The postsecular city - Call for papers

[i]Call for papers[/i] 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, 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:[url=mailto:j.r.beaumont@rug.nl]j.r.beaumont@rug.nl[/url] and the ISA-RC21 Tokyo Conference Organizing committee ([url=mailto:rc21-tokyo@mbe.nifty.com]rc21-tokyo@mbe.nifty.com[/url]) [b]by May 15, 2008[/b]. The abstract of your paper should be limited to 150 words and include your name, affiliation and email address.