Descrizione del progetto
Coesistenza urbana del pluralismo religioso
In tutto il mondo, l’aumento dei conflitti religiosi pone interrogativi legati alla coesistenza di persone appartenenti a religioni diverse nei contesti urbani di origine non secolare. Il progetto MEUS, finanziato dall’UE, esaminerà l’incontro di varie religioni in aree in cui è presente una religione nazionale o dominante, cercando di affrontare la questione della coesistenza di varie religioni nelle aree urbane. Il progetto indirizzerà la sua ricerca a Karachi, nell’Asia meridionale, a Nairobi, nell’Africa orientale e a Palermo. Tutte queste città hanno rappresentato dei luoghi d’incontro storici per le principali religioni, ma oggi si differenziano nel pluralismo religioso. MEUS ricorrerà alla ricerca etnografica comparativa per analizzare le forme di coabitazione religiosa che sono apparse negli ambienti urbani emergenti e si adopererà per sviluppare un quadro interregionale riferito al pluralismo religioso.
Obiettivo
This comparative ethnographic project asks, how do people of different faiths coexist in cities? Questions of coexistence take on urgency in a time of increasing religiously-inflected flashpoints across the globe. How can we think about religious coexistence beyond prevailing frameworks of tolerance or conflict? MEUS will explore multi-religious encounters in non-secular urban contexts, ie. areas where there is a state religion or where religion has salience in the public sphere. Research will be organised into three complementary and contrasting sub-projects in South Asia (Karachi), East Africa (Nairobi), and Southern Europe (Palermo). The sites are similar, having served historically as encounter sites for major religions, but differ in their vantage points on religious pluralism.
The project has two objectives: 1)to examine what modes of religious co-habitation emerge in aspiring urban settings; and 2)to develop a cross-regional comparative framework about religious pluralism that de-centers secular-liberal ideas of tolerance and opens space for alternate modes of coexistence. MEUS will ask: How do people of different religious faiths coexist in cities? What tensions and contestations does such coexistence articulate or give rise to? Do aspirations for socioeconomic mobility engender encounters with religious ‘others’ and, if so, how do people make sense of this contact?
MEUS is novel in its ethnographic and comparative frame. Its interventions within debates on pluralism will challenge the monistic tendencies of studies of religion (eg. the anthropology of Islam) and counter the hegemony of secularism in ideas on coexistence. MEUS is cognizant that the current work on coexistence, outside of liberal contexts, is largely regional and interpreted as exceptions to the norm. Instead, MEUS pushes against the limits of regional comparisons to develop a cross-regional, historically sensitive understanding of coexistence with the aim of provincializing secularism.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
WC1E 6BT London
Regno Unito