂ´ LELG [Y ZDV D VLJQLÂżFDQW LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFH LQ LQWHOOHFWXDO DQG SR-

congregations offered a safe space for militant resistance movements in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, or Santiago de Chile, fostering the poorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-organization and â&#x20AC;&#x153;liberationâ&#x20AC;? in their struggle for better living conditions and the right to the city.

VXEPLVVLYH WR *RG ,Q FRQWUDVW WRGD\ LQ ,VWDQEXO DV ZHOO DV HOVHZKHUH RQH ÂżQGV D SUH-

elements borrowed from the Western-modernist â&#x20AC;&#x153;ideals of a planned, functional and ef-

ÂżFLHQW FLW\Â´ 7XJDO LELG VHH FRQWULEXWLRQV E\ $\ĂşH dDYGDU DQG g]JH $NWDĂş DQG (GD Ă&#x153;nlĂź-YĂźcesoy in this volume).

2Q WKH RWKHU KDQG DFFRUGLQJ WR 6RÂżD 6KZD\UL WKH ,VODPLF FLW\ PRGHO LV VWLOO WDNHQ

THE ORIENTALIST IDEA OF THE ISLAMIC CITY If urban theory conceptualized the modern Western

even nowadays, as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;dominant frameworkâ&#x20AC;? for studies on contemporary cities in the

city as secular, it regarded the metropolises of the Middle East as precisely the opposite.

Middle East. Finally, in the context of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;war on terror,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;the Islamic city model is again

ligion. The Islamic city as a discourse was the invention of French orientalists investigating

and destructionâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 271). Hence, for instance, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;ersatz cities in the American heart-

colonial cities such as Algiers and Damascus in the 1920s. Janet Abu-Lughod (1987) and

landâ&#x20AC;? constructed for exercises in military urban warfare are based on a model of the Islam-

AndrĂŠ Raymond (1994, 2008) show that, in comparison to the European city, the supposed

ic city as â&#x20AC;&#x153;chaotic, lawless and underdevelopedâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 272).

7KH\ ZHUH FKDUDFWHUL]HG DV ,VODPLF FLWLHV ZLWK XUEDQ VWUXFWXUHV GHFLVLYHO\ LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHG E\ UH-

Âł,VODPLF FLW\Â´ LV DOZD\V GHÂżQHG E\ D ODFN 7KH SUHYDLOLQJ WKHRULHV UHJDUG WKH ,VODPLF UHOL-

XVHG E\ LPSHULDO SRZHUV WR GHÂżQH 0LGGOH (DVWHUQ VRFLHWLHV DQG DV WKH MXVWLÂżFDWLRQ IRU ZDU

gious systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dominance over the urban as responsible for the continuing decay in these

BLIND SPOTS IN POST-MARXIST URBAN ANALYSES If

cities, their chaotic spatial structure, and their lack of effective institutions. Such sweeping

of the urban, Aihwa Ongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2011: 2) argument that both the prevailing social science ap-

one focuses on the religious as an element

descriptions ignore the fact that the cities under Islamic rule have very different forms,

proaches to urban analysis â&#x20AC;&#x153;bear a Marxist pedigree and are thus overdetermined in their

span a historical period of over 1,300 years, are found in the geographical space of three

privileging of capitalism as the only mechanism and class struggle as the only resolution to

continents, have a basic urban spatial design that precedes Islam, or that cities such as Cai-

urban problemsâ&#x20AC;? has a particular validity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The political economy of globalization,â&#x20AC;? one of

ro or Damascus have always been home to considerable religious diversity.

the dominating approaches, postulates global capitalism as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;singular causalityâ&#x20AC;? in the

This clearly indicates how the idea of an Islamic-city model is based on an orientalism

DVFULELQJ HYHU\ FXOWXUDO SKHQRPHQRQ LQ D UHJLRQ XQGHU ,VODPLF LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFH WR ,VODP 7KLV

production of the city as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;site of capital accumulation.â&#x20AC;? In turn, urban analyses informed by â&#x20AC;&#x153;the postcolonial focus on the subaltern,â&#x20AC;? the other prevailing approach, limit them-

is one plank in the discourse of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;West and the restâ&#x20AC;? (Hall 1992), which inscribes the

selves to â&#x20AC;&#x153;- agentsâ&#x20AC;? as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;special category of actors.â&#x20AC;?

qualities of urban, modern, civilized and secular into the concept of the West, and regards

The emphasis on capitalist mechanisms of urbanization and the narrowed focus on

the (Islamic) rest as underdeveloped, traditional and religious: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The disorderly Islamic city was a trope that made possible the norm of the ordered European city. Such a distinction â&#x20AC;Ś

Euro-North American cities, especially evident in critical â&#x20AC;&#x153;Western-centric urban theoryâ&#x20AC;?

(GHQVRU DQG -D\QH VXEVXPHG WKHLU ÂłKHWHURJHQHLW\ Ă&#x20AC;X[ DQG XQFHUWDLQW\Â´ XQGHU

resonates with the distinction drawn today between ungovernable Third World cities and

a â&#x20AC;&#x153;minimal set of explanatory conditionsâ&#x20AC;? (Ong op. cit.: 6). In doing so, the non-tangible

governed First World citiesâ&#x20AC;? (AlSayyad and Roy 2006: 3). Here, too, Western urban stud-

elements in the production of the urban were ignoredâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and this applies especially to

ies reveal, aside from their orientalist perspective, how they exclusively connect religion to

religion. In relation to religion, the bias among (post-)Marxist urban theorists also sup-

backwardness and label it as the antithesis of modern urbanity.

ported a normative secularism (cf. Beaumont and Baker 2011b) through their tendency,

The revitalization of the orientalist notion of the Islamic city from the early 1980s not only

as a rule, to discuss issues in urban diversity and justice without even mentioning as-

illustrates the persistence of colonial concepts, but also their complex patterns of reciprocal

pects of the religious. In general, the politico-economic reductionism in critical urban

appropriation and adaption. During an Islamic renewal, for example, Arab urban planners

studies evident in the analytical subordination of urbanization processes to the logics

and Turkish Islamists sought to re-establish the model of the Islamic city (Abu Lughod

DQG RSHUDWLRQV RI D SODQHWDU\ FDSLWDOLVP SURYRNHV WKH TXHVWLRQ RI ZKDW WKH VSHFLÂżFDOO\

op. cit.)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;not least with the aim of countering the defamatory image of Islam as a relic of

urban represents in such analyses (cf. McFarlane 2011a: 205; FarĂas 2011: 367). In such

an approach, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the attempt to grapple with notions of urban life itselfâ&#x20AC;? (Simone 2011: 355) falls through the cracks.

as, understood as forms of â&#x20AC;&#x153;immediate communication between atomized individuals,â&#x20AC;? it facilitates â&#x20AC;&#x153;passive networksâ&#x20AC;? (2012: 76). Asef Bayat has coined the term â&#x20AC;&#x153;street politicsâ&#x20AC;?

On the other hand, â&#x20AC;&#x153;subaltern urbanismâ&#x20AC;? (Roy 2011a) has made important attempts to postcolonize Western-centric urban theory by elaborating independent paths and modernities in post-colonial urban developments as well as subaltern agency. However, in terms of

WR GHVFULEH WKH FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFWV DQG FRQQHFWHG G\QDPLF RI SRZHU UHODWLRQV EHWZHHQ WKH HQFURDFKing â&#x20AC;&#x153;ordinary peopleâ&#x20AC;? and the authorities. In this book, we have dedicated a chapter to this

FRQFHSW WR FRQVLGHU LW LQ WHUPV RI WKH UHOLJLRXV YDULDQWV RI VXFK FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFWV DQG SRZHU VKLIWV

apprehending urban complexities, this approach similarly proves to have its limits due to a perspective that is too narrow. Ananya Roy (ibid.: 235), for example, critically examined

THE GLOBAL PRAYERS RESEARCH PROJECT: THEORETICAL MANEUVERS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;ontological and topological readings of subalternityâ&#x20AC;? in urban analyses that essentialize the

There are presently extensive ongoing debates over the â&#x20AC;&#x153;return of the religiousâ&#x20AC;? in a num-

supposedly subaltern identities in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;slumâ&#x20AC;? of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;megacityâ&#x20AC;? or celebrate the habitus of

ber of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Over the past decade, though with a

the urban poorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s entrepreneurial drive and self-organization (see also Lanz 2008). Aihwa

notable delay, there have also been numerous research studies investigating, on the global

Ong (2011: 9), in turn, points out how these two orientations in post-colonial urban stud-

level, religious practices in cities. However, although the majority of these studies consider

ies, with one underlining the continuities of the colonial past in the urban present and the

religion in the city, they do not consider the city itselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and this was a key motivation in ini-

other focusing on the political agency of subaltern groups, seem â&#x20AC;&#x153;to privilege postcolonial

tiating the Global Prayers project. In general, they focus neither on the question of how the

subjectivity and agency as the primary driving force in vastly different global sites that

urban impacts the formation and character of new forms of religion, nor on how the new

have been greatly transformed, through heterogeneous processes, colonial encounters and

religious communities and practices affect the urban. The studies that exist are also widely

postcolonial histories, in infrastructure, politics, and culture.â&#x20AC;?

dispersed, distributed across a range of area studies, or limited to individual disciplines, in

In contrast to a politico-economic approach, â&#x20AC;&#x153;subaltern urbanismâ&#x20AC;? has paid close attention

WR WKH VLJQLÂżFDQFH RI XUEDQ UHOLJLRQ IRU D ORQJ WLPH WKRXJK DV D UXOH RQO\ LQ WKH JHRJUDSK-

particular religious studies and anthropology and their journals. Most previous research has also been directed to individual cities, global regions or religionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;dedicated solely, for

ical Global South. Admittedly, here too, connections between, for example, urban poverty

example, to urban developments in Islam (Desplat and Schulz 2012), the United States

and religious community-formation were privileged over the religious practices of the ur-

(Orsi 1999a) or Asia and Africa (Hancock and Srinivas 2008). As a result, it was hardly in a

ban middle class or transnational connective processes between the city, religion, politics,

position to notice remarkable parallel developments across religions, patterns of urbaniza-

the economy, and culture. Here, Asef Bayat (2007) has provided key theoretical concepts

tion, and world religions. Other research has only focused on particular issues relating to

for investigating religious urbanity. His approach, based on many years of empirical stud-

the presence of the religious in the city (e.g., â&#x20AC;&#x153;faith based organizations,â&#x20AC;? Beaumont 2008,

ies, stands out from reductionist theses Ă la Mike Davis (2004). In particular, he not only

or â&#x20AC;&#x153;the sacredâ&#x20AC;? (GĂłmez and Van Herck 2012).

rejects the standard urban-studies assumption of a causal link between the boom in fun-

In contrast, the theoretical approaches to urban analyses with the largest reach, which over-

damentalist variants of religion and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;slumâ&#x20AC;? or urban poverty, but equally disputes the

come some of the blind spots ingrained in urban theory and examine the heterogeneous

supposedly altered ideologies of poverty. Taking Cairo and Tehran as examples, he shows

interconnections between the religious and the urban, subordinate these to homogenizing

that the key Islamic actors come from the educated middle classes, and their missionary

concepts such as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;post-secular cityâ&#x20AC;? (Beaumont and Baker 2011a) or â&#x20AC;&#x153;fundamentalist

ambitions lead them to utilize the ignorance of corrupt state apparatuses for the needs

cityâ&#x20AC;? (AlSayyad and Massoumi 2010). The former is particularly problematic in its nor-

of the poor. As Bayat notes, the poor cannot afford to be ideologically choosy, but attach

mative content, â&#x20AC;&#x153;linear temporalityâ&#x20AC;? (Leezenberg 2010), and ethnocentric basis. The lat-

themselves to groups which offer effective support for their everyday needsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;spiritual, so-

ter focuses exclusively on the aspects of religious urbanisms which political and academic

cial, and material. Over the past decades, Bayat points out such groups have often been

discourse has most problematized and taken exception to, yet does not address the diverse

radical religious movements.

ordinary forms of urban religiosity. It thus runs the risk of reifying the selective urban the-

Bayatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s notions of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;quiet encroachment of the ordinaryâ&#x20AC;? (2000) and â&#x20AC;&#x153;street politicsâ&#x20AC;?

RUHWLFDO OLQNV DV GHÂżQHG IURP WKH :HVWHUQ SHUVSHFWLYH EHWZHHQ PRGHUQLW\ EDFNZDUGQHVV

(1997, 2006) are important in analyzing the religious in urban everyday life. The former

RUGHU GLVRUGHU DQG VHFXODU IXQGDPHQWDOLVW

offers a reading of the activism of marginalized groups in cities in post-colonial society as

For this reason, Global Prayers, simultaneously building on and distancing itself from

a non-collective and often illegal agency (e.g., occupying land), which is initially directed

such research, initially adopted a very open heuristic concept to focus on the question of

toward improving the individual personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own life rather than having any political aim.

the religion of the city. As a result, we are investigating urban religion in its diverse forms

However, Bayat also shows how, in the long term, such a â&#x20AC;&#x153;quiet encroachmentâ&#x20AC;? can have

D VLJQLÂżFDQW SROLWLFDO LPSDFW RQ UHGLVWULEXWLRQ DQG GHPRFUDWL]DWLRQ SURFHVVHV :KHQ VWDWH

DV D VSHFLÂżF HOHPHQW RI XUEDQL]DWLRQ DQG XUEDQ HYHU\GD\ OLIH LQVRIDU DV LW LV LQWHUWZLQHG

ZLWK RWKHU HOHPHQWV IURP XUEDQ ÂżHOGVÂ˛XUEDQ OLIHVW\OHV DQG LPDJLQDULHV LQIUDVWUXFWXUHV

measures threaten what has been achieved (for example, an irregular settlement), en-

and materialities, cultures, politics and economies, forms of living and working, commu-

croachment frequently transforms into a collective political struggle to defend the gains

nity formation, festivals and celebrations, and so onâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and together with these, incessantly

made. The location of such struggles is in the physical and social space of the street insofar

generates and (re-)produces the city. Hence, we understand the production of urban reli-

gion and religious urbanity as two sides of a continual process in which the urban and the

UHOLJLRXV UHFLSURFDOO\ LQWHUDFW PXWXDOO\ LQWHUODFH SURGXFLQJ GHÂżQLQJ DQG WUDQVIRUPLQJ

each other. In other words, Global Prayers critically explores the theory that religion rep-

cept of fundamentalism reduced to a repressive form of government, AbdouMaliq Simone offers a reading interpreting â&#x20AC;&#x153;urban fundamentalism as opening up a space and a time of the miraculous.â&#x20AC;? Fundamentalism understood in this way, which, as it were, resonates with

resents an integral element of material, social, and symbolic production of the urban on

WKH IXQGDPHQWV RI WKH XUEDQ FDQ UH HPSRZHU WKH FLW\ WR IXOÂżOO LWV PRVW LPSRUWDQW ÂłWDVNÂ´

all levels, and thus needs to be integrated in urban theories (see Kong 2001). The Global

which he describes elsewhere, following Ranciere, as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the possibility of those who have â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;no

Prayers project is designed as transdisciplinary and transinstitutional on the global level,

part in anythingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to become â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;anyone at allâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is, to come to the stage, to be visible as

and generates its knowledge by leveraging a diversity of case studies in many different cit-

an ordinary life in the cityâ&#x20AC;? (Simone 2011: 356). The Global Prayers case studiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which,

ies across the world where these studies have initially been designed as â&#x20AC;&#x153;deep explorative

GULOOLQJÂ´ LQ WKH UHOLJLRQ XUEDQ ÂżHOG

LQ WKH ÂżHOG EHWZHHQ WKHVH WZR FRQFHSWXDO SROHV DGGUHVV WKH XUEDQ YDULHW\ RI WKH UHOLJLRXV

commonly regarded as fundamentalismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;approach these issues from an actor-centered

The conceptual framework we constructed to research into the diverse manifestations of

perspective, thus avoiding a homogenizing explanatory approach within a conceptual re-

religion and religious urbanity in the contemporary city was created on the basis of the the-

duction.

RUHWLFDO SRVLWLRQV RXWOLQHG DERYH ZKLFK SURYLGHG WKH IRXQGDWLRQ IRU PHWUR=RQHV WKH GH-

Beyond these methodological aspects, worlding is also understood, on the other hand, as

construction of problematic urban-theory traditions as well as the most recent innovations.

heterogeneous spatializing practices, not only collecting the elements and practices com-

Yet in constructing that framework, what theoretical and methodological â&#x20AC;&#x153;maneuversâ&#x20AC;? did

ing from the world into the city, but also releasing them, in an altered form, back into the

we adopt?

world again. In this way, they invoke potential worlds transcending the current conditions

â&#x20AC;&#x153;THE ART OF BEING GLOBALâ&#x20AC;? (AIHWA ONG) Global

Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ÂżUVW WKHRUHWLFDO PDQHXYHU UHVSRQGV

of urban living: â&#x20AC;&#x153;a non-ideological formulation of worlding as situated everyday practices

LGHQWLÂżHV DPELWLRXV SUDFWLFHV WKDW FUHDWLYHO\ LPDJLQH DQG VKDSH DOWHUQDWLYH VRFLDO YLVLRQV

WR WKH FRQFHSWV QHHGHG WR LQYHVWLJDWH XUEDQ FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV RQ WKH JOREDO OHYHO DV SDUWV RI

DQG FRQÂżJXUDWLRQVÂ˛WKDW LV ÂľZRUOGV Âś ÂŤ :RUOGLQJ LQ WKLV VHQVH LV OLQNHG WR WKH LGHD RI HPHU-

the same analytical framework without recourse to reductionist explanatory patterns. In

gence, to the claims that global situations are always in formationâ&#x20AC;? (Ong 2011: 12). World-

her search for â&#x20AC;&#x153;another route through postcolonial urbanismâ&#x20AC;? (Roy 2011b: 307), with the

ing in such a reading is generally viewed as unstable and incomplete. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Worlding practices

aim of overcoming the limitations of a subaltern urbanism as described above, Ananja Roy

of centering, of harnessing global regimes of valueâ&#x20AC;? (Roy 2011b: 313) can be regarded as

puts forward a â&#x20AC;&#x153;new way of doing global metropolitan studiesâ&#x20AC;? founded on a shift â&#x20AC;&#x153;from the

including global modeling and inter-referencing practices (related, for example, to such

postcolonial as an urban condition to the postcolonial as a critical deconstructive method-

spatial variations as gated communities as well as megaprojects, world-class aesthetic dis-

ologyâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 308). To avoid the standard approach of linking modernity with the West-

courses, and forms and processes of religious urbanism) just as much as those â&#x20AC;&#x153;anticipa-

ern city and facilitate research into metropolitan modernities on the global level, Aihwa

tory politics of residents and transients, citizens and migrantsâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.) which AbdouMaliq

Ong (2011: 9) argues for an analytical framework capable of elaborating â&#x20AC;&#x153;how an urban

Simone (2001), drawing on the example of African cities, has termed â&#x20AC;&#x153;worlding from be-

situation can be at once heterogeneously particular and yet irreducibly global,â&#x20AC;? but one

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that does not attempt to do so on the basis of a unique explanatory concept. In their book

Worlding Cities, 5R\ DQG 2QJ GHYHORS D VSHFLÂżF LGHD RI ÂłZRUOGLQJÂ´ IRU WKLV SXU-

tution of the zawiya, which has branches in many towns and cities serving both as a lodge and a place of prayer for travelling â&#x20AC;&#x153;brothers,â&#x20AC;? to discuss the translocal networks, economic

pose, which builds on Gayatri Spivakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original concept. In contrast to Marxist versions of

options, and forms of solidarity which facilitate the extension of urban Africa outside the

worlding, which are subordinated to capitalist logics and, for instance, dominate global city

continent. Frequently a survival strategy, over the last decades this form of worlding has

research, the analytical framework proposed by Roy and Ong breaks with the mainstream

not least been a â&#x20AC;&#x153;by-product of the implosion of urban Africaâ&#x20AC;? (Simone 2001: 17).

â&#x20AC;&#x153;core-periphery model of globalizationâ&#x20AC;? (Roy 2009: 824). Worlding alludes, on the one hand, to urban knowledge production itself, and requires

In this sense, Global Prayers explores the manifestations of urban religion and religious urbanity as practices of worlding, whereby here it is especially true that â&#x20AC;&#x153;the art of be-

the deconstruction of global â&#x20AC;&#x153;regimes of truthâ&#x20AC;? (Roy 2011b: 314), in particular (though not

ing global ignores conventional borders of class, race, city and country. There are promis-

only) with regard to the production of traditional Western-centric urban theory. One chap-

cuous borrowings, shameless juxtapositions, and strategic enrollments of disparate ideas,

ter of this book takes up precisely this task, offering a â&#x20AC;&#x153;deconstruction of the fundamenWDOLVW FLW\Â´ DQG LQ WKLV DSSURDFK LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHG E\ 1H]DU $O6D\\DG SRLQWLQJ WR RWKHU SRVVLEOH

actors and practices from many sources circulating in the developing world, and beyondâ&#x20AC;? (Ong 2011: 23). In this context, worlding refers, on the one hand, to those aspirations and

readings of the encounter between the city and religious fundamentalism. AlSayyad him-

imaginations informing religiously motivated attempts to create alternative urban worlds

self not only deconstructed the traditional links between fundamentalism and Islamism,

transcending the city as it exists in reality and which, in essence, are common to all ur-

but also the Western-centric theory that can only locate the advance of urban-religious

ban religious practices and communities. On the other hand, worlding also comprises the

fundamentalism, together with its associated â&#x20AC;&#x153;medieval modernity,â&#x20AC;? in the supposedly

(imaginary or real) extension of the particular practices to the translocal and global lev-

un-modern cities outside the West. In this context, in contrast to a religious-urban con-

elsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whether as urban-religious forms of circulation and community building, modeling

practices (for instance, of â&#x20AC;&#x153;cities of Godâ&#x20AC;?), borrowing and appropriating (for example, in

be researched as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;sensational formâ&#x20AC;? (Meyer 2009, 2012), whose sensory, material, social,

the course of sacralizing urban cultural practices), identities (e.g., as in the form of be-

and symbolic practices not only manifest themselves in the urban, but are also generated

longing to global Ummah or Pentecostalism), or as the expansion of religious-political and

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economic power.

ing visions and voices, practices and orientations, which arise out of the complex desires,

As a rule, the phenomena at the heart of Global Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; research are revealed as glob-

needs and fears of many different people who have come to the cities by choice or com-

al phenomena in the sense that their validity is not conventional, â&#x20AC;&#x153;only intelligible in re-

SXOVLRQ RU ERWK DQG ZKR ÂżQG WKHPVHOYHV LQWHUVHFWLQJ ZLWK XQH[SHFWHG RWKHUV DQG ZLWK

lation to a common set of meanings, understandings or societal structuresâ&#x20AC;? (Collier and

XQH[SHFWHG H[SHULHQFHV RI WKHLU RZQ VXEMHFWLYLWLHV RQ D FRPSOH[ VRFLDO ÂżHOGÂ´ 2UVL E

Ong 2005: 11). According to Stephen Collier and Aihwa Ong, global phenomena are char-

44f). Hence, rather than the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s characteristic features only providing the context for re-

DFWHUL]HG LQVWHDGÂ˛DQG WKLV DSSOLHV WR D VLJQLÂżFDQW H[WHQW WR WKH IRUPV RI LQWHUZRYHQQHVV

ligious experiences and its forms of expression, they belong to the basic constituents from

between the urban and religion investigated hereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;by their â&#x20AC;&#x153;distinctive capacity for decon-

which such experiences and forms of expression are generated.

textualisation and recontextualisation, abstractability and movement, across diverse social

The concrete forms of religionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contextualization and territorialization in the urban en-

and cultural situations and spheres of life. Global forms are able to assimilate themselves

vironment do not occur as a unidirectional incorporation or assimilation, solely either as

to new environments, to code heterogeneous contexts and objectsâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.).

the religious form adapting to the environment or vice versa, but as manifold interactions, references, and intersections, as dynamic processes of appropriation and borrowing. Here,

Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; second theoretical maneuver

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counters and interactions between the religious and the urban without subordinating them

Assemblage urbanism enables us to research the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s constitution as a multiple, dynam-

ASSEMBLING URBAN-RELIGIOUS CONFIGURATIONS Global

UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWV WKH FRQFHUQ ZLWK HYROYLQJ D FRQFHSWXDO DSSURDFK FDSDEOH RI XQGHUVWDQGLQJ WKH HQ-

tween religion and urbanity crystalizing from such processes.

to one-dimensional explanatory models.

LF FRQWLQJHQW REMHFWÂ˛DQG QRW DV DQ ÂłHQWLUHW\ Â´ D ÂłÂż[HG ORFDOLW\ EXW DV D SDUWLFXODU QH[XV

On the one hand, this maneuver develops from the realization that the secularist and Marx-

of situated and transnational ideas, institutions, actors and practicesâ&#x20AC;? (Ong 2011: 4); in

ist genealogy of urban studies has marginalized â&#x20AC;&#x153;attempts to grapple the notions of urban

other words, as a nexus of spaces, objects, bodies, subjectivities, and symbols with diverse

life itselfâ&#x20AC;? (Simone 2011: 355). In particular, in view of the way that approaches in tradi-

and various reciprocal connections and which â&#x20AC;&#x153;assemble the city in multiple waysâ&#x20AC;? (FarĂas

tional urban theory fail to grasp the everyday production of the city through the agency of

2010: 14). If one reads assemblage as the constantly emerging â&#x20AC;&#x153;product of multiple deter-

its residents, including their religious agency, a different method is neededâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one that is

minations that are not reducible to a single logicâ&#x20AC;? (Collier and Ong 2005: 12), we can grasp

able to apprehend the â&#x20AC;&#x153;diversity of urbanismsâ&#x20AC;? (McFarlane 2011c: 652), and hence address

the city as a permanently regenerating assemblage of assemblages. Hence, rather than

the urbanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complexity and multi-dimensionality, its generic and process character, and

analysis focusing on spatial categories or formations, it concentrates on a dense descrip-

the way it is generated from the most diverse connections between extremely heteroge-

tion of the agency apparent in urban everyday life and on the mutually interlacing practices,

neous actors and materials, discourses, aspirations, and imaginations.

processes, and materialities which generate urbanism. In this way, the question (of power)

2Q WKH RWKHU KDQG WKLV WKHRUHWLFDO PDQHXYHU UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWV QHZ DSSURDFKHV LQ UHOLJLRXV VWXGLHV

arises of â&#x20AC;&#x153;who and what has the capacity to assemble the cityâ&#x20AC;? (McFarlane 2011c: 668). In

critiquing very similar limitations in the traditional approaches to religion to those cur-

contrast to the urban political economy, assemblage does not posit power as power over

rently challenged by urban studies. In this respect, they call for comparable changes, em-

but, following Deleuze and Foucault, as power to (Dovey 2011: 349). Rather than resorting

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need to postcolonialize religious studies. In this process, the aspects of materiality in reli-

to structural or contextual explanations to read domination, injustices, or exclusions in urban assemblages, they are investigated by concretely considering how asymmetries and

gious practices are considered in a contrasting way to the traditional â&#x20AC;&#x153;mentalistic approachâ&#x20AC;?

unequal relations of power develop in their origination processes, and the ruling effects

(Meyer 2012: 14) which, based on a modern dualism between external form and internal

they produce. Hence, analyzing the urban from an assemblage perspective does not mean

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disregarding capitalist logics and effects on urban life. Here, too, the principle applies that

terialized the understanding of religion and neglected the â&#x20AC;&#x153;reality effectsâ&#x20AC;? (Meyer 2009: 7)

today on the global level â&#x20AC;&#x153;urban life cannot be understood external to variegated capital-

of cultural forms. Taking a â&#x20AC;&#x153;material approach to religionâ&#x20AC;? (Meyer 2012; cf. VĂĄsquez 2011;

ismsâ&#x20AC;? (McFarlane 2011b: 733). However, these are viewed from a different perspective: â&#x20AC;&#x153;By

Garbin 2012) not only allows religion to be understood as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;practice of mediationâ&#x20AC;? (Meyer

looking at cities, we can learn more about capitalism as a form of life;â&#x20AC;? in other words, cap-

2009: 11) between the idea and experience of supernatural powers and everyday life, but

italism is not understood as an abstract global logic which, as it were, subjugates cities, but

also places the material forms and their affective powers in the focus of research.

investigated â&#x20AC;&#x153;as a concrete process assuming multiple formsâ&#x20AC;? (FarĂas 2011: 368).

In relation to the city, religious practice may then be, on the one hand, analyzed as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;pre-

The assemblage approach is particularly suited to analyzing the forms of the encounter

scriptive regimeâ&#x20AC;? (Marshall 2009: 11), where technologies of power and technologies of the

between the urban and the religious, understood as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;practice of mediation.â&#x20AC;? On the basis

self intermesh in its practice of governmentality, in Foucaultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense. On the other, it can

of Deleuze and Guattariâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concept of agencement, AbdouMaliq Simone (2011: 357) regards

assemblage as pointing to the relation ÂłEHWZHHQ WKH SRVVLEOHÂ˛WKH XQVWDEOH Ă&#x20AC;RZV RI PDWH-

WLYH DQG LQWHUSUHWDWLYH DSSURDFK GLUHFWHG QRW OHDVW DW VHOI FULWLFDOO\ UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWLQJ ZLWKLQ WKH

rials and substancesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and the prescribedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the imposition of functional stable structures â&#x20AC;Ś

framework of post-colonial inequality of power, the prevailing â&#x20AC;&#x153;geopolitics of knowledgeâ&#x20AC;?

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;between code and singularity, expression and content.â&#x20AC;? It is especially this underscoring

(Mignolo 2002) mirrored in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;dynamics of academic and research policiesâ&#x20AC;? (Kaltmeier

of potentialities, ever-present in the urban, beyond the existent as well as a focus on doing,

2012: 28) in which the research process is embedded.

performing, and events that enables the worlding practices of urban religious communities,

The initial objective was to avoid an analytical Western-centric reductionism informed by

understood just as much as prescriptive regimes as sensational forms, to be grasped as cre-

a ruling discourse where urban modernity per se is fuelled by secularity, and â&#x20AC;&#x153;open up an

ating alternative urban worlds transcending real cities. Such an approach facilitates a con-

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ceptual framework capable of doing justice to the diversities and ambiguities in the connec-

tween religious practices and lifestyles and the urban. To achieve this, we adopted, in the

tions between city and religionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;its temporalities and instabilitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;without reducing it to a

broadest sense, an actor-centered and practice-theoretical research approach focusing less

KRPRJHQL]LQJ FRQFHSWXDO DFFHVV WR VSHFLÂżF DVSHFWV IXQGDPHQWDOLVP SRVW SRVWVHFXODULVP

RQ WKH UHOLJLRXV ZRUOGYLHZV DSSHDULQJ LQ XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV WKDQ RQ DFFHVV-

etc.). Hence, interactions between the urban and the religious can be understood as inter-

ing the concrete world of their actors and investigating their â&#x20AC;&#x153;way of doing things.â&#x20AC;? Hence,

actions between the components forming the assemblage; as Colin McFarlane (2011c: 653)

this is about reconstructing â&#x20AC;&#x153;the interior perspectives of the actors and the experiences un-

notes in quoting Gilles Deleuze, their sole unity is that of â&#x20AC;&#x153;co-functioning: it is a symbiosis,

GHUO\LQJ WKHPÂ´ 6FKLIIDXHU DQG FULWLFDOO\ UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWLQJ RQ WKHP

a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sympathy.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? In this way, it becomes possible to focus on the multiple interlacing of the

To this end, we carried out the following operations: expanding the concept of research to

religious even with all those aspects of urban spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the sensory, imaginary, material, etc.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

FRYHU DUW FRQÂżJXULQJ WKH SURMHFW WUDQVLQVWLWXWLRQDOO\ WR WUDQVFHQG WKH VFLHQWLÂżF DFDGHPLHV

which would remain beyond the reach of standard urban theory. Thus, in the words of Ash

primarily engaging local Fellows to conduct on-site research; and a collaborative progres-

Amin and Nigel Thrift (2002), this approach can then â&#x20AC;&#x153;repopulate the cityâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.:4), which

sive knowledge production, partially developed in cooperation in intensive workshops and

LV DOVR ÂłD NLQG RI IRUFH ÂżHOG RI SDVVLRQV WKDW DVVRFLDWH DQG SXOVH ERGLHV LQ SDUWLFXODU ZD\VÂ´

on research trips, and partially in discussions with university and civil society communica-

(ibid.: 84), with those urbanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;here religiousâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;actors and aspects having previously fallen

tion partners in the cities in the research project.

through the cracks in models of urban theory.

,Q D ÂżUVW PRYH ZH WRRN D WUDQVGLVFLSOLQDU\ DSSURDFK WR H[SDQGLQJ WKH UHVHDUFK FRQFHSW

In this spirit, Global Prayers analyses the diverse and various encounters and links be-

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historically colonized by academia, and included artistic forms of research. We decided that neither the scholar nor the artist should have the sole authority over knowledge-formation

tions,â&#x20AC;? which we understand as assemblages of material, social, symbolic, and sensuous

or the diverse forms of presentation for Global Prayers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from the various text formats to

spaces, processes, practices, and experiences where the religious and the urban are inter-

exhibitions, performative events, and installations (see Kathrin Wildner in this volume).

ZRYHQ DQG UHFLSURFDOO\ SURGXFH LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFH DQG WUDQVIRUP HDFK RWKHU

The projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transdisciplinary approach transcending the borders of academia and art was

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EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON AS A RESEARCH STRATEGY Global Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; third theoretical maneu-

stead, the artistic approaches were to be regarded as an independent â&#x20AC;&#x153;epistemic practiceâ&#x20AC;?

ver relates to the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concrete research strategies. This also addresses the issue of

(Bippus 2009), hence expanding the concept of research. As noted by Anne Huffschmid

UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV LQÂ˛RU EHWZHHQÂ˛D WRWDO RI WZHOYH FLWLHV $V QRWHG DERYH WKLV UH-

ed â&#x20AC;&#x153;as a procedure of validation of a hypothesis,â&#x20AC;? but as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;procedure of exploration and

search project initially started from more contingent observations, which later became

discoveries, a constant and delicate movement between knowing and not-knowing.â&#x20AC;? This

KRZ WR PXWXDOO\ UHODWH WKH LQGLYLGXDO FDVH VWXGLHV ZKLFK KDYH LQYHVWLJDWHG VSHFLÂżF XUEDQ

in the Global Prayers publication Faith is the Place (2012: 165â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6), research is not regard-

increasingly systematic and collaborative, on the multiple transformation processes and

SURPRWHV RQ WKH RQH KDQG VHOI UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWLYH SUDFWLFH LQ UHVHDUFK DQG RQ WKH RWKHU D SUDFWLFH

the growing presence of urban manifestations of the religious which evidently crossed the

of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;aesthetical interrogation of reality.â&#x20AC;? In the context of the researchersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; subjectivity,

classic borders between, for example, South and North, or overstepped traditional reli-

the former questions how they construct their analytical perspective; the latter contains a

gious territorialization and cultural embeddedness. This contradicted basic urban theo-

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ry assumptions which we also subscribed to, or was either simply overlooked by urban

formativity of religious urbanities, or political stagings, including a critical consciousness

studies or discussed with a one-dimensional explanatory logic. Given this major gap between everyday urban life and urban knowledge production, there was an obvious need

of visual discoursesâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 166).

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to critically review accepted urban studies methods and theoretical approaches from the

LQ WKH SURMHFW DQG JLYHQ WKHLU VLWXDWHGQHVV LQ WKH ÂżHOGV RI DFDGHPLD DUW FXOWXUH DQG SRO-

tualizationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;since this could only have followed accepted theoriesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and design a research

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JURXQG XS +HUH LW ZDV LPSRUWDQW WR LQLWLDOO\ PDQDJH ZLWKRXW DQ\ GHÂżQLWLRQDO FRQFHS-

LWLFV WKHLU VRPHWLPHV VLJQLÂżFDQWO\ GLYHUJHQW LQWHUHVWV DQG IXQFWLRQDO ORJLFV 7KHVH KDG WR

approach as open and experimental as possible, informed by decentering, defamilializing

prone crisis management and, in the process, generated a new diversity of perspectives

and â&#x20AC;&#x153;un-truthingâ&#x20AC;? (Jane Jacobs 2012). Such research is based on an interrogative, induc-

on research topics, issues, and methods. The project Global Prayers was developed by

PHWUR=RQHV DQ DVVRFLDWLRQ RI VFKRODUV DUWLVWV MRXUQDOLVWV DQG FXUDWRUV ZKR KDYH EHHQ investigating urbanization processes on the global level for some years. The project is im-

ging demands and studies calling for a renewal of comparative urban research, and applying such methods. This is particularly relevant since the projects suggested, including those

SOHPHQWHG E\ PHWUR=RQHV WRJHWKHU ZLWK WKH (XURSHDQ 8QLYHUVLW\ 9LDGULQDÂśV &XOWXUDO 6WXG-

by Jennifer Robinson (2006, 2010), belong to the efforts to postcolonialize urban studies

ies faculty as well as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, a forum not only for contemporary

by analyzing â&#x20AC;&#x153;ordinary citiesâ&#x20AC;? on the global level within shared conceptual frameworks. At

art but also for theoretical and socially relevant discussions on the global circulation of

present, a number of highly different concepts are collected under the umbrella of compar-

cultures. Research cooperations were also realized with the Berlin arts association Neue

ative research approaches, though there is no space here to systematically discuss the spec-

Gesellschaft fĂźr Bildende KĂźnste (New Society for Visual Arts), which is located in a po-

trum they cover (see for example: Robinson 2010, Ward 2010, McFarlane 2010 or Urban

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Geography issues 28, no. 1 (2007), 29, no. 5 (2008) and 33, no. 6 (2012)).

eral left-leaning Heinrich BĂśll-Stiftung (in Beirut, Istanbul, Mexico, Buenos Aires, Rio de

&HUWDLQO\ DFFRUGLQJ WR WKH GHÂżQLWLRQ RI FRPSDUDWLYH XUEDQLVP E\ -DQ 1LMPDQ DV

Janeiro, and Lagos) which, in its local-level civil society cooperation, has often been con-

â&#x20AC;&#x153;the systematic study of similarity and difference among cities or urban processes,â&#x20AC;? Glob-

fronted with the set of problems relating to urban religion and is interested in developing

al Prayers does not follow a classical comparative approach. Working with the idea of a

approaches to it.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;comparative consciousnessâ&#x20AC;? (Nader 1994), the project focuses less on similarities and differences between mutually exclusive units (in particular since, in our view, cities cannot

process also sought to avoid reproducing the prevailing geopolitics of knowledge by un-

be understood as such units) than on transformations and connections, or the melding of

national journals, connections to elite universities, etc.). Instead, we welcomed local ap-

terest. Here, â&#x20AC;&#x153;transnational examinationsâ&#x20AC;? are a key strategy since these â&#x20AC;&#x153;can use one site

plicantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; well-founded and specialized knowledge acquired on the ground in the research

to pose questions on anotherâ&#x20AC;? (Roy 2003: 466). The individual case studies do not follow

UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWHGO\ DSSO\LQJ WKH (XUR $PHULFDQ DFDGHPLF HYDOXDWLYH ORJLF SXEOLFDWLRQV LQ LQWHU-

WKRVH XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV SUDFWLFHV DQG VWUXFWXUHV RI VSHFLÂżF FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV LQ WKH IRFXV RI LQ-

cities or deriving from sources beyond academic logics. In the course of the project, the

DQ\ IRUPDO FRPSDUDWLYH DJHQGD +RZHYHU ZKHUH WKH\ H[DPLQH XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUD-

resulting composition of actors not only facilitated a multi-faceted readiness to experiment

tions as practices of worlding, they always point to global forms and processes, and mate-

with methods and forms of collaboration, but also generated numerous problems and con-

Ă&#x20AC;LFWV 5DWKHU WKDQ WKHVH GHULYLQJ VROHO\ IURP WKH ÂżHOG RI WHQVLRQ EHWZHHQ WKH SURMHFWÂśV H[perimental constellation and the particular logic of and demands in the German research

rial as well as imaginary transnational networks and connections. In a certain sense, the researchers often only needed to follow the urban-religious actors they were investigating

VLQFH WKHLU ZRUOG LV DOZD\V EDVHG RQ FRPSDULVRQVÂ˛LQ WKH FRQWH[W RI WKHLU DIÂżOLDWLRQ WR D

and funding landscape in which the project is embedded, they were also due to the struc-

JOREDO UHOLJLRXV FRPPXQLW\ EHWZHHQ KHUH WKLV OLIH DQG WKHUH WKH DIWHUOLIH EHWZHHQ ÂłGHYLO-

tural inequalities between the various project actors in terms of access to resources, links to

ishâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;devoutâ&#x20AC;? urban locations and cultural practices, between cities that really exist and

academia, or the implementation of standardized demands on international research and

imaginary â&#x20AC;&#x153;cities of God,â&#x20AC;? etc.

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In a certain sense, Global Prayers LV D ÂŤ SURMHFW DV GHÂżQHG E\ -DQH -DFREV

A modus operandi was then established through four long workshops in Berlin, Lagos, Bei-

(2012), drawing on Gilles Deleuze as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;philosopher of this kind of (+).â&#x20AC;? Hence, this is not

UXW DQG 0XPEDL ZKLFK ZHUH FRPELQHG ZLWK ÂżHOGWULSV DV ZHOO DV ORFDO FRRSHUDWLRQV DQG

about establishing essential differences between â&#x20AC;&#x153;Aâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bâ&#x20AC;? or explaining everything by

public events. After the initial explorative phase, the way of working became increasingly

a single logic, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;homogenizing geography of a single causeâ&#x20AC;?: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rather, the Deleuzian (+)

consolidated, with growing reciprocal understanding between researchers and collabora-

points to multiplicity, and in the direction of emergence and becomingâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 905). This

tion in a variety of local as well as translocal constellations, which gradually led to the de-

follows the simple insight that â&#x20AC;&#x153;the project of decentering assumes multiples,â&#x20AC;? as is evident

velopment of more robust conceptual frameworks and terms. This step-by-step process

in â&#x20AC;&#x153;the notion of the center against which one worksâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 904). In this sense, Global

did not only generate a conceptual framework for the entire project, but also produced

Prayers EXLOGV RQ WKH LQVLJKWV JDLQHG LQ WKH SUHYLRXV PHWUR=RQHV SURMHFWV /DQ]

close cooperation between, for example scholars and artists in Beirut, Istanbul, and Mum-

SchĂ¤fer et al. 2006; Lanz et al. 2008) whereby, to quote Jane Jacobs, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the multiple (1 + 1)

bai. Moreover, the reciprocal approach to critiquing methods and content also increasingly

generates an ever-present ground â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;un-truthingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in which I am forced to admit that what is

OHG WR D QXPEHU RI FORVHU FRQQHFWLRQV EHLQJ LGHQWLÂżHG IRU H[DPSOH EHWZHHQ WKH ÂłFLWLHV RI

happening in City A does not, might not, cannot stand for City B, and certainly not for City

Godâ&#x20AC;? in Lagos and Istanbul; between the politico-religious urban constellations in Jakarta,

E(verywhere)â&#x20AC;? (op. cit. 907).

Mumbai, and Beirut; between the urban-religious forms of de- and re-territorialization in

The individual Global Prayers productions created from such an approach are mutually re-

Kinshasa, London, Rio de Janeiro, and Berlin; between the historical foundations of the

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religious movements in Tehran, Mexico, and Buenos Aires; and between forms of sacraliza-

a multi-faceted picture of present urban transformations in the context of urban religions

tion of urban cultural practices in Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Amsterdam.

and religious urbanities. Rather than, as in a narrower sense, comparatively tracing the de-

This leads me back to the initial question in this section on the comparative nature of Glob-

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al Prayers. This question has to be discussed, not least, in the context of the recent emer-

ed, within the framework of productions, connections, fractures, similarities, or differences

between the elements regarded as dynamic and temporary, to stand for itself. Knowledge of

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cities, religious actors, and transregional connections was not arbitrary, it was naturally selective. Thus, though Global Prayers are not generally limited to religious movements within

here, and discussed in the present book or, in some cases, in the preceding volume Faith is the Place PHWUR=RQHV 7KH DLP LV WR VNHWFK D SLFWXUH QR PDWWHU KRZ IUDJPHQWDU\ DO-

ORZLQJ WKH HYROYLQJ DQG GLYHUVH XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV LQ WKH VHQVH RI DQ DVVHPEODJH WR EH LGHQWLÂżHG RQ WKLV VHH DOVR :HUQHU 6FKLIIDXHUÂśV ÂżUVW HVVD\ LQ WKLV YROXPH

Christianity and Islam, the studies in this book, with the exception of one study on Hinduism, all focus on such religious movements. In essence, their shared novelty lies in the fact that,

URBAN CULTURES OF CONVERSION

as global forms, they have grown to become mass movements in the most diverse metrop-

culture, and space, Global Prayers UHVHDUFK LQGLFDWHV KRZ WR D VLJQLÂżFDQW GHJUHH QHZ UH-

To begin initially with the relationship between religion,

olises around the world, or are totally new movements, and interact intensely with urban

ligious communities distancing themselves from traditional orthodoxies interact with the

structures and lifeworlds (in contrast see the previous publication Faith is the Place, which

urban in the process of their particular religion breaking away from its traditional embed-

WRRN D IDU EURDGHU DSSURDFK WR UHOLJLRXV PRYHPHQWV PHWUR=RQHV 7KH UHVHDUFK ZDV

GHGQHVV LQ D FXOWXUH RU D WHUULWRU\ 7KLV LV FRQÂżUPHG E\ 2OLYLHU 5R\ÂśV II WKHR-

conducted both in â&#x20AC;&#x153;particular cities,â&#x20AC;? for example, cities regarded as capitals of Pentecostal-

ry of religionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global individualization, â&#x20AC;&#x153;de-territorialization and de-culturation.â&#x20AC;? In this

LVP /DJRV 5LR GH -DQHLUR RU KRWVSRWV RI UHOLJLRXVO\ FRQWH[WXDOL]HG FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFWV 7HKUDQ %HLUXW

0XPEDL EXW DOVR LQ ÂłRUGLQDU\ FLWLHVÂ´ ZLWKRXW DQ\ DSSDUHQW VSHFLÂżF FKDUDFWHULVWLFV LQ WHUPV of urban-religious dynamics (such as Berlin, Jakarta, Mexico, Amsterdam, or Atlanta). This

DSSURDFK LV HLWKHU MXVWLÂżHG E\ WKH FRQWHQW VLQFH WKH SURMHFW QRW RQO\ VHW RXW WR LQYHVWLJDWH

SDUWLFXODUO\ FRQVSLFXRXV XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV EXW DOVR ÂłRUGLQDU\Â´ RQHV RU LV MXVWL-

ÂżHG SUDJPDWLFDOO\ VLQFH IUXLWIXO FROODERUDWLRQV DOUHDG\ H[LVWHG LQ VRPH FLWLHV RU LQWHUHVWLQJ

YROXPH IRU H[DPSOH $PDQGD 'LDVÂśV UHVHDUFK LQWR WKH 6DODÂżVW FRPPXQLW\ VKRZV KRZ D religious movement without traditional cultural and territorial connections created itself in the Christian city of Rio de Janeiro. Its growth was derived from individual conversions, which can be read just as much as an aspect of a dynamic religious market as the result of

5LR GH -DQHLURÂśV VSHFLÂżF VRFLDO DQG UHOLJLRXV ODQGVFDSH 7KH WUDQVIRUPDWLRQ RI 6KLLWH ,VODP in Beirut with its invention of religious ritual, discussed by Joseph Rustom, also follows

SURMHFWV ZHUH VXJJHVWHG WKDW UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWHG WKH RYHUDOO UHVHDUFK GHVLJQ

a deterritorialization due to Shiite migration from rural Southern Lebanon into a Sunni

In the context of the operations mentioned above, the 1 + 1 + 1 + project concept does not

Muslim Beirut. The Chhath festival in Mumbai can be similarly located, transforming from

only relate to questions of content, but also to the methodological and strategic positioning

a traditional religious ritual into a mega-event in the course of urban migration by the rural

of Global Prayers. In this sense, the project follows Colin McFarlaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2010: 727) notion

population in northern Indian and their subsequent stigmatization (cf. George Jose).

of comparison as a strategy: â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the expansive reading of comparison â&#x20AC;Ś I argue for atten-

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The return of religion into public space,â&#x20AC;? according to Roy, â&#x20AC;&#x153;no longer occurs as something

tion not just to different scholarly knowledges on cities from social science across the world,

culturally taken for granted, but as a display of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; religiosity or reconstructed tradi-

but different activist and public knowledges that are important for the production of a

tionsâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 24).To avoid isolation in religious â&#x20AC;&#x153;ghettos,â&#x20AC;? religious communities look for

more global, more democratic urban studies characterized by diverse urban epistemes and

new â&#x20AC;&#x153;cultural markersâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 255). In this process, it is no coincidence that new religious

imaginaries.â&#x20AC;? Understood in this way, comparison becomes a â&#x20AC;&#x153;mode of thoughtâ&#x20AC;? beyond

communities turn to urban youth and pop culture, since this cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (young) protagonists

WKH PHWKRGRORJLFDO LVVXHV RI D FRPSDUDWLYH ZRUN DQG D VWUDWHJLF WRRO LQ WKH RYHUDOO FRQÂżJuration of a project seeking to cross transdisciplinary, transinstitutional and transregional boundaries; in other words, it becomes a tool â&#x20AC;&#x153;for creating new conversations and collab-

RUDWLRQV IRU UHDGLQJ GLIIHUHQW WUDGLWLRQV DQG FRQQHFWLRQV DQG IRU H[SDQGLQJ WKH ÂżHOG RI

are a popular target for their missionary strategies. As the Global Prayers case studies

LQGLFDWH WKH FLWLHV HVSHFLDOO\ DUH WKH ORFDWLRQV ZKHUH UHOLJLRXV DFWRUV ÂżQG D QHZ FXOWXUDO political, and economic embeddedness. To begin with, in a kind of anti-cyclical movement,

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critique and inquiryâ&#x20AC;? (ibid.: 730). Last but not least, following AbdouMaliq Simone (2010 :

progressive hybridization, de-bordering, individualization, and secularization of urban re-

263), the aim is to go beyond a purely analytic approach â&#x20AC;&#x153;to imagine a situation whereâ&#x20AC;? At-

ligions. This dialectic entanglement of the religious with the urban generates a diversity of

lanta, Beirut, Berlin, Istanbul, Jakarta, Cairo, Kinshasa, Lagos, Mexico, Mumbai, Rio de Ja-

urban cultures of conversion. For example, (post-)Islamist middle-class milieus in Istanbul

neiro, and Tehran â&#x20AC;&#x153;are â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;neighborsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in a single metropolitan space and what that experience

infuse urban consumer cultures linked to the fashion and beauty industry with a religious

might be like for people who would live within it.â&#x20AC;? Such a comparison is not only endowed

VLJQLÂżFDQFH g]JH $NWDĂş DQG (GD hQOÂ <Â FHVR\ +LGD\HW 7XNVDO %XLOGLQJV FRPSOH[HV LQ

with meaning as reciprocal Learning from* WKH WLWOH RI DQ HDUOLHU PHWUR=RQHV H[KLELWLRQ

the wastelands of urban modernityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whether those generated by industrial production and

see Becker et. al. 2003) but is equally â&#x20AC;&#x153;a key site for the urban imaginationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a potential site

its bureaucracies or by the cultural industriesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are similarly transformed into serial rooms

of politicsâ&#x20AC;? (McFarlane 2010: 732).

for Pentecostal prayer, appearing in the photo series by Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber as a global form going beyond regional patterns. Or religious actors adopt previously demonized practices and genres from both worldly and global urban pop- and subcultures, â&#x20AC;&#x153;purifyâ&#x20AC;? them

INTERCONNECTIONS: COMBINING ANALYTICAL â&#x20AC;&#x153;DEEP EXPLORATIVE DRILLINGâ&#x20AC;? TO FORM A COHERENT PICTURE

to conform with their religious values, and market them in a highly lucrative global religious

In this last section, I would like to suggest, on the basis of the higher-level issues, a variety of

media and culture industry (Martijn Oosterbaan; AdĂŠ Bantu; and Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt).

interconnections between case studies and Global Prayers productions, taken as exemplary

6XFK XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV GHYHORS LQ WKH IRUP RI ZRUOGLQJ SUDFWLFHV IURP WKH

originally urban processes of mutual borrowings, appropriation, transformation, and ne-

Istanbul, and Berlin, and ultimately to Paris. As Heck illustrates with the example of Istanbul,

tion. In a continual process of dialectic entanglements, they shift existing urban borders

paradigmatically in a â&#x20AC;&#x153;worlding from belowâ&#x20AC;? (Simone 2001), to enable urban Africa to expand

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WKH FKXUFKHV KDYH QXPHURXV IXQFWLRQV LQ WKLV XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQ ZKLFK GHYHORSV

between sacral and secular cultural practices, even though these rigid divisions were, in

around the globe. The churches function as places of retreat, offer migrants economic and po-

general, initially constructed by the religious communities themselves to keep the faith-

litical options, serve as the location, in their role as a spiritual home, of a religious community

ful from the temptations of the sinful world.

and experience, and provide a â&#x20AC;&#x153;distinction marker to assert their believers as having a moral concept and lived identityâ&#x20AC;? (Gerda Heck).

RELIGIOUS METROPOLITAN MAINSTREAM

Where urban religions interact with current cultur-

al and political practices and scenes in urban space, they create new kinds of cultural self-evidences facilitating their compatibility with the most modern forms of urbanity. Even in Berlin, the dynamic of religion is no longer limited to disputes between migrant religions

These examples show that, contrary to the traditional urban theory assumptions, in the conWH[W RI VXFK XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV DV SUDFWLFHV RI ZRUOGLQJ UHOLJLRQ GRHV QRW UHSUHsent some exotic reminiscence, but its agency unfolds at the heart of metropolitan moderniza-

WLRQ 6XFK FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV KDYH QRW GHYHORSHG LQ FRQWUDGLFWLRQ WR FDSLWDOLVW ORJLFV LQ WKH FRXUVH

in the diaspora, as still shimmers through in Werner Schiffauerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essay. The artistic research

of a global â&#x20AC;&#x153;new metropolitan mainstream,â&#x20AC;? which the research network INURA (2011) un-

for Global Prayers by Magdalena Kallenberger and Dorothea Nold (2012), in contrast, in-

derstands as structurally comparable urban development strategies and lifestyles applicable

vestigated the spatial practices of new Christian congregations in Berlin who rent such sub-

â&#x20AC;&#x153;under the conditions of planetary urbanizationâ&#x20AC;? in economically competing cities. Instead, in

culture venues for their church services as a trendy nightclub, an arthouse movie theater, or

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a co-working space. Here, it becomes clear how the urban dynamic of religion has already reached the â&#x20AC;&#x153;creative classes,â&#x20AC;? the educated, individualist, and entrepreneurial milieu which

URBAN-RELIGIOUS BODILY PRACTICES AS THE (SELF-)GOVERNANCE OF BELIEVERS

The following

represents that metropolitanism in Berlin currently celebrated around the world. The pro-

section discusses interconnections between Global Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; research into the relationship

fane locations these congregations appropriate are less sacralized by staged interventions

between religious communities and their believers and non-believing urban residents, as evi-

than atmospherically by a mediating â&#x20AC;&#x153;spiritâ&#x20AC;? of religious â&#x20AC;&#x153;communitasâ&#x20AC;? spread through the

dent in their interactions with the city. This is closely linked to the question of the religious

VSDFH E\ WKH SRZHU RI FRPPXQLW\ ULWXDOV JRVSHO PXVLF RU GLVFXUVLYH DIÂżUPDWLRQV RI IDLWK ,Q

actorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;embodied acts and the bodily practicesâ&#x20AC;? (Holloway and Valins 2002: 8) in urban

this way, such new religious communities forge links to other metropolitan community for-

space. Since this in essence addresses the question of governmentality in Foucaultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense,

mations that are presently highly dynamic and which, as in the case of co-working and club

drawing on this concept allows various studies to be read together. As a â&#x20AC;&#x153;totality of proce-

communities, have emerged from urban subcultures.

dures, techniques, methods that constitute the way people rule one anotherâ&#x20AC;? (Foucault 2005:

7KH VWXGLHV E\ $\ĂşH dDYGDU DQG $VRQ]HK 8NDK ZKLFK FDQ EH UHDG DV FRPSOHPHQWDU\ IRFXV

116), governance does not only suppress subjectivity, but also promotes technologies of the

on urban planning projects, lifestyles, infrastructures and power structures in the religious

self, which can be docked onto the aims of governmentality. Hence, governmentality is, in

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general, not characterized â&#x20AC;&#x153;by the power to rule,â&#x20AC;? but â&#x20AC;&#x153;by the power to affect, like the relation-

a global scale, these complexes also belong to the most modern representations of late

ship between priest and congregation, producing a certain set of behaviors within members

capitalist urbanityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;though here, as megaprojects developed through centralist planning

RI WKH Ă&#x20AC;RFN VR WKDW IRU H[DPSOH VDOYDWLRQ PD\ EH DFKLHYHGÂ´ *DUPDQ\

DQG IXQFWLRQLQJ RQ WKH EDVLV RI D FDSLWDOLVW SURÂżW ORJLF LQ LWV IRUP DV FRQVXPHU RULHQWHG

Religious communities, then, can be understood as programs of conversion and redemp-

technocratic, and modernist. Although the Istanbul development was designed by a

tion and as technologies of governance to collectively implement the rules and anchor them

state apparatus dominated by the Islamic faith and the Lagos complex is the product of

in the individuals (cf. Marshall 2009). In doing so they offer religious rituals through which

an economic-religious (global) company, both constellations ultimately appear as urban-

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At the same time they provide a precise code of conduct, with which the believers are to

also locations where processes of secularization (of Christian as well as Islamic milieus

govern their own life on an everyday basis, and give clear instructions concerning fami-

and their values) and sacralization (of urban social space) are active, creating paradoxical

ly life, gender roles, sexual orientation, consumer behavior, and cultural activities (Lanz

effects. In these two religious worlding processes, it is precisely the gated community, the

2012). In this interconnected governing of the self and the other, the believers go through

global paradigm of space in the Western secular city under neoliberal capitalism, which

a process of subjectivization creating them as new people, and intending to lift them out

becomes an exemplary model for the development of a real â&#x20AC;&#x153;city of Godâ&#x20AC;? which follows the

PRGHUQLVW XUEDQ LGHDO LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHG E\ KRPRJHQHLW\ SXULW\ DQG VHJUHJDWLRQ

of an urban environment perceived as not-pleasing to God or, literally as devilish, into a divinely ordered spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a â&#x20AC;&#x153;city of God,â&#x20AC;? as it were. In this process, space is also to be under-

In her multi-sited ethnography, Gerda Heck describes quite different types of urban worlding

stood in Lefebvreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense as geographical.

practices which, however, are equally avant-garde. Her research traces the global migration

Each individual conversion in the context of the individualized and deculturized forms of

routes of Congolese revivalist Christians from Kinshasa to the transfer cities of Rio de Janeiro,

urban religion turns into, first and foremost, a question of the governance of the self,

as is evident, for instance, in the studies, both conducted in Rio de Janeiro, by Amanda

'LDV LQWR D 6DODÂżVW FRPPXQLW\ RU P\ RZQ LQWR 3HQWHFRVWDO XUEDQ FXOWXUHV /DQ] 7KH

H[DPSOH PHWUR=RQHV VXFK VWXGLHV DOVR FRQÂżUP $VHI %D\DWÂśV VWDWHPHQW WKDW marginalized urban residents cannot afford to be ideological. Instead, they are more likely

event of conversion represents a break with a previous lifestyle and an extreme endeavor

to side with those groups able to effectively support them in their everyday needs and, over

on womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s religious lifestyles in Istanbul shows, this generally leads to a permanent strug-

elaborated historically in an interaction with the technologies of power they were exposed

WR FUHDWH D QHZ SHUVRQDO LGHQWLW\ $V WKH FRQWULEXWLRQ E\ g]JH $NWDĂş DQG (GD hQOÂ <Â FHVR\

the last decades, these were often religious organizations. Their technologies of the self,

gle in self-disciplining which interacts with its urban environment. The strategic program

to, enable the urban poor to act as subjects, and certainly make them capable of, depending

of each particular religious community is inscribed in the new believers during the pro-

on theirâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;material, political, or spiritualâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;objectives and needs, interlinking the religious,

cess of subjectivization, which is largely realized through bodily practices enacted in urban space as a break with the spatial practices exercised before the conversionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as, for instance,

SROLWLFDO DQG HFRQRPLF ÂżHOGV DQG EOXUULQJ WKH ERUGHUV EHWZHHQ WKHP

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The corporeal enactment and performances â&#x20AC;Ś [which] are central to the maintenance and

in Amanda Diasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s example of the use of the beach in Rio de Janeiro. This is also realized

development of religious spaces and landscapesâ&#x20AC;? (Holloway and Valins 2002: 8) are natu-

through religious clothing, especially in terms of womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bodies (though, as Dias indicates,

rally not only expressed in individual body practices, but also appear in performances, such

not exclusively so). Taking the example of academic religious women in Istanbul, Hidayet

as collective prayers, missionary â&#x20AC;&#x153;crusades,â&#x20AC;? processions, or purely symbolic occupations

Tuksal describes how since, in contrast to men, their clothing makes them visibly religious

of space, which religious communities orchestrate in the form of a technology of power in

combining their faith and everyday life. Asonzeh Ukahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s description of the virtually totali-

invisibility play an important role here as when, for instance, Hezbollah, in Beirut, osten-

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urban space. As the artistic contribution by Paola Yacoub shows, questions of visibility and

tarian code of conduct for all the residents of Redemption City in Lagos highlights in par-

sively enacted the power of God and his representatives on earth during an overpoweringly

ticular just how strongly the religious regulation of bodily practices extends into all areas of

and passionately staged funeral procession. This, in turn, is complemented by a process of

everyday culture (alcohol, smoking, bars, dancing, music, sex, etc.).

making those elements invisible which contradict its claims to religious-political purity and

The collective self-organization of created or transformed assemblages of religious perfor-

perfection. In Yacoubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s words â&#x20AC;&#x153;Both ostentation and occultation contribute simultaneously

mance in urban space, however, reveals how unstable, dynamic, and contingent the development of religious body practices are in the city. This includes such hybrids as the Pentecostal â&#x20AC;&#x153;crusade,â&#x20AC;? carnival, or the drug-gang funk party in Rio de Janeiro (Martijn Oosterbaan), ritual prayers in the Santa Muerte cult in Mexico (Anne Huffschmid), the

to how religious leaders have a major responsibility for dead bodies.â&#x20AC;?

%ULDQ /DUNLQÂśV DUWLFOH LQ WXUQ WDNHV WKH GLIIHUHQW H[DPSOH RI DQ XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXration in the northern Nigerian city of Jos, which has repeatedly suffered from religious

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burial rituals in Kinshasa taken over by adolescents (Filip De Boeck), or young people in

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Mumbai transforming the Ganesh Chuturthi festival into techno-style rave parties (George

churches and mosques, are capable, as non-human actors in Latourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense, of drawing

Jose). Potentialities appear in such urban-religious configurations for quite different

attention to religious messages and creating emotions capable of fomenting religious con-

(social, cultural, spiritual) urban worlds than those envisaged in religious governance

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programs. They show particularly clearly how, in their mutual interactions with the believersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

with a deliberate strategy of disattention. Through this opposing technology of the self,

WHFKQRORJLHV RI WKH VHOI DQG WKH VSHFLÂżF HIIHFWLYH SRZHUV RI WKH XUEDQ JRYHUQDQFH SURgrams inevitably fail as an entirety (as do all such programs), and the relationship between

they seek to distract themselves from an urban space which, through sound, has been exSORVLYHO\ FKDUJHG ZLWK UHOLJLRXV FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFW DQG ZKLFK WKH\ FDQQRW SK\VLFDOO\ HVFDSH

governing the self and the other has to be constantly realigned. At the same time, in their

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(STREET) POLITICS RECLAIMING THE (RELIGIOUS) RIGHT TO THE CITY

society. For example, Pentecostalismâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s de facto patterns of government in Rio de Janeiroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Prayers contributions just mentioned, I would like to now take the case studies as a start-

favelaV ZKLFK GHYLDWH FRQVLGHUDEO\ IURP LWV VWUDWHJLF SURJUDP UHĂ&#x20AC;HFW WKH favelaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s his-

ing point to consider connections to the relations between the political and the religious

torically developed character as a particular urban space. The favelaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-made urbanism

FRUUHVSRQGV WR WKH HPHUJHQW XUEDQ VHOI PDGH UHOLJLRQ WKHUH ERWK EHLQJ LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHG E\ LQIRU-

Following the two Global

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VXSSRUWLQJ DQ XQHTXLYRFDO GLVWLQFWLRQ EHWZHHQ OHIW ZLQJ HPDQFLSDWRU\ DQG UHOL-

mality in the sense of self-organized regulations and precarity, as well as an individual and

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collective creativity as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;quiet encroachment of the ordinaryâ&#x20AC;? (Bayat 2004; Lanz 2012).

by the latter. Similarly, Nezar AlSayyad (2010) primarily associates radical-religious urban

This also highlights how the connection between poverty and the rise of urban religions,

groups with reactionary positions, connecting their rise to the possible establishment of

dubbed by Asef Bayat (2007) in the context of Islam as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;myth of the Islamic poor,â&#x20AC;? is

a â&#x20AC;&#x153;fundamentalist city,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;where certain categories of people or the religious other are ren-

far from being as causal and one-dimensional as urban theory has so often assumed (cf.

GHUHG ÂľEDUH OLIHÂśÂ´ ,Q DGGUHVVLQJ WKH TXHVWLRQ RI ZKLFK XUEDQ FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV UDG-

Davis 2004). Although Global Prayersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; studies indicate that the urban poor often regard

ical religious groups could constitute as powerful actors, AlSayyad and Massoumi (2010)

religion as a means of enhancing their control over their own circumstances (see, for

point to a multiplicity of mutually interwoven processes, as do a number of the authors of

research projects conducted for Global Prayers (for example, Danusiri, Jose, Bou Akar,

munity (on this notion see, for example, Marcuse 2009, Harvey 2008). Their success was

Rustom, Yacoub, SchĂ¤fer, and Huffschmid). These processes include power and exploit-

based on a political activism addressing those social issues that were existentially import-

ative structures from colonialism, ethno-nationalist projects, institutionalized forms of

ant for the Shiites migrating from rural southern Lebanon to Beirut. This urban-religious

marginalization, the arrogance of secular or traditional religious elites, and modernizing

FRQÂżJXUDWLRQ ZDV JHQHUDWHG E\ D VWUHDP RI PLJUDQWV WR WKH FLW\ D QHZ NLQG RI UHOLJLRXV

processes that break up social structures. AlSayyad and Massoumi rightly note that radical

community formation with an associated political practice and, interacting with this, the

political-religious groups can successfully establish themselves in cities by reacting to such

material, social, and symbolic production of urban space, and it resulted not least in the

societal constellations with transcendentally based practices capable of endowing meaning,

creation of completely new types of religious spaces and rituals.

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$U\R 'DQXVLULÂśV DQDO\VLV RI WZR UHOLJLR SROLWLFDO FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFWV RYHU XUEDQ VSDFH LQ -DNDUWD RU-

Justin Beaumont and Christopher Bakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2011a, 2011b) concept of the postsecular city

FKHVWUDWHG E\ WKH 6XÂż 7DULTD $ODZL\D PRYHPHQW DOVR UHYHDOV WKH QRYHO ZD\V LQ ZKLFK UHOL-

offers a quite different interwovenness in contemporary cities in contrast to the repressive

gion and politics intersect on the urban level. Danusiriâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research clearly shows how urban

religious-political forms of interactions described above. However, the one-sided empha-

DFWRUV XVH UHOLJLRQ DV D SODWIRUP WR SXEOLFDOO\ SURÂżOH WKHLU SURWHVWV DJDLQVW XUEDQ GHYHORS-

sis on the positive effects of the religious urban presence makes this ultimately normative

ment processes detrimental to their interests, and in this process invent new saints and

concept, which interprets the city transformed by postsecularism as a laboratory of educational and ethical change, appear to be almost naively optimistic. Certainly, the asser-

KRO\ VLWHV LQ XUEDQ VSDFH ,Q WKLV XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQ WKH UHOLJLRXV PRWLYHV DQG

rituals (such as the aspired sacralizing of space, veneration of saints, or hope of a miracle)

tion that integrating religious groups in urban governance does not automatically lead to

RI D UHOLJLRXV DFWRU WKH 6XÂż PRYHPHQW DUH LQWHUZRYHQ ZLWK WKH SROLWLFDO DQG PDWHULDO PR-

conservative political change, but also facilitates the formation of overarching coalitions of

tives of secular actors in a spatial practice, forcing urban development processes to become

SURJUHVVLYH VHFXODU DQG UHOLJLRXV JURXSV PD\ UHĂ&#x20AC;HFW WKH UHVHDUFK ÂżQGLQJV LQ WKH Global

the subject of a public negotiation.

Prayers project (e.g., Schiffauer in this volume; Teschner 2011). Nonetheless, the Global

George Joseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research in Mumbai also considered the new way in which political and reli-

Prayers research into the urban-religious way of doing things through actor-centered ap-

gious claims and practices in urban space are interwoven, in this case in the transforma-

SURDFKHV OLQNLQJ WKHRU\ DQG SUDFWLFH KDV SURGXFHG D VLJQLÂżFDQWO\ PRUH DPELYDOHQW UHVXOW

tion of the Hindu Chhath festival from a ritual celebrated privately into a mega-event on

than these two opposing concepts of, on the one hand, a fundamentalist city viewed as re-

the glamorous Juhu Beach, resembling a scene from a Bollywood movie. Through this

pressive and marginalizing and, on the other, a postsecular city interpreted as a laboratory

religious-political event, representatives of the marginalized Bhojpuri migrants confront

of ethical change.

ideological opponents such as the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena. This transformation of

Such ambivalent interlacings are already evident in the two religious-political movements

ZKLFK LQ GLVWLQFWLRQ WR WUDGLWLRQDO RUWKRGR[LHV SOD\HG D VLJQLÂżFDQW SDUW LQ HVWDEOLVKLQJ WKH

a religious ritual into an event reinvents religious tradition and fuses it with a political mobilization which asserts and defends the right to the city for the individual ethnic

modern urban interlinking between the religious and the political in the 1970s. These two

communities.

movements were political Islam which, as Hengameh Golestan and Sandra SchĂ¤fer note,

Paradigmatically, these Global Players studies show the lack of evidence to support ei-

emerged as the ruling form in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, and a Catholic liberation

ther the view that religious (fundamentalist) movements are simply replacing secular

WKHRORJ\ ZKRVH ZRUOGO\ SRZHU ZDV UHVWULFWHG WR D GLVFRXUVH ZLWK D JOREDO LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFH DQG

(emancipatory) ones, or that the formerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s political involvement can be reduced to reac-

a multiplicity of grassroots communities in poor districts across Latin America (cf. Anne

tionary (religious) positions or to a positive ethical change in the cities. Instead, one can

Huffschmid in this volume). Though these movements have fundamental differences as,

identify, often in the sense of Asef Bayatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;street politics,â&#x20AC;? multi-faceted intersecting

for instance, in their political and ideological proximity to the poor which was more instru-

forms of politics and religion in all nuances of ideology and agency. At times, religious

mental in political Islam and, rather, an end in itself in liberation theology (Bayat 2007),

and political mobilization fuse, while in other cases religion is instrumentalized as a ve-

they also share important features, for example, in terms of their anti-colonial stance or

hicle for political protest, and vice versa. Such an instrumentalization may also occur to

Marxist roots.

push through the classical demands of emancipatory movements, such as social rights.

If one examines interwovenness between the political forms of religion in urban daily life

When discriminated migrant workers self-organize (in this case, the Bhojpuri in Mumbai

less on the basis of strategic programs and technologies of power and more through the everyday forms and the concrete spatial and cultural practices by which they become man-

or Shiites in Beirut), there is a successive sacralization of areas of political struggle or so-

FLDO VXSSRUW IRUPHUO\ GHÂżQHG DV VHFXODU D SURFHVV ZKLFK FDQ EH VLPLODUO\ REVHUYHG LQ WKH

ifest in the city, the result is a picture of ambivalences and contradictionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as is evident

EDWWOH DJDLQVW JHQWULÂżFDWLRQ DV LQ -DNDUWD 7KH ERUGHUV UXQQLQJ EHWZHHQ WKH VHFXODU DQG

from the three following examples. For instance, Joseph Rustomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research looked at three

sacral are renegotiated, creating novel hybrid structures. As Roberto Orsi (1999b: 53) right-

Sheikh generations to explore the rise of the Shiites in Beirut from a marginalized minority to a powerful religious-political group utilizing Beirutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s particular political and social char-

DFWHU LQ WKHLU ÂżJKW WR JDLQ LQ /HIHEYUHÂśV WHUPV WKH ÂłULJKW WR WKH FLW\Â´ IRU WKHLU UHOLJLRXV FRP40

ly notes: â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is nothing necessarily liberating about the alternative worlds constituted

RU GLVFORVHG E\ WKHVH XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV PDSV ÂŤ $OO UHOLJLRXV UHFRQÂżJXUDWLRQV RI XUEDQ VSDFH make some experiences possible, encourage and satisfy some desires and aspirations, while 41

disallowing others.â&#x20AC;? Hence, interactions between the political sphere and the new urban

gious.â&#x20AC;? Werner Schiffauerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research into multi-religious encounters and forms of involve-

religions always contain at least the potential of opening the city, as AbdouMaliq Simone

ment in local politics, shows, not least, that such a selectively understood secularity is also

expressed it, for the miraculous which can enable new urban worlds to appear beyond the

no longer viable. Such traditional borders are destabilized in the rearguard actions of â&#x20AC;&#x153;mil-

real urban landscape.

LWDQW VHFXODULVWV Â´ DQG DUH EHFRPLQJ IDU PRUH FRPSOH[ RSHQ DQG VXEMHFW WR FRQĂ&#x20AC;LFW

As the Global Prayers research shows, there presently appears to be in the cities, on the NEW ZONES OF SECULAR-SACRAL OVERLAPPING IN URBAN SPACE

It remains to note, in conclu-

most diverse levels, a complete and continuous renegotiation of traditional bordersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even

sion, that the Global Prayers research generally indicates the impossibility of limiting the

if â&#x20AC;&#x153;onlyâ&#x20AC;? discursively establishedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;between the secular and sacral, religion, politics, the

urban religious dynamic anywhere in the world to just the poor populations, or to migrant

economy, and culture, and all their manifestations and forms of materialization in urban

religions in the diaspora with their niches and battles over diverging assertions. Instead,

space. As a result of ongoing social practices and negotiation processes, these borders are

this religious dynamic can be found on all levels of the permanent production of the urban,

shifting, producing novel hybrid structures, new fragmented and fractal borders, and inno-

and thus needs to be correspondingly integrated into urban theory. All the urban-religious

YDWLYH W\SHV RI XUEDQ UHOLJLRXV FRQÂżJXUDWLRQV ZKLFK WUDQVIRUP XUEDQ VRFLDO VSDFH WKURXJK

ping and interwovenness between religious forms of producing urban spaces, forms of the

least this should be the aim of urban theory, as closely as possible in all their complexity.

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religious transformation of everyday urban life, the location of transregional religious connections and the governmentality of urban religious communities, which all emerge from

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY ANDREW BOREHAM

urban-religious practices of worlding. As has become clear, the religious expands into all other (supposedly secular) areas in the permanent production of the urban in such a way

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21). Such a view is also supported by Adrian Ivakhiv (2006: 173), who regards religion as

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ographies. At the same time, though, the urban practices of religious actors cannot be reduced to political claims or economic or social activities, even if they intimately connect â&#x20AC;&#x153;religionâ&#x20AC;? to such claims or activities (on this point, see Schiffauer). Despite saints being invented during the political struggle over an urban development project (in Jakarta, see Danusiri), or church communities representing centers of economic enterprises (in Istanbul, see Heck), or Redemption City representing a capitalist form of urban planning (in Lagos, see Ukah), these

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life and spiritual experience. In many cases, such practices temporarily or permanently transform spatial structures into sacred places: miracles are attributed to new â&#x20AC;&#x153;Saintsâ&#x20AC;? and new pilgrimage sites established; religious services and forms of community in the diaspora are experienced as religious communitas; and Redemption City facilitates a unique religious mass experience, and a lifestyle informed by religious norms. By focusing on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;way of doing thingsâ&#x20AC;? from an actor and everyday perspective and the

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al Prayers elaborate how new types of overlapping structures are formed between the secular and sacral in relation to the urban. Both the secular and sacral were always interwoven in a multiplicity of ways in urban life, especially in non-Western societies, and can hardly be divided conceptually. Although Western modernity has ascribed strictly and abstractly drawn borders to the religious (see Asad 2003), the Christian churches have always played an important role in urban social organization (through, for example, their religious charity associations) even in a city such as Berlin as the supposed â&#x20AC;&#x153;world capital of atheismâ&#x20AC;? (Berger 2001), a point that often remains unheeded in debates over the â&#x20AC;&#x153;return of the reli42

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GARMANY, JEFF, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Religion and Governmentality: Understanding Governance in Urban Brazil,â&#x20AC;? Geoforum 41, no. 6

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Lagos Strip SABINE BITTER AND HELMUT WEBER

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125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

“Architecture in this landscape becomes a symbol in space rather than a form in space” (Venturi et al. 1972).

As part of the infrastructural modernization

the series of camps and congress halls, with

of Nigeria, the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway

capacity for masses of people, along the

was constructed between 1976 and 1979. It

highway entail multiple meanings. In leav-

starts at the municipal border of Lagos and,

ing behind the city these sites offer a symbol

by crossing the federal state of Ogun, it has

of hope and prosperity to the middle classes,

strategically connected the political capital

but mainly, they provide respite to the low-

(until 1991) and commercial center of the

er class population who suffer from living

country with Ibadan, Nigeria’s second most

under informal and precarious conditions

important city. The expressway has been

in Lagos. In addition, these camps serve a

the key for the transportation of agricultur-

social and political imagination, which ac-

al and industrial products and resources.

cuses the city of being dark, godless, and

Since its independence in 1960, and its for-

dystopian, and see Lagos as an outcome of

mation as a nation-state in 1963, Nigeria’s

the failures of modernization and decoloni-

wealth has been based largely on oil re-

zation.

sources. The nation’s oil revenues increased

These emergent “Cities of God” along the

during the oil crises in 1973 and 1979, but

Lagos–Ibadan Expressway became the

Nigeria faced a severe economic crisis in the

main focus in our research on the represen-

mid-1980s, which has affected the country

tation of architectures, buildings, and spac-

and the city of Lagos until the present.

es produced by new religious movements

Since the mid-1980s, the presence of Pen-

in Lagos. In our series of works, “All Will

tecostal churches on the interstate highway

Be Well: Religion Industries” (2012) we

has also increased, through property acqui-

looked at a complex mix of Fordistic and

sition. Today, the road is home to mainly

post-Fordistic modalities in the production,

Pentecostal prayer camps, a few Evangelical

distribution, and consumption of religious

Christian Churches and one Islamic camp.

goods and spaces, and how their growing

The compounds of housing developments,

social-political, cultural, and economic im-

banking institutions, and private universi-

portance affects the city and its inhabitants.

ties, and prayer camps—most prominent-

In “Lagos Strip” we approach visibility,

ly the Redeemed Christian Church of God

image-ability, and the symbolic and formal

(RCCG) forty-two kilometers outside La-

aspects of prayer camps.

gos 1 —are representative of the growth of

Driving along the expressway and passing by

the economic and social importance of the

these strangely familiar popular religious-

new Evangelical churches. Even though the

based architectures with their symbolic or-

location of “sacred spaces” in rural areas is

der of signs, billboards, and gates, we were

common to Nigerian indigenous religions,

reminded of an earlier debate on the rela-

1 See Asonzeh Ukah’s contribution in this volume.

carried out in the 1960s and ’70s.

tionship between image and architecture

136

137

In his recently published book, The Art-

at distance from the car, and the drawings

Architecture Complex (2011), Hal Foster

SRLQWV WRZDUGV WKH LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFH RI 3RS LQ WKH

of the architectural elements of entrances

shift from modernism to postmodernism,

HUQLVW UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWLRQV RI WKLV SDUWLFXODU XUEDQ

and gates of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lagos Strip,â&#x20AC;? articulate the debate of failed modernization and postmod-

through the oppositional approaches of Venturi et al. (op. cit.) and Reyner Banham.

ODQGVFDSH ZKLFK LV VLJQLÂżFDQWO\ VKDSHG E\

In Theory and Design in the First Machine

a religion-based industry.

Age (1960), Banham advocates a radical up-

The studies of entrances and gates in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lagos

dating of modernist design and form-giving

Stripâ&#x20AC;? express both the multiple choices and

WKURXJK DQ H[SUHVVLYH 3RS LQĂ&#x20AC;XHQFHG

the offers of religious organizations, and

â&#x20AC;&#x153;image-abilityâ&#x20AC;? of the Second Machine Age.

obviously indicate the way the churches or-

In contrast, Foster quotes Learning from

ganize the sequences of buildings and sites

Las Vegas, in which Venturi et al. criticize

alongside the Stripâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where these camps

modernist architecture for its disconnec-

compete for recognition. As a montage,

tion both from society and history through

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lagos Stripâ&#x20AC;? 2 proposes further engagement

its commitment to an abstract modernity.

with the questions of what is â&#x20AC;&#x153;behindâ&#x20AC;? these

Therefore, they could argue, the modern

symbols and architectural forms, and what â&#x20AC;&#x153;futureâ&#x20AC;? they promise.

paradigm of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;duck,â&#x20AC;? in which the form expresses function sculpturally, must cede to the postmodern model of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;decorated shed.â&#x20AC;? In their understanding, this meant a building that has a rhetorical facade and a conventional body, and where space and structure are directly at the service of the program, and ornament is applied independently of them. Foster is ultimately skeptical about the postmodern shift in architecture, which he perceives as always contextual, alluding to

KLVWRU\ DQG SODFH EXW ZKLFK DOVR FRQĂ&#x20AC;DWHV

BANHAM, REYNER, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London, 1960. BITTER, SABINE, AND HELMUT WEBER, â&#x20AC;&#x153;All Will be Well: Religion Industries,â&#x20AC;? in Faith is the Place: the Urban Cultures of Global Prayers, ed. metroZones, metroZones 11. Berlin, 2012, pp. 94â&#x20AC;&#x201C;105. FOSTER, HAL, The Art-Architecture Complex. London, 2011. UKAH, ASONZEH, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Redeeming Urban Spaces: The Ambivalence of Building a Pentecostal City in Lagos, Nigeria,â&#x20AC;? in Global Prayers Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City, ed. Jochen Becker et al. Berlin, 2013. VENTURI, ROBERT, DENISE SCOTT BROWN, AND STEVEN IZENOUR,

Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA, 1972, p. 13.

the civic and the commercial into a socially inclusive symbolism of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;everyday.â&#x20AC;? He doubts that these social inscriptions in architecture have ever been a form of the democratization of built space, but instead have just remained a mere projection of the desire for this democratization. These queries are useful to consider the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lagos Stripâ&#x20AC;? and its mix of symbols, signs, architectures, and images that evolve out of competing religious, commercial, and social

2 7KH PRQWDJH RI SKRWRJUDSKV DQG VNHWFKHV ZDV ÂżUVW SUHVHQWHG as a video-loop at Global Prayers: Redemption and Liberation in the City, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in 2012.

interests, driven by the popularization of religion. The montage of photographs taken 138

139

Clusters

140

141

Deconstructing the Fundamentalist City?

142

143

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Speaking in Tongues: Crowds, Assistants, and Miracles AERNOUT MIK

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Popular Cultures of Conversion

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On â&#x20AC;&#x153;Speaking in Tonguesâ&#x20AC;?: Experiences of Researching Religious Practices

In the context of Global Prayers, Dutch artist Aernout Mik is developing a multi-screen video installation exploring manifestations of current transnational religious movements (with focus on Pentecostalism) that promise liberation and prosperity to the individual, while at the same time operating as corporate companies that structure social and urban life. In preparation for this project, entitled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Speaking in Tonguesâ&#x20AC;? (cf. the visual essay in this volume), Aernout Mik and the cultural anthropologist and Global Prayers-Fellow Martijn Oosterbaan (cf. his contribution to this volume) met up with Jochen Becker in Amsterdam. On their agenda were research strategies and the search for apt ways to UH SUHVHQW UHOLJLRXV SUDFWLVHV LQ WKH *OREDO 6RXWK $W WKH VDPH WLPH $HUQRXW 0LN RĚ&#x2020;HUV insight into his production process.

JOCHEN BECKER: Maybe we could start with Aernoutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reaction to the Global Prayers pro-

posal. We showed you piles of photos as well as books and videos. And we talked quite extensively about what we had observed. I think we share interests in those kinds of observations, contradictions, or the blurriness of things. AERNOUT MIK: Can you remember why you guys asked me? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not the obvious artistic re-

searcher. JOCHEN BECKER: We liked the skipping between the one and the other within your works.

,Q FRQWUDVW WR DQ HVVD\ ÂżOP \RX JHW D NLQG RI PRUH VHQVXDO DSSURDFK DQG \RX DUH PRUH within a situation. What actually caught my interest was your installation at the Venice Biennale 2007. Where, on the one side, you re-enacted asylum conditions, and where there were related videos, artistic productions, but also found-footage videos. Plus a clever catalogue Citizens and Subjects, where the National Pavilion of The Netherlands positioned

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what social-political sphere, but on the other side, having a lot of reference, artistically, to

GRFXPHQWDU\ ÂżOPV 7KHUH ZDV D YHU\ FOHDU GLYLGH EHWZHHQ WKH QRWLRQ RI D GRFXPHQWDU\ found-footage approach and those kinds of quite ordinary situations, which are obviously staged: people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t behave naturally, so to speak. AERNOUT MIK: My interest in joining the Global Prayers project was indeed the sense of

blurriness I felt about the whole subject, I mean the range of itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the global rangeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all the footage that I saw from the start. I approached the project not so much from the angle: Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going on a location to do in-depth social-anthropological research there, but took a more distanced approach; where do these places, happenings, and spaces open up to? What kind of things do they share with completely different spaces, geographically, but also as a whole conceptual structure? That was really the starting point to investigate in all the visual material you showed me, but, of course, I also collected a lot of extra material, where these connections became visible. The connections appear to be visible between different places; for instance, the links between Nigeria and Rio. But also that the spaces were connecting with completely different spaces as well, that they were all, in a way, blurry situations: that they are on the crossroads of different worlds, that there is a strange way of adaptation to

AERNOUT MIK AND MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN IN CONVERSATION WITH JOCHEN BECKER 464

a very wide range of references, which are used either in a traditional religious sense, in a business sense, or in a media sense, or in the sense of a spectacle. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also hard 465

to talk about it from one perspective only, because thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;sâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;enormous crossroads of different things that happen at the same time. JOCHEN BECKER: And this is what broadened our perspective of the global approach. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d

tried to point out the global of Global Prayers. AERNOUT MIK: I was cutting it back a little bit, because it was too much to handle actuallyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it

went beyond my range and size very quickly. So thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why I also limited it to Pentecostalism in the end; why I focussed it more and more on Rio, because actually Rio in itself is so ... global. It sits on a crossroads of different things that spread out in a global way, already, by itself. JOCHEN BECKER: So the one thing is the global aspect which we could talk about, but the

other thing is the corporate, the business, or the media and event perspective, which we also observed, and which might be the prayer/player thing in the title of our project. In a way, you interpreted both sides of our given title, and maybe you could speak about this kind of entrepreneurial or event/business/media situation that you observed. And which is obviously different to the traditional church service. MEDIA

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way that the Catholic churches are located in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a gigantic difference. In every area you see maybe one large Catholic church and then you have hundreds of these different kinds of entrepreneurial Pentecostal churches in all different versions and sizes. So

Shooting â&#x20AC;&#x153;Speaking in Tonguesâ&#x20AC;? at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, July 2013 (pp. 467â&#x20AC;&#x201C;75)

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s completely intertwined with the urban structure at its most foundational level. It starts really smallâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you can see this corporate change in the little shopsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and then in other places,

towards the spiritual and religious happening. This is completely speculative but working

bigger versions of the little shops, until you get the very large shop. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s completely, ur-

from two sides towards each other and maybe, partly, in parallel to each other. They probably

banistically speaking, a totally different way and very much like an entrepreneurial struc-

canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meet really, but I wanted to see what happens; if they operate in relation to each other.

ture. So everyone is kind of inventing himself or herself there. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve also seen these very simple churches, such as one where this young girl was healing

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people and the father-pastor was extremely happy that I was there. He offered me this

trip to Rio, and in 2002 I began to live in this favela on the south side of the city, which

[crown of thorns] in the service. Of course, I was scared he would put it on my head. I felt

is surrounded by the wealth of Ipanema and Copacabana. Entering with camera in hand

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: We should talk about in what kind of environment that expectation

that the church was in a state of decline, I was coming from outside, and from an entrepre-

made my movement in the churches much easier. The idea that I was taking pictures and

neurial point of view I was the savior. When he knew we were coming and understood it

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documenting visually what was happening in the churches was very helpful. There was this

he made a photomontage of his daughter in front of the Berlin Film festival. For him, the

the representation by these churches, my initial question was how can these Pentecostal

church is like a small business that he must grow and sustain.

churches position themselves in the media age? How do they use media and, of course,

The whole event, even the service itself, of course, is a mixture between something that has

how do they get the funding? Where do they get the resources to be able to use that whole

enormous motivation of the people themselves: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Come, take pictures.â&#x20AC;? Being interested in

to do more with entertainment and with television up to a kind of a corporate motivational

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trainingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there is this crossover between a mediatized event and a corporate organization,

It seems that in a way these churches, and also the smallest entrepreneurs, are already

a management-like structure and a corporate motivational event. It is an event where there

thinking about the audience/consumers of their productsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in a very late modern, one

is a sense or suggestion of collectivity but, in the end, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actually mostly based on individ-

might even say post-modern wayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so they also see all these kinds of possibilities. You only

ual futures, individual prospects, and individual prosperity. And there you have this very

need a crazy guy from Amsterdam whom you perceive is going to be the key to the start of

one-to-one fusion of the material and the spiritual worlds, which in my opinion, you can

your world campaign. And there are these founding myths of the big pastors who also allow

also see in the corporate world itself as the leading thread.

these dreams: letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say, Edir Macedo of the Universal Church.

I start in my staged part of the project from the other side, approaching the situation from the

AERNOUT MIK: I am in contact with him now actually. It took me half a year to do that, but

viewpoint of a strictly corporate kind of event, and then try to transform this situation more

now we have direct e-mail contact (which turns out to be a dead end actually right now).

466

467

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: , VDOXWH \RX QRZ DQG \RX GHÂżQLWHO\ GHVHUYH WKLV FURZQ RI WKRUQV

back to the entrepreneurial grassroots. But on the other hand, a service with 5,000 people

JOCHEN BECKER: Maybe Aernout needs someone to handle the microphone?

really demonstrates that the Holy Spirit is present and that God has blessed your church.

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: That really would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

AERNOUT MIK: The power of God.

AERNOUT MIK: It has nothing to do with the church only as an institutionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all around

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: It is the repetition of bodies, in a way: the more bodies, the more

Macedoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personality all the time. You see posters of pastors that have a clear celebrity

potent the sign that the Holy Spirit is really present. There is a kind of scale.

structure. The church is very professionally organized, but you see it also in other church-

AERNOUT MIK: But that is a growth model and so, in a sense, it is also a corporate model.

es that are half the way to becoming bigger, that have media coverage already included. I

You start as the small entrepreneur and end up as the big global company.

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JOCHEN BECKER: To whom does the size speakâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to the inside and/or outside?

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MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: There has been some good statistical work on who the audiences of

are wearing identical long dresses; their bodies are kind of wiped out; they look like nuns.

the Pentecostal churches actually are. The AssemblĂŠia de Deus, the Assemblies of God, and

Although the space is not very big, it has live, sweeping cameras which make the space look

the Universal Church draw the same public, so to speak. In Rio, one speaks of classes A to

much bigger than it actually is. Screens around the place broadcast what is taking place.

E, class E is the lowest. The two churches draw people from this class but the Universal

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very well edited on the spot. So people are in this service but they have a media aware-

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ness of their own presence simultaneously, which is extremely fascinating. Especially in

AERNOUT MIK: Because wealth is related to that church very strongly.

these transitions between the smaller church and the mega-church, you can see the emer-

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Going back to your earlier question, most of these Assemblies of

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God churches are located in favelas, they are smaller, and they have more of this idea of

JOCHEN BECKER: Is it an extension of the given space? It might be that you always feel different

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solidarity among the members. If you want to look for the kind of leftovers of liberation

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AERNOUT MIK: The most powerful thing about the church is that it embraces contemporary

secret of their success, because it is actually not one churchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you could say it is a franchise?

society, it embraces the desire for money and the desire to be present in and through the

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media and to the whole world of celebrity. The whole structure of our new liberal society is

convention, but you have a lot of liberty if you get an audience and you are successful.

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world that is created.

AERNOUT MIK: Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure the Universal Church is differently organized. MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Indeed. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fascinating that they draw on the same people but do it

in different ways. According to all the people who have written about Universal, you can

COMMUNITAS

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JOCHEN BECKER: Is it a self-empowerment of those who otherwise are not seen?

idea that you develop a strong community feeling with the people present, because you can

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: I would be hesitant to go straight to a kind of empowerment. The

go on your way from work, you stop at a certain location and you enter, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the same

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kind of service that you can follow when you are close to your own neighborhood church.

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in their newspapers. You would see the same kinds of pictures all around the world. But

porary way of living in the city.

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JOCHEN BECKER: And the corporate culture too, because it obviously tests that brand or

as personal, or at least thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the only element to it. The idea of you, one, as one of the

identity, which is very eclectic, but somehow keeps it together. Would you say that the

millions of followers is extremely important as an image also.

churches have identities like corporate identities?

AERNOUT MIK: To me, this whole relation between what is the collective and what is the indi-

AERNOUT MIK: The Universal Church is very strong, of course, also with its symbol and the

vidual experience, and what is the individual or the collective message, is unclear. In a way

way the buildings are so clean-looking.

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not community oriented; although it is very collectively organized, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s some kind of strange paradox there, because it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speakâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the event itself has a community feeling

URBAN/RURAL

and the community experience, but outside of that, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more akin to something that helps

JOCHEN BECKER: Is it an urban phenomenon? Or have you observed it in a more rural sit-

you in leading your life and striving for the success of your family and career. But, at the

uation?

same time, in the service itself and the media coverage of it, there is an extremely strong

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: I think your question is very pertinent, but the fascinating thing is

collective experience.

that, originally, the Assemblies of God came from the north of Brazil. It was structured

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: I often heard the saying â&#x20AC;&#x153;Whenever there are two or three people

around a rural model, both in its organizational structure and its political organization. So

praying the Holy Spirit will be present.â&#x20AC;? Even the three of us, we are enough, and this goes

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468

469

other, saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;This church really is beyond Christianity.â&#x20AC;? Universal has always been criticized by many people. AERNOUT MIK: But also because theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re so strong, of course. MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: And it hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stopped them from inventing, at least, the whole range

of fascinating rituals that are completely new, which incorporate all these Afro-Brazilian symbols. AERNOUT MIK: These bigger churches, especially, are very experienced; they are hesitant

about any kind of media interference from outside. So they are open in a way to what they adopt within their own system, but outside, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re very much closed. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been kicked out of churches and stopped although we had permission; I have been asked to stop while the money is being collected. So there are a lot of tensions going on with the rest of society, there, obviously. There are a lot of accusations, not just from other churches, but also from journalists all kinds of signals. There is this idea of a marginalized urban population, which grew, even

about the role of money in the Church. So thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the contradiction with the openness of the

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under the military dictatorship there, and masses of people came to the city. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still

system and, in a way, Universal is the strongest in that rigidity towards the outside.

AERNOUT MIK: Is it not that the nature of the church has changed simultaneously with

is a secular state and there are clear forces that want to maintain boundaries between what

changes in society? If you think about the speed of growth of the new churches and the

is religious and what is commerce.

way the Catholic Church has been declining in parallel. That does have to do with the way

AERNOUT MIK: A lot of these pastors are gaining political power now; they are running for

society is developing economically, the current precariousness of the labor market, and the

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MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: There are different political agendas, but still, the idea is that Brazil

HOHFWLRQV DQG DUH JRLQJ LQWR ORFDO JRYHUQPHQW 6R WKHUHÂśV D IRUFH WR LQÂżOWUDWH WKH VHFXODU world. There is this very controversial Pastor Marco Feliciano who has just been elected as president of the human rights commission in Rio. He is extremely homophobic and also

current society than any other church. MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: So perhaps even our old dichotomies of thinking about the city and

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the ruralâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: At a certain point we are confronted with the fact that there are nor-

AERNOUT MIK: â&#x20AC;&#x201D;that might also explain the kind of limitations of this case study in Rio,

mative borders where we think religion begins and politics ends, or the other way around.

because it could also be a smaller city or bigger village somewhere else, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fundamentally different.

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BRANDING

outside, because we are not outside of it. I want to get towards this intrinsic combination

JOCHEN BECKER: Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s at the core of it compared to the traditional Catholic Church?

between the two.

But what we actually see is that religion, politics, and commerce are strongly connected.

to make a study of religion as something outside of us; as something we observe from

These kinds of enterprises are very fast, can be very eclectic and pragmatic, so how do they control their inner rules, what is the constitution of it? Is it the Bible? AERNOUT MIK: In all those things Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen, the Bible doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t play such a big role. If they use

BODY/CONTROL

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it, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s often in the form of a small quotation and a lot of the talk goes on about other things,

tion of politics: obviously religion can be a moral system, which more or less is powerless

actually.

beyond its own space. Or it is extended, as we see especially in the more militant Islamic

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: For the Universal Church the Bible is more a book to quote from.

situations or other very dominant religious systems, where it rules the whole city or even

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fascinating is, going back to these different churches in historical moments, that

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the whole state. In Nigeria, the Pentecostal Church takes over society as a political-moral

AERNOUT MIK: You mean within the church or between the churches?

quite out of control. You described the nun-like bodiless look.

power. And on the other side, for example in Rio where body-culture is exposed, it seems

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Between the churches. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not a historian, but it seems that it

AERNOUT MIK: That church was quite an exception, because, generally, the churches are

would be incredibly interesting to compare the European schisms and the many bran-

not so strict on women in terms of clothing. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s this whole thing of paying tribute/

ches of Protestantism in Europe with contemporary Brazil. In Holland, all these events

respect to God: men often wear suits, but there are also people in very casual dress and

were always about ruptures and then balancing the equilibrium between different voices.

with naked arms. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mostly worldly and connects to a contemporary condition of society,

That could help when thinking about how churches in Brazil are constantly accusing each

so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not an outside system that is imposed on the existing system.

470

471

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: The classical Pentecostals were very rigid about bodily behavior, but

I would hesitate to suggest that I would know where the staging begins or ends.

also about dress. And even when looking at Pastor Marcos Pereira for instanceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

AERNOUT MIK: I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ask if you knew where the staging began and stopped because I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

AERNOUT MIK: They walk like royalty, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re very proud.

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think you can locate it like that, but I do think that the intrinsic element of it is one of

rigid body culture,â&#x20AC;? actually, I see performance more than I see discipline.

For instance, at some Assemblies of God, they were dancing in trance excessively. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s com-

staged-ness, the sense of performance in there. It varies a bit between the various churches.

AERNOUT MIK: There very much is a performative side to all of it.

ing strongly from the physical movements and not so much from a staged group-spectacle.

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: One should observe how they are affecting legislation for instance.

Like I imagine it is in Universal, where it seems to be more like a set, a public event to wit-

There are signs that they are siding with more conservative groups, but there are also Pen-

ness. But, in both, I think some of the staged-ness allows it to happen, maybe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more

tecostal movements that are siding with more liberal social movements.

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AERNOUT MIK: The Catholic Church is probably stricter on homosexuality then many

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: I approached it from the idea that maybe we can look at Brazilian so-

Pentecostals.

ciety to think about what staging means. There is also a history of political staging. For in-

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Actually there are Pentecostal pastors who are much more pro-

stance, when I spoke to my former tutor of Brazilian studies here in Amsterdam, constantly

abortion than some other religious leaders.

he would tell me that the staging of power, the visual staging, really reminds him of Brazil

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STAGED WONDERS

least he gave me an indication that there is a tradition of staging. Certain things are the way

AERNOUT MIK: How do you see the relation between Pentecostalism and neoliberalism?

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AERNOUT MIK: You see two kinds of histories there, one is of course the history of political

AERNOUT MIK: If you believe, you will be prosperous.

staging, but then the other is the relation to television shows. I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s partly local,

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: There is a kind of old Weberian Protestant ethic: that one must work

partly not at all local, because thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s taking place globally. For instance, the emergence of

hard, quit drinking, avoid drugs, resist committing adultery etc., which provides a self-

reality shows where ordinary people on the stage are being put in extraordinary emotional

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my television ...,â&#x20AC;? and so on. There are all these material proofs of the fruits of the conver-

situationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there is a very strong crossover, in my view, with the staged testimonies and â&#x20AC;&#x153;wondersâ&#x20AC;? of the Pentecostal churches.

sion. This idea that one can make it, of course, is the only thing that is reproduced in all the

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really matter if you watch television shows of the Uni-

videos. The Universal Church has made a whole economy out of it.

versal Church, Oprah Winfrey, or Dr. Phil. In all the shows you see people sitting, saying

AERNOUT MIK: Connected with the miracle as such? We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really touch on the supernat-

things such as, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now this is what happened in my life and it was really, like, misery ...,â&#x20AC;? and

ural, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;wonder,â&#x20AC;? which is actually part of the entertainment also. I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also con-

also in terms of the visual imagery; in all the shows they use, like, black-and-white and

nected with the promise of prosperity.

greyish tones when they narrate the â&#x20AC;&#x153;before.â&#x20AC;?

JOCHEN BECKER: Is it entertainment in the sense that people know it is a fake and they con-

AERNOUT MIK: Yeah, the color is off.

sume the fake?

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: So there are all these kinds of visual techniques.

AERNOUT MIK: I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the feeling is a fake; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s staged but not a fake.

AERNOUT MIK: But I also think of the structure where they stage games with people who are

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: That remains the great enigma of this phenomenon. Even for peo-

brought into extreme and emotional situations, and in going through that, they experience

ple participating in it. One must understand that there is a very strong tradition of spirit-

some kind of transformational moment, but done in a more physical way.

possession, which the Pentecostals did not invent, and which is about allowing other forces,

JOCHEN BECKER: Is this a post-modern â&#x20AC;&#x153;we know, but we go with it anywayâ&#x20AC;? situation? So is

extra-subjective forces, to take over. Perhaps we are not so well equipped to understand

it a ritual which structures my life, which structures the show, which structures something

what this process is. By mimesis or by performance you learn that there are other forces

which I go with to a certain point? Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compare it with a traditional Catholic Church ser-

that can take over and you are but one individual.

vice where you drink and eat the body of Jesus Christ. As a kid I had no big doubts about it.

AERNOUT MIK: But if I say itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also staged, how would you reply to that?

But after a long while of not attending the church I went to a service and thought itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s canni-

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: I read this really nice article about people who asked this par-

balistic, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hedonic. It is very â&#x20AC;&#x153;indigenous.â&#x20AC;?

ticular question too, but in an Afro-Brazilian religious context. The central notion in

AERNOUT MIK: You started with the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;blurry.â&#x20AC;? And that is the blurry area.

context is that one should dance until the spirits take possession of you. And the partic-

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Even when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d known people for a long time they still would see me

ipants would say things like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yeah, I really canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember what happened,â&#x20AC;? but when

as the non-believer, so there would always be a sense of keeping the secret.

asked a little bit more they would say things such as, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yeah, of course, I do remem-

AERNOUT MIK: At least being in the middle of it, physically, I did not feel an outsider. The

ber,â&#x20AC;? and so there is a kind of remembering and forgetting going on at the same time.

whole physicality of it, the feeling of crossing a border and going back and forwards in

472

473

a kind of acceptance was very easy, even stronger in Africa: in Nigeria, religion was completely a thing you pick up and let go. In Rio I experienced a strong difference between the believers, the pastors, and the helpers, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say the assistants. The emotions of the attendees were extremely intense and the crossing of the border was taking place, but the people

ZKR VWDJHG LW DQG DOVR WKH PLGGOH ÂżJXUHVÂ˛WKH\ VHHPHG OLNH WKH SHRSOH MXVW VWUXFWXULQJ it, and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel the same kind of intensities from them at all. They were from a totally

different league. They are the in-between people. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re put in a suit, do the money thing, and they help if people fall over. MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: If you study Afro-Brazilian religion in Brazil then it is generally ac-

cepted when you belong to that, somehow, when you believe in it. Speaking of believing is already not really the issue. But if you were an anthropologist in Brazil who â&#x20AC;&#x153;convertsâ&#x20AC;? to a Pentecostal church, people would approach you differently. It took a long time until I started to think about how we construct these boundaries. Somehow there is a sense that if you

AERNOUT MIK: There is a lot of waiting and listening before and afterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and then, suddenly,

really cross that border â&#x20AC;&#x153;theyâ&#x20AC;? have caught you, or that you are one of the dupes who could

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s there and then itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s over also.

not tell the difference anymore. I like it very much that you say you could feel part of it.

JOCHEN BECKER: It is so controlled in a way. And on the other hand, you have the feeling

AERNOUT MIK: It depends on the place, some of them are completely offensive, actually, and

that people are, in a way, ecstatic.

others the opposite. Most of what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m doing is trying to attach to these mimetic impulses

AERNOUT MIK: Basically itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the same in Rio: if you look back from a distance you see itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very

that go through a space. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the entry point of how I look at it or how I try to be in it.

clearly structured. There is always a mixture of clear organization, a very rational structure

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: In the beginning, I played drums during church services. I started

almost, and this intoxication, excess, and ecstasy going on which suddenly leaves again.

my research in this very small Assemblies of God church, and by incidence or coincidence I could be part of the music. I was part of the atmosphere, of the collective production of the

EYE/CONTACT

presence of the Holy Spirit, and there it was very hard to say, yeah, what did I feel or how

JOCHEN BECKER: Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a kind of frame where it is allowed to happen â&#x20AC;Ś now is the time, so to

did I feel. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not saying that I had, like, a religious experience, butâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

speak, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not so triggered, but you live with that, you know it, and then you go with

AERNOUT MIK: Not at all, but letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say more a kind of acceptance about what happened

that. What I found interesting besides those very performative acts, when people lay down

around me? So if this strange border-crossing happens, okay Iâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for this moment, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

and the assistants take off their shoes to help them recover, which is also quite interest-

knowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I kind of understand it, you know? Maybe later not, but at this moment, yes I take it.

ingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not giving them water but taking off their shoes! What seems much more collective in

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see it as an exotic thing anymore. To me this feeling was the strongest in Lagos: you

the one sense, and non-collective in the other, is the speaking in tongues, standing in one

had the notion that the people crossed the borders with enormous ease and naturalness in

place and talking to yourself: suddenly it is not a collective church service anymore, but you

whatever direction and back and forth.

-HQV :HQNHO PDGH WKH ÂżOP IRU WKH the Urban Cultures of Global Prayers exhibition, his

have the feeling that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parallel. In the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) when

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Could you say a little bit about how, because I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t in Lagos?

AERNOUT MIK: (VSHFLDOO\ WKHVH Ă&#x20AC;RRGV RI VSHDNLQJ LQ WRQJXHV WKDW VXGGHQO\ ULVH XS WKH\

cameraman walked through the rows, you see people all by themselves and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not at all a

pick it up and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll drop it down, just like that. I sense itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a different consciousness, not

collective church service where it re-gathers afterwards. You step out of the collectiveness

a fully different consciousness either, but you see that there is a border crossedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you have

of the church service, even if you are all together speaking in tongues. They form a group,

been in it also. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so collectively done, a very physical experience; they cross it, but a

but on the other side they are so individualized, they have their own performative ways.

moment later everything is just normal and ordinary and they just write things or chat. If

AERNOUT MIK: But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neither the one nor the other, and we are still a collective body, but

there was a line in the room somewhere where you can just easily be on top of the line, and

not in a communicative sense.

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not, like, now Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m crossing this gigantic border; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only very thin and diffuse, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thin-

JOCHEN BECKER: Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not synchronized anymore. I saw a presentation of the ethnographer

ner thanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in Rio it was more dramatic with the falling down.

Heike Behrend, who worked in Uganda on exorcism. Armin Linke who is a photographer

JOCHEN BECKER: At The Lordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chosen in Lagos, you have a pre-stage arena with sand. And

and video artist, followed her, and he said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;For me, I knew these situations very well be-

there are stands where the camera people are, so they can get it all from a higher viewpoint,

cause it was like earlier when I was a theatre photographer, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t direct it, I just followed

as well as mobile cameras which follow the performance. And that means spinning or cry-

what was being directed.â&#x20AC;? And then he observed that, even when they speak in tongues,

ing and then there are people who try to control the mass of people so that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get KXUW ,W LV DW D VSHFLÂżF SRLQW LQ WLPH ZKHQ LW VWDUWV DQG ZKHQ LW VORZO\ VWRSV 474

WKH\ VXGGHQO\ KDG H\H FRQWDFW ZLWK KLV FDPHUD Âł<HV , NQRZ WKDW \RX DUH ÂżOPLQJ PH EXW

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m also not only just performing it for you, I do it within myself.â&#x20AC;? It was a kind of agreement, 475

and that might also be Aernoutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position to it. So I would like to talk about your methods

AERNOUT MIK: No, excess is not something which wipes out borders completely and is going

and the ways of observing, describing, and presenting it or analyzing it.

beyond everything.

AERNOUT MIK: It was the same when we shot in Lagos. One had a feeling that these people

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Of course we can recognize there are certain kinds of routines, ritu-

are completely out of it and somewhere else with their consciousness. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t experience

al forms, and structures. But then, how people relate to those themselves is very much an

it when I was there, but if I look at the footage closely I often see a sudden blink of an eye

open question.

noticing the camera. MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Michael Taussig wrote about this as the way we become part of the per-

SPECULATIVE STAGINGS

formance, not that we are also in it. In general, the speaking in tongues has all the elements of

JOCHEN BECKER: Aernout, you have different methods and ways, which on the one hand

what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been talking about now. I think it differs from one church to another as to how the

have descriptive moments, or what you call the â&#x20AC;&#x153;mimetic approach,â&#x20AC;? and on the other

spontaneity and framing are negotiated or how they are balanced. For instance, in most of the

hand, it is a certain kind of analytic gesture. The story of rubber gloves for the police makes

churches where I did research, they would not openly practice speaking in tongues.

it clearer: they use them to keep their distance from the asylum seeker, whom they only

AERNOUT MIK: In Rio itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not that common.

touch through gloves. So when you have to re-enact things and not just document it, you

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: That actually would be part of the narrative, in that it is sponta-

have to think of every detail. And through looking for every detail you think about why they

QHRXV DQG VR PLPHVLV ZRXOG EH OHIW XQ UHĂ&#x20AC;HFWHG 7KH\ ZRXOG VD\ Âł, ZDV LQ FKXUFK DQG DW a certain point I suddenly â&#x20AC;Ś,â&#x20AC;? you know, â&#x20AC;&#x153;and I witnessed people who came to church for

wear gloves, what do rubber gloves mean? That is an analytic approach within your work, EXW LW KDV QRW WKH OLPLWDWLRQV RI D VFLHQWLÂżF ZRUN

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AERNOUT MIK: The method is always very clearly a double gesture. So itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an immersing,

point, suddenly, they would allow the spirit to speak.â&#x20AC;? But, on the other hand, there are

where this mimetic moment is taking place, combined with a distancing simultaneously,

many churches where they just openly practice it, but then they would say it is a kind of

but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neither one nor the other. And I think part of the distancing comes from the fact

training, to make it easier for the real thingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

that I very often donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use sound. Your eyes start to follow a completely different kind of

AERNOUT MIK: Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a technique.

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: ([DFWO\ 7KH\ ZRXOG RSHQO\ UHĂ&#x20AC;HFW RQ WKH WHFKQLTXH EXW WKHUH LV VWLOO

a lot of space for one to claim that the spirit makes use of that technique, so there is an in-

technique in order to read what you see. So although at one end you are addressed physically by the image, on the other hand, your eyes are reading an image very differently. So this is a double movement of your senses.

ÂżQLWH PRPHQW ZKHUH DFWXDOO\ VSRQWDQHLW\ EHJLQV

What is important is that I try to also de-localize things, especially if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m working in a doc-

AERNOUT MIK: The delay.

umentary vein. Even if I stage something, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a moment of de-localization going on.

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: ([DFWO\ , ÂżQG LW VXSHU IDVFLQDWLQJ EHFDXVH LW WRXFKHV RQ WKH VDPH

When I started working on this project I was interested in how these churches look from

questions: what kind of agency is there for people to control them when they want? And

the outside, how they are embedded in the environment, but when I kept on working I

there is really a contradiction, I guess, in saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now I have decided to be taken over.â&#x20AC;? Of

VWDUWHG WR ORVH VRPH RI WKH VSHFLÂżFLW\ RI WKH SODFH DQG WKDW LQ WXUQ HQDEOHG VRPH FDWHJR-

course, we do that all the time in life, I guess. But I had different experiencesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;some people

ries to come to the fore. So thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the non-sociological approach that I have, and also, when

talked of it in terms of being â&#x20AC;&#x153;in the game.â&#x20AC;?

I stage there are often situations that are close to something, but they are not really that

AERNOUT MIK: There was this place where a lot of people were healed, they were lying on the

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I think, is also where this analytical moment is appearing. You have to have a very active

ent state of consciousness.

something. And that is a means of distancing I use to evoke that approach from the viewer/

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: Trance, hypnosisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;undeniable that there are techniques. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

participant with the work. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also why I try to create environments where you are

approach to, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say, the activity of reading a situation instead of simply representing

know how they do it; now, that would be very interesting. I was less interested in that ques-

in relation with the images that are there, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an overly sensorial moment where too

tion at the time because I thought more about how these things work in the public domain.

many sensations are going on, where you continuously have to choose. So again, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a mix-

AERNOUT MIK: What interests me, of course, is the relation of real experience and staged-

ture of being immersed and being outside of it.

ness: how this is intertwined and how one meets the other. What happens within these

JOCHEN BECKER: There are two ways: the re-enactment or restagingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

moments of crossing the border, where you still have some kind of doubt; not in the sense

AERNOUT MIK: Speculative staging, I would say, instead of re-enacting.

that I have to solve it, decide if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true or not, because that is not the case, but there is a

JOCHEN BECKER: And on the other hand, there might be a factual approach. Up to now you

doubt about how much the whole thing is in itself a performative gesture, and how much

only use found footage extensively, where the media represents itself. So what does that

that triggers a desire and sensation, and creates experience.

mean in terms of a combination of all these different approaches for your planned Global

MARTIJN OOSTERBAAN: We should not be fooled by the idea of spontaneity.

Prayers contribution?

476

477

AERNOUT MIK: It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel as if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fundamental difference, actually, at all. When I

and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re very structural actually. And of course the relation to media, the recording of

used found footage it was mostly that I used raw, unedited footage and, in a way, I used

it, the feeding it back in the same space, the whole distancing inside the space itself. Then

the same technique on it that I use in the staged work, where I would try to create a sense

thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the role of the pastor as a performer, as an executive trainer. I probably wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use

of immersion as well as enlarging the categories or structures of it, by means of association

ZKR LV Ă&#x20AC;RDWLQJ EHWZHHQ GLIIHUHQW DVVRFLDWLRQV RI GLIIHUHQW VSDFHV DQG IXQFWLRQV $QG WKHVH

and combining. In a way, now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening with documentary material in the same way, especially because I focus only on the inside of the church and the service, which has no beginning or end: I just use the matter of the service itself, cut-off from the people entering

WKH VRXQG DQG WKHUHIRUH VRPHWLPHV \RX ZLOO QRW NQRZ ZKHUH \RX DUH +H EHFRPHV D ÂżJXUH

of course, are things that I push forward. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the editing always, a result also of a certain

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and leaving, and closing off, more as a vacuum; just as a sensation. So it has very much the

it, because thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a certain emerging in it and a moving between different energy levels.

same structure as that which Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m investigating in any kind of staging. Staging, in the end, is

This has to happen in the edit itself.

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JOCHEN BECKER: And youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re casting, within the German context, the quite well-known actors

pened in the performance; of course itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a real thing, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a joke, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not acted, but

Lars Eidinger and Burkhart KlauĂ&#x;ner. It would be quite interesting to think about that kind

partly it is acted. And in that sense, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the structure of this service as any different.

of leadership, which also goes into the corporate idea of the master of ceremonies, or entre-

JOCHEN BECKER: At an earlier stage of the Global Prayers project you decided to take a

preneurial exploitation as in Lagos. It needs a chief pastor who has the charismatic style, a

documentary path, because you were not sure at that time that you could work with your

person that is also very suggestive. This brings up the question of leadership in general as a

methods of staging for a church service; you were concerned it might be inappropriate or

kind of corporate leadership; a corporate system also needs a kind of spiritual leader.

just not possible.

AERNOUT MIK: This is exactly the point I want to go to. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not re-enacting a church to

AERNOUT MIK: It changed. Initially, I wondered if the intensities could really communicate

produce a corporate thing, I want to create a business event which itself moves towards

on a direct level; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m still hesitant about that. But thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why I developed them side-by-

a church, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a motion towards becoming another space. But I just havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t managed to

side. So I think they need a certain distance but not that much distance. And actually, my

make that. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say what I want, or what I intend, or whether this is something that really

experience with the performers is that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not an impossible thingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you can do analogous

comes together. It depends, largely, on the space and the people, what is possible, what we

activities that, at the same time, are not images of the other thing, not representations of

can do, what we articulate there. So it can become something other than what I intended

the other thingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but they still have to do with whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening in the churches. I think the

it to be.

whole structural element came more to the front, and made it easier for me to relate to the

But maybe, also, I mean, ideally, to create another space there, which actually I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know

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what it is, but it is not just a critique of corporatism or whatever, but creates a sort of com-

JOCHEN BECKER: So will you separate it? How will the relationship work between, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say,

munal event. I would put a question mark, actually, at this point, about what exactly it is.

the documentary and the staged?

But maybe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s it also, if you say so; hence to the question that you asked earlier, okay,

AERNOUT MIK: Of course this is an ongoing question, which I can only solve with the ma-

where do these churches go? You see a movement, a pressure in a certain direction. And

terial itself, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a very tricky one. I have the feeling to go more in the direction of

I think that it is a more speculative thing about where society is heading. This could also

accumulation than in solving it to an articulated point. I also donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the point in that,

be approached, maybe even from this corporate world, in a similar direction. Maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a

because I think there are so many things raised, so many things put in motion. How can

deeper ambition of the work.

I build an analogy where every place, every method, keeps its own kind of integrity. Of

JOCHEN BECKER: How much of that corporate structure governs your life? And isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it a kind

course, it could also become a failure. What I initially wanted to useâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a kind of montage of

of belief system?

the whole thing completely togetherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I have withdrawn from completely now. Even mixing

AERNOUT MIK: If you name the word corporate you have a certain association of some clear

the churches, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not doing that at this point, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re now parallel tracks Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m working on.

economic structure. But the word corporate itself, of course, has become such a very different thing, which hosts many types of vectors in it all pointing in different directions. And

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RE-VIEWING/EDITING JOCHEN BECKER: Earlier, you described that looking through the footage you noticed a kind

it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to do with a particular job, or being inside or outside a job, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more a kind

of direct eye-contact. What else happens while re-viewing and editing the material?

of a basic condition. If everything is a product, if every experience is a product, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just

AERNOUT MIK: First of all, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the nature of the places, the relation they have with secular

matter anymore; it comes into contact with spirituality somehow.

places; how they change, in a way. If you distance yourself, they are able to change more into secular places; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the relation, of course, between organization and excess, and what

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GLOBAL PRAYERS Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City EDITED BY Jochen Becker, Katrin Klingan, Stephan Lanz, and Kathrin Wildner MANAGING EDITOR: Martin Hager COORDINATION: Evi Chantzi COPYEDITING // EDITING: Mandi Gomez PROOFREADING: Carolyn Jones DESIGN: Sandy Kaltenborn / image-shift.net & Pierre Maite PRINTING AND BINDING: KĂśsel, Altusried-Krugzell

This book is no. 13 of the metroZones publication series and has been published in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Europa-UniversitĂ¤t Viadrina, with the support of the Forum Transregionale Studien, funded by the Senatsverwaltung fĂźr Wirtschaft, Technologie und Forschung Berlin. The publication has been realized within the framework of the research and cultural project Global Prayers: Redemption and Liberation in the City. ,QLWLDWHG LQ E\ DFDGHPLFV FXUDWRUV DQG DUWLVWV DIÂżOLDWHG ZLWK WKH SURMHFW DJHQF\ PHWUR=RQHVÂ˛&HQWHU for Urban Affairs, Global Prayers is a joint endeavor of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the EuropaUniversitĂ¤t Viadrina. As a research project at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Global Prayers has been granted funds for international, long-time research between 2010 and 2014. With the resources of the humanities and social sciences as well as from artistic production, Global Prayers is generating knowledge of our global present. The work of the research project has been presented to the public during various events in Berlin, Lagos, Beirut, and Mumbai. ÂŠ 2014 Haus der Kulturen der Welt, metroZones, Europa-UniversitĂ¤t Viadrina, and Lars MĂźller Publishers, ZĂźrich Texts by kind permission of the authors. Images by kind permission of the photographers, artists / copyright holders. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or manner whatsoever without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Should, despite our intensive research, any person entitled to rights have been overlooked, legitimate claims should be compensated within the usual provisions. Please contact info@hkw.de. Lars MĂźller Publishers ZĂźrich, Switzerland WWW.LARS-MUELLER-PUBLISHERS.COM

ISBN 978-3-03778-373-3

Printed in Germany WWW.GLOBALPRAYERS.INFO WWW.METROZONES.INFO WWW.HKW.DE