[URBANTH-L]Call for papers: The postsecular city

[Justin Beaumont]

Apologies if you receive this call more than once. Feel free to forward to
anyone who might be interested in these themes.

 

 

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CALL FOR PAPERS

The postsecular city

 

A paper session of the ISA-RC21 Conference, Landscapes of Global Urbanism:
power, marginality, and creativity, Tokyo, Japan, 17-20 December 2008

 

Justin Beaumont, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, The
Netherlands, j.r.beaumont at rug.nl

 

This proposed session addresses new and innovative approaches for theorizing
and conceptualizing the postsecular city. The primary focus is relations
between public religion, deprivatization of religion and theorizations of
modernity and modernities, with the newly emergent focus on postsecular
urbanism. The starting point is what might be referred to as "postsecular
society" following Habermas or what Taylor (2007) calls the "secular age",
with the closely related focus on faith-based organizations (FBOs) as actors
for social justice in cities across the globe. A number of recent events
reveal a growing recognition of these hitherto distinct realms but while
important in their own right suggest limited theorization in the academic
literature. In exploring the ambiguous and contested role of religion in
urban life in the contemporary context of neoliberalization, the session
relates to a number of pressing concerns among theorists across disciplines:
the mutually constitutive relations between the "social" and the "spatial",
especially the "urban", as well as new approaches to religion, modernity and
modernities, critical social theory, urban theory and political action in
theory and practice. Prospects for a new international research agenda will
be an underlying factor throughout the discussions.

 

The proposed session seeks theoretical enrichment and empirical advance
through paper presentations and discussion in the context of one or more of
the following themes:

 

(1) innovative relations between urban theory, on the one hand, and theories
of religion, faith and belief in a postsecular context on the other;

(2) links between religion, politics and postsecular urban society at the
political economy and humanist nexus in the current era of
neoliberalization;

(3) connections between neoliberalization, deprivatization of religion,
reenchantment of the real, the Weberian secularization thesis and the
revalorization of FBOs and religions more generally in the social and
political processes of cities;

(4) relations between religion, modernity and modernities and postsecularism
in contemporary urban societies;

(5) new governance and politics amid changing roles of religions and diverse
FBOs in the socio-political processes within cities; and

(6) shifting interfaces between church (and FBOs more generally) and state
at a variety of scales for social and political processes in urban areas.

 

Please send the title and abstract of your paper to me (j.r.beaumont at rug.nl)
and the ISA-RC21 Tokyo Conference Organizing committee
(rc21-tokyo at mbe.nifty.com) by May 15, 2008. The abstract of your paper
should be limited to 150 words and include your name, affiliation and email
address.

 

 

 

 

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Faculty of Spatial Sciences

University of Groningen

The Netherlands

Tel: 00 31 50 363 6910/ 3895

Skype: justin9712

Web: www.rug.nl/staff/j.r.beaumont/index

 

International Conference: Religion, Politics and the Postsecular City,
Groningen, 12-15 November 2008

 

EU-7FP FACIT project: Faith-based organizations and exclusion in European
cities

 

Book Reviews Editor: Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie
(TESG)