In the course of human evolution, religion has undergone an equally dramatic development, which has always been interwoven with the formation of cities. Migration, natural disasters, ghettoization and genocides that took place parallel to the development of settlements and the transformation of spatial concepts and practices. Lifestyles, both religious and urban at the same time, developed along religion and cities.

The question of how the urban and the religious relate to one another has landed on the desks of scientists from a wide variety of disciplines lately since major projects such as MetroZones have started. In this respect, it is time to systematically answer these questions both interdisciplinary and internationally.

The Kollegforschungsgruppe (KFG, “DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities”) “Religion and Urbanity. Reciprocal transformations" at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt, led by Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke, presents its work for the first time through a conference to which the first fellows of this program had been invited. It also led to theoreticians and empiricists from such a broad spectrum of disciplines -religious studies, history, classics, archaeology, urban studies and anthropology of religion, among others - to tackle the difficulties of real interdisciplinary work, which not seldom resemble building a tower of Babel.

Organized together with the Center for Urban Network Evolutions (Aarhus, Denmark), represented by Rubina Raja (Aarhus University), the conference addressed systematic questions of concepts and terminologies. It was not primarily a matter of reproducing the great concepts of "religion" and "city" comprehensively, but of grasping the significance of the mutual influence of urban and religious actors, networks, urban planning and etcetera, in different contexts. The terminology was not exclusively dominated by English conceptualizations, but also included terms from French, Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, or German that had previously been inaccessible to the international debate.

The conference contributions, which had been pre-circulated, enabled a deeper understanding of the lectures and at the same time fueled a fruitful subsequent discussion.

SUSANNE RAU (Erfurt) gave the first lecture with a brief but clarifying distinction of terms, where she highlighted how historical concepts of urbanity inscribe themselves into current ideas. Given this, politics and religion are mutually influencing parameters. In the following contribution, JÖRG RÜPKE (Erfurt) dealt with the competition between cities. He emphasized that there is not only a contrast between urban and rural, but also between cities and other cities. On the one hand, religion would contribute to urbanization, i.e. it would play an active role, and at the same time, it could be passively urbanized.

ANNE MURPHY (Vancouver) presented her heuristics concerning her research project on North India in the early modern period, i.e. the perspectives she sharpened with regard to the urban, space, politics and religion. Like Rüpke, she emphasized the staggering of cities and that between rural and metropolitan areas, medium-sized cities can act as buffer zones. For her, urbanity is above all a moral order: in the density of living, both politeness and class-consciousness are necessary to maintain order. Urbanity is not to be equated with urbanization, as the latter includes growth as well as transformation etc.

RUBINA RAJA (Aarhus) explored the concept of “network evolutions” as a lens through which the dynamics between religion and urbanity can be framed. With case studies from the ancient classical world and with a particular focus on materials from the period between the late Hellenistic times and Late Antiquity, she examined whether and in which ways we may come closer to a growing understanding of the relationships between ancient religion and the urban.

BENNO WERLEN (Jena) argued that geographical conditions of human actions are to be seen primarily as a social product and only secondarily as a biophysical condition. From his point of view, constitutive dynamics of geographical realities are fundamental to a wide range of formative processes of social and cultural realities, especially also urban realities. But the Digital Revolution, meaning the end of distance for a wide range of human activities and accelerated social change, establish “new social relations of space.”

MAR GRIERA (Barcelona) and MARIAN BURCHARDT (Leipzig) examined the regulations, modalities, and consequences of the religious uses of public spaces through the analysis of religious encounters and events such as the Sikh procession of the Vaisakhi, the Islamic procession of Ashura, the Peruvian procession of the “Lord of miracles” or the celebrations of the Buddhist Vesak. By focussing on them, one can detect these events as privileged sites for understanding the spatialization of religion, the ritualization of faith in public, and the enactment of governmental regulations over public religious expressions.

RANJEETA DUTTA (New Delhi) analysed the relationship between religious interactions and urban arrangements from the thirteenth to nineteenth century in Srirangam, a temple town of South India. She showed how temple towns in South India are usually considered as mere pilgrimage centres imbued with devotion and piety and how their character as urban centres in which secular historical processes have been important are virtually ignored. She therefore highlighted these towns as a part of the phenomenon of urbanization and urbanism in South India.

PAROMA CHATTERJEE (Ann Arbor) looked at the chronicle of John Malalas (6th century), the author of the first Byzantine universal chronicle, aiming to address how religious belief or practice inflect, intersect, or conflict with conceptions of urbanization if the latter is defined as the material foundation and development of a city, or a network of sites. With the example of Malalas she underlined the fact that his non-Christian counterparts played a much more significant role in the urban definition of those cities than we usually give them credit for.

MIRI RUBIN (London) took the perspective of looking at Jews in European cities as permanent ‘strangers’ and their belonging, yet not fully, to urban communities. On the one hand welcomed, as providers of certain professions, on the other hand never fully integrated are foreigners, whether separated by religion or by origin, according to Rubin, important elements of urban society. Their visibility makes them both vulnerable and a first target in times of political or economic uncertainty.

MARIA CHIARA GIORDA (Rome) introduced the innovative approach of the “spatial turn” related to religions in cities and focused on the urban space as the space of religious super-diversity. She showed how one could consider Italian cities as multi- and inter-cultural laboratories, religious spaces characterized not only by a majority (Catholicism), but also by several religions that bring a kind of disorder, in absence of a formal regulation.

CHRISTOPHER SMITH (St Andrews) focussed on an engagement with the work of the philosopher and Latour correspondent, Michel Serres, and the first volume of his Foundation Trilogy, Rome, questioning the myth as a definitive sense of the beginning. Why is such significance given to a specific moment in time, when archaeology usually shows a process over time? Smith proposes that these myths seem so important, because they are supposed to legitimate views of community, which are usually freighted towards privilege.

EMILIANO RUBENS URCIUOLI (Erfurt) offered an analytical distinction between “urbanization” and “citification” of religion as two sets of processes and states of affairs concerning the role of religion/s in city-spaces. He uses the formula “citification of religion” for re-describing the urban history of early Christ-religion according to a different perspective and agenda. Urciuoli’s research aims to clarify whether this is also a valuable cross-cultural and -religious analytical tool for spatially informed enquiries on past religions.

QUDSIYA CONTRACTOR (Mumbai) brought the discussion around the acts of pollution and their relationship with the notions of purity in some Indian settlements. While animal garbage and slaughter are often seen as a defilement of urban life and civism, these "impurities" are present in these cities. Contractor explored how this feeling of defilement is justified through religious explanations despite being a product of recent concerns related to hygiene and claims of status.

MARTIN FUCHS (Erfurt) was focusing on people whose way of living can be described as precarious for a long time, or even marginal. Specifically, he was paying attention to the ways in which this precariousness defines or influences their relation to religious practices and ideas. For this, he chose to focus on Mumbai as a case study, paying special attention to the Dharavi area and to the links of these people with the city itself.

NORA LAFI (Berlin) framed her work in the Ottoman period, trying to determine to which extent Hisba documents and treatises actually regulated the relationship between religious and civic spheres in the city. She discussed the values around which the concept of urbanity was built, and how it was linked to religion and/or civic life, underlining that there were no impermeable boundaries.

The first of these contributions, by ONNO VAN NIJF and CHRISTINA WILLIAMSON (both Groningen), focused on Hellenistic festivals. These authors analysed the interaction of their distribution on different scales, as well as their connection between different cities to contribute to the “Greek unity”. Special emphasis lied on the performance and visibility of spectacles, and in the action, reaction and interaction among each other. For this, a mixed methodology was proposed, involving place making, geography, common knowledge, sociology and cultural studies.

The second paper of this panel was delivered by CRISTIANA FACCHINI (Bologne), who, addressing cities in the Early Modern Period through missionary texts and travelogues, offered her view about how the city can also hide religion, and about how topography and memory can both serve as articulation models for these parameters. In her view, if religion is considered as a means of communication, it can very well be invisible and visible. She also stressed that religious atmosphere can be immaterial, but it is held through collective memory.

Finally, the paper by SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI (Jadavpur) dealt with the spaces of the sacred in Kolkata, paying attention to the intimacy and, at the same time, publicly shared religious experiences. It also stated that the location of religion in the city is everywhere, even though some urban practices (such as the abandonment of certain carvings) can be indicating an ephemeral religious sense as well.

PRALAY KANUNGO (New Delhi) introduced the concept “religioscape” through the Indian case of Varanasi. Their urban arrangement and daily life cannot be correctly understood disregarding the presence of the river, which is the anchor of urbanity in this city. Thus, this paper presented the coevolution of religion and urbanity in clear connection to the river regarding rituals, festivals and practices around this natural element but also involving it. This analysis pointed towards the existence of different kinds of urbanities, as there are different layers (or even “cities”) within the same city.

RANA P. BEHAL (Delhi) spoke about his ongoing research in Amritsar, also in India, which can hardly be defined as a colonial or imperial city. Through the centrality of oral history and ethnography, and also by listening and recording collective memory and by collecting photographs, this project aims to ask the inhabitants about how they perceive religion and religiosity in daily life. Their responses are suggesting a growing religiosity in their everyday experiences, particularly highlighted during the difficult political times in the 1980s, for which this research is looking for an explanation.

The last contribution came from BEATRICE RENZI (Erfurt), who is currently working on the rural-urban mobility in India. Her work, which can be considered as a sociological reading of the living space across the rural-urban continuum, aims to develop a coherent analytical framework to analyse the role of religion in these migrations. Her paper also dealt with the realities of scheduled and intersecting castes and with class and patriarchal hierarchies.

The conference concluded with a final discussion in which all the phenomena analysed were brought together, testifying the trans-boundary nature of these mutual formations and the need to develop further research on their mutual interactions. In this regard, the super-institutional and interdisciplinary framework of the event proved to be particularly profitable. To avoid analytical blurriness when dealing with such a varied range of phenomena of different nature, one of the main conclusions arose during this conference relates to the need of focusing not exclusively on religion, nor on urbanity, but on their mutual relations.

Panel 1
Chair: Rubina Raja (Aarhus)

Susanne Rau (Erfurt) "Urbanity"

Jörg Rüpke (Erfurt) "Religion and Urban Space"

Anne Murphy (Vancouver) "Which Urbanity? Secondary Urban Centres and their Attendant Religious. Formations at the Border with the Rural"

Ulrike Freitag (Berlin) Respondent

Panel 2
Chair: Asuman Lätzer-Lasar (Erfurt)

Christopher Smith (St Andrews) "What is Religious about Founding a City?"

Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli (Erfurt) "Citification of Religion: What is it?"

David Garbin (Kent) Respondent

Joint Discussion

Panel 3
Chair: Martin Fuchs (Erfurt)

Mar Griera (Barcelona)/ Marian Burchardt (Leipzig) "Religious Events and the Politics of Space in the Mediterranean City"

Ranjeeta Dutta (New Delhi) "Religious Interactions and Urban Configurations in a Temple Town of South India: the Case of Shrirangam in Tamil Nadu"

Paroma Chatterjee (Ann Arbor) "Urbanity and Religion in the Chronicle of John Malalas (6th century): Coexistence and/or Conflict?"

Harriet Rudolph (Regensburg) Respondent

Panel 4
Chair: Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli (Erfurt)

Pralay Kanungo (New Delhi) "Conceptualizing the Urban Religioscape"

Mariachiara Giorda (Rome) "From Urban Geometry to Religious Urbanity"

Martin Christ (Erfurt) Respondent

Panel 5
Chair: Susanne Rau (Erfurt)

Rubina Raja (Aarhus) "Religion and the Urban: Network. Evolutions as a Lens"

Benno Werlen (Jena) "The Constitution of Geographical and Urban Realities. An Interpretive Approach to Geographical Urban Research"

Markus Vinzent (London) Respondent

Panel 6
Chair: Jörg Rüpke (Erfurt)

Qudsiya Contractor (Mumbai) "Between Community and Alienation? – Muslim Women and the Urban Experience of Religiosity in Mumbai"

Martin Fuchs (Erfurt): Precarious Belonging: Religious Options and Engagements with the World in a Metropolitan Context. The case of Dalits in Dharavi (Mumbai)

Nora Lafi (Berlin) "Conceptualizing Urbanity, Practicing Coexistence: The Relationship between Religion and the Civic Sphere in Cities of the Middle East and North-Africa between the Middle Ages and Ottoman Times

Sunil Kumar (New Delhi) Respondent

Panel 7
Chair: Beatrice Renzi (Erfurt)

Onno van Nijf / Chr. Williamson (Groningen): "Festivals and Urban Placemaking in the Greek city of the Hellenistic and Roman periods"

Cristiana Facchini (Bologne): "Seeing Cities in Travelogues and Missionary Texts in
the Early Modern Period"

Supriya Chaudhuri (Jadavpur) "Spaces of the Sacred: Religious Practice in Urban Interstices"

Asuman Lätzer-Lasar (Erfurt) Respondent

Panel 8
Chair: Martin Christ (Erfurt)

Miri Rubin (London) "Difference and Urbanity in the Age of Religion"

Rana P. Behal (New Delhi) "Religion, Religiosity and the Urban World: Everyday Lives of People in Amritsar City, Punjab, India"

Beatrice Renzi (Erfurt) "Religion at the crossroads of rural-urban life-worlds: Systems of relatedness in transition

Zoe Opacic (London) Respondent

Final discussion