Geographies of postsecular rapprochement in the city 1

Bibliographic Data

ID11949941
AuthorsPaul Cloke (0000-0003-2679-1915, University of Exeter, corresponding author), Justin Beaumont (0000-0003-2740-6257, University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
Year2012
Volume37
Issue1
Pages27-51
Publication date2012-04-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueProgress in Human Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0309-1325 • E-ISSN: 1477-0288
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0309132512440208
OpenAlexW2148094262
LanguageEN
Citations received103
References cited73

This paper explores the emergence of urban spaces of partnership between people of faith and those of no religious faith who come together to offer care, welfare and justice to socially excluded people. The activities of such groups are understood in terms of adjustments to the secularization thesis pointing to the possibilities of a series of emerging geographies relating to postsecular rapprochement and different forms of reterritorialization in the city. In particular, the accounts of postsecularism by Klaus Eder and Jürgen Habermas are used to explain both how the hushed-up voice of religion is being released back into the public sphere in some settings, and how the assimilation and mutually reflexive transformation of secular and theological ideas may represent crossover narratives around which postsecular partnerships can converge around particular ethical precepts and practical needs. Taking the particular example of Christian religion in western Europe, the paper traces both how a critique of secularism has led to some instances of contemporary political expression underpinned by theological precepts that are converted into practical ethics, and how a greater propensity among the Christian faith to explore faith-by-praxis has fuelled increased activity in the public sphere. Not all such activity can be regarded as postsecular, but emergent spaces of postsecular partnership in the city offer possibilities for new, perhaps liminal, geographies of resistance that cannot be explained away as simply the incorporation of religious capital into neoliberal governance. The possibilities of mutually transformative possibilities in these partnerships open both politics and faith up to processes of poststructural reterritorializing as part of the faith-in-practice of postsecularism

Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Faith · Liminality · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Secularism · Secularity · Secularization · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious Tourism and Spaces