Interreligious Encounters in Europe: Sites, Materialities and Practices

Description

This book examines interreligious dialogue in Europe and how interreligious encounters are framed, expressed and practised. Throughout Europe religious identities have increasingly become significant categories within debates on migration, cohesion, diversity and belonging. By focusing on the spatialities, materialities and practices of interreligious dialogues and encounters, the volume sheds light on the heterogeneous domains where the visibility and inclusion of religious and cultural differences are currently negotiated and contested. The chapters draw on social science perspectives and include a range of empirical case studies from a variety of European settings. The contributions (a) shed light on the subjectivities, relations and modes of behaviour produced, negotiated and contested in and through locally embedded interreligious encounters and dialogue-oriented practices, (b) observe the power dynamics that shape those practices and encounters and (c) discuss their implications for the place(s) of religion in the public sphere. Overall the book contributes to a better understanding of how cultural, religious and political identities are reconfigured across Europe. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: The Sites, Materialities and Practices of Interreligious Encounters in Europe Introduction The Diversification and Complexification of Interreligious Encounters Scholarly Perspectives on Interreligious Dialogue A Three-fold Approach to Studying Interreligious Encounters Concluding Remarks Part I: The Sites of Interreligious Encounters 1 Spatializing Interreligious Practice: Interreligious Place-making in a German Metropolitan Area 1.1 Introduction: Towards a Spatial Approach to Interreligious Dialogue 1.2 Methods and Research Design 1.3 Case Study 1: The Gates of World Religions 1.4 Case Study 2: The Angel of Culture 1.5 Patterns of Interreligious Place-making: Comparative Conclusions 2 Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Searching for ‘Mjesto Susreta’ 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Research Process 2.3 What Constitutes a Community in the BiH Context? 2.4 Interfaith Dialogue in BiH 2.5 Interreligious Dialogue and Suživot 2.6 Spatial Segregation and Interactions 2.7 Stolac – Known and Unknown Places 2.8 Kotor Varoš – Identities and Localities 2.9 Conclusion 3 Provincializing Dialogue: Post-secular Governance Networks and the Brokerage of Religious Diversity in a North German Town 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Post-secular Governance Networks 3.3 Research on Small Towns in Germany: Rural Networks and Brokers 3.4 Case Study and Methods 3.5 Fromberg’s Changing Dynamics: A Brief Timeline 3.6 Network Protagonists in Fromberg 3.7 The Benefits, Obligations and Internal Tensions of Network Governance 3.8 Secular–religious Competition 3.9 Conclusion Part II: The Materialities of Interreligious Encounters 4 Architectures of Tolerance: Muslims, Alevis and the Impossible Promise of Berlin’s House of One 4.1 Introduction 4.2 The House of One 4.3 Interreligious Dialogues 4.4 Methodological Approach 4.5 Empirical Findings: Blind Spots 4.6 Conclusion: The Ambivalence of the Symbolic 5 The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue: The Case of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church in Poland 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Theoretical and Methodological Frame 5.3 Data and Analysis 5.4 The Poster Controversy and the Emergent Dialogue 5.5 Analysis of Textual Elements 5.6 Analysis of Visual Elements 5.7 Viewing the Poster in its Broader Context 5.8 Kraków as a Space of Dialogue 5.9 The Poster’s Reception 5.10 T he Materiality of the Poster and Negotiations of Visibility 5.11 Conclusions 6 The Affective Machines of Dialogue: Materializations of Identities/Differences in the Assemblages of an Exhibition About Everyday Muslim Life 6.1 Introduction 6.2 The Production of Identities and Differences Within Material and Dynamic Assemblages 6.3 A Diversity-political Exhibition on Local Muslim Life: Contexts, Rationalities and Conflicts 6.4 Exhibiting ‘Muslimness’: The Politics of Multicultural Intimacies and the Material Entanglements of Differentiating and Binding Forces 6.5 Relations of Difference/Identity in an Interreligious Groups’ Guided Tour through the Exhibition on Muslim Life: Analysing Shifting Affective Assemblages 6.6 Situated Becomings: Between Religious Community and the ‘Friendly Smiling Non-believer’ 6.7 Synthesis and Concluding Remarks Part III: The Practices of Interreligious Encounters 7 Dialogic Art: The Photographer Peter Sanders on Promoting Understanding 7.1 Introduction 7.2 The Journeys of a Veteran Photographer 7.3 Capturing the Spiritual 7.4 The Sufi Anthropology of Peter Sanders 7.5 (Mis)interpretations and Conversations: A Methodological Intermezzo 7.6 Light and Light 7.7 Promoting a Message of Peace and Understanding 7.8 Reaching Out 7.9 Art as Dialogue 8 Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation? Examining the British Context for Multifaith Social Action and Interfaith Dialogue from 1997 to the Present 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The Relationship Between Interfaith Dialogue and Multifaith Social Action 8.3 Interfaith, Multifaith and Government Policy 8.4 Evidence from the Case Studies 8.5 Conclusion 9 Atmospheric Encounters: Interfaith Dialogue in a Multifaith Neighbourhood of Copenhagen 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Atmosphere 9.3 The Study, Context and Methodology 9.4 The Spirit and the Body 9.5 Expectations of Transcendence 9.6 Moving Together 9.7 Conclusion Afterword An Afterword The Productivity of Interreligious Encounters Power and Inequalities in Interreligious Encounters Looking Ahead Index