Lectures and Discussion
Global prayers to go
Salvation and Liberation in the Megacities of the World
Inaugural event of the research project "Global Prayers"
"If God died in the cities of the industrial revolution, he has risen again in the postindustrial cities of the developing world," writes urban theorist Mike Davis. Reinvigorated religious "identities" and movements are considered among the most important socio-political agents today. The mobilization of the religious in the mega-metropolises - in the guise of Islam, Hindu nationalism or Pentecostal churches - is accompanied by an ethnicizing of urban and social conflicts.
The multidisciplinary project "Global Prayers" examines the new urban churches, their takeover of state functions and the consequent transformation of urban policies.
Programme
With: Asef Bayat, Patricia Birman, Filip de Boeck, Edgar Cleijne, Julia Eckert, Werner Schiffauer, David Garbin [ short biographies ]
and Klaus Teschner, Kerstin Pinther, Gerda Heck, Sandra Schäfer, Sabine Bitter, Helmut Weber, Jens Röhm, Chara Ganotis
18 – 22 h Public event with talks and discussion
Welcome: Susanne Stemmler (HKW), N.N. (Heinrich Böll-Stiftung)
Introduction: metroZones – Center for Urban Affairs
Global Prayers – a transnational, interdisciplinary research and cultural project
18.15 – 19.30 h: Panel 1
Local spatialization and transnational routes: the ‘glocality’ of Pentecostalism
Patricia Birman: ‚From the Favela to the world’: glocal Pentecostalism in Rio de Janeiro
Filip de Boeck : Re/Proselytizing in the (post-)colonial city: Kinshasa // Brüssel
Edgar Cleijne: Church as spectacle: urban prayers in Lagos
19.30 – 20.15 h: Panel 2
Political mobilization of religion in the city: militant Islamism and Hindu-Nationalism
Asef Bayat: Radical religion and the urban dispossessed in Cairo and Teheran
Julia Eckert: Participation, politics of violence and “the enemy within”: Hindu-Nationalism and Muslim activism in Bombay/Mumbai
Break: 30 min
20.45 – 21.30 h: Panel 3
Official politics, urban change, local conflicts: the territorialization of religious movements in European metropolises
Werner Schiffauer: Third space: Islamic community and urban identification in Berlin
David Garbin: Diasporic religious spatialisations: the Islamisation and Christianization of East London
21.30 – 22.00 h: Discussion with all panelists and the audience
A co-operation of Metrozones e.V. with Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung