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Around 1800 roughly three per cent of the human population lived in urban areas; by 2030 this number is expected to have gone up to some seventy per cent. This poses problems for traditional religions that are all rooted in rural, small-scale societies. The authors in this volume question what the possible appeal of these old religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam could be in the new urban environment and, conversely, what impact global urbanization will have on learning and on the performance and nature of ritual. Anthropologists, historians and political scientists have come together in this volume to analyse attempts made by churches and informal groups to adapt to these changes and, at the same time, to explore new ways to study religions in a largely urbanized environment.
“The strength of the book lies in its treatment of a crucial topic through historical and ethnographic material which is drawn from various cross-cultural case studies illustrating the vastness of the issue in question…offer[ing] a wealth of material on the dynamic relationship between religious traditions and urban contexts around the world.” · Journal of Contemporary Religion
“This book is a neat little volume with clear localized case studies…showing how urbanization generally influences the religiosity of everyday life in modern urban centres… In general, the book is easy to read and suitable as a student reader or an academic or postgraduate reference text. It is high time that anthropologists consider modern urban religiosity and its contested spatial practices with the seriousness they deserve.” · JRAI
Rik Pinxten is Professor and Senior Researcher in Anthropology and Head of Department of Comparative Sciences of Culture at Ghent University, Belgium. His current research focus is on identity as a central mechanism in cultural and religious learning processes. He has published widely on the anthropology of knowledge and the comparative study of religion.
List of Figures
Introduction: When God Comes to Town
Rik Pinxten and Lisa Dikomitis
PART I: NATION VERSUS STATE
Chapter 1. Religion and Nationality: The Tangled Greek Case
Renée Hirschon
Chapter 2. A Church Lost in the Maze of a City without References
Bruno Drweski
PART II: URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 3.The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Urbanism
Simon Coleman
Chapter 4. The Ecology and Economy of Urban Religious Space: A Socio-Historical Account of Quakers in Town
Peter Collins
PART III: URBAN MIGRATION
Chapter 5. Rural Immigrants and Official Religion in an Urban Religious Festival in Greece
Giorgos Vozikas
Chapter 6. From the City to the Village and Back: Greek Cypriot Refugees Engaging in ‘Pilgrimages’ across the Border
Lisa Dikomitis
PART IV: IMPACT OF MODERNITY
Chapter 7. Reading the City Religious: Urban Transformations and Social Reconstruction in Recife, Brazil
Marjo de Theije
Chapter 8. Modernity Contra Tradition? Taijiquan’s Struggle for Survival: A Chinese Case Study
Dan Vercammen
Notes on Contributors
Index