A Astor
Biographic Data
| ID | 40076 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Astor |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Astor |
| SIGNATURE | ASTOR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4720-1841 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 132 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Aesthetics, material culture and religious identity: Transnational Shi’i Islam in Europe and the Middle East
The relationship between aesthetics, material culture and religious identity has become increasingly central to the study of religious formations in the humanities and social sciences. ‘Aesthetic s
The “publicness” of urban religious rituals: A comparison of Shia lamentation processions in Barcelona and Birmingham
TEDified Islam: Postsecular Storytelling in New Media, written by Jasbeer Musthafa Mamalipurath
Ashura in Barcelona: Spatial Adaptations of a Shia Islamic Ritual in a Diasporic Setting
Ashura en Barcelona: Adaptaciones espaciales de un ritual islámico chiita en la diáspora
Anonymity and Digital Islamic Authority
Much of the literature on digital religious authority has focused on spiritual "influencers" and the challenges they pose to traditional religious hierarchies and structures of authority. Less attention has been dedicated to religious websites, social media pages, and digital feeds whose popularity and influence do not hinge on the personalistic qualities of their creators. There is a wide assortment of generic religious reference sites that, alt…
L'Achoura à Barcelone: Adaptations Spatiales d'Un Rituel Islamique Chiite en Situation Diasporique
Barcelone, capitale de la Catalogne et deuxième ville d’Espagne, est aussi une métropole méditerranéenne qui a connu d’importantes transformations sociales et urbaines au cours des dernières décennies. Parmi ces évolutions, on peut souligner la remarquable et rapide pluralisation de son paysage religieux qui a remplacé l’ancienne hégémonie sociale (et politique) du catholicisme et semble avoir bouleversé un processus de sécularisation présenté co…
Performing heritage at Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral
This article explores the politics of cultural heritage in societies experiencing secularization and religious diversification by examining recent efforts made by Cordoba's Cathedral Chapter to emphasize the Christian origins and identity of the iconic Mosque-Cathedral. We argue that the Cathedral Chapter's approach to managing and narrating the building over the past two decades responds largely to tensions stemming from the divergence between t…
Religious representation and performative citizenship: The civic dimensions of Shia lamentation rituals in Barcelona
In diasporic contexts, religious representatives play a key role as cultural ambassadors for their respective communities and religions. This article examines religious representation as a form of civic engagement among Shia Muslims who have assumed representational responsibilities in Barcelona. Our study focuses on their interactions with municipal authorities and the wider public amid the planning, organization, and enactment of public lamenta…
Transforming the sacred: A neo-Durkheimian analysis of the aesthetic modification and cultural resignification of Barcelona’s municipal crèche (1961–2021)
Religion and its modifiers: Making Sense of the Definition and Subtypification of a Contested Concept
Marian Burchardt, Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West
Marian Burchardt’s Regulating Difference is an original and innovative comparative study of the complex entanglements of secularization, religious diversification, and national identity in Quebec and Catalonia, two regions that are comparable in a number of key respects. They are both stateless nations with predominantly Catholic populations. And both have been transformed significantly by the processes of secularization and religious diversifica…
Nationalist Mobilization, Ethno-Religious Contention, and Legal Innovation in a Stateless Nation: Explaining Catalonia’s 2009 “Law on Centers of Worship”
This article analyzes the development and framing of Catalonia’s “Law on Centers of Worship”, an innovative law dedicated exclusively to the regulation of religious temples that was passed by the regional Parliament in 2009. The law was a legal novelty in Spain, as well as in Europe, where regulations pertaining to places of worship are typically folded into regional or municipal laws and ordinances dealing with zoning and construction. My analys…
Religion and counter-state nationalism in Catalonia
Catalonia is simultaneously the most secular region in Spain and the region that places the greatest priority on actively managing religious affairs. Moreover, parties comprising the Catalan Left have been particularly assertive in pushing for legislative proposals to reduce the privileges of the Catholic Church and the general presence of religion in the public sphere. This article examines the sources of Catalonia’s exceptionality in religious …
Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research
Scholars have taken a growing interest in what we call “culturalized religion”—that is, forms of religious identification, discourse, and expression that are primarily cultural in character, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual. This article aims to clarify our current thinking about these phenomena so as to facilitate future theoretical and empirical work. Drawing on recent work in the …
A Latin Can Be Worth Just as Much or More than a Saxon’: Boxing, Gender, and Transnational Latinity in Late Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Spain
This article examines Spanish press coverage of boxing upon its entry into Spain’s ‘media space’ during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our analysis highlights how the mix of fascination, repugnance, and admiration displayed toward the sport were shaped by the broader context of imperial rivalry and anxieties about the purported decline of Spain and other Latin nations vis-à-vis the ascendant Anglo-Saxon nations. Criticizing bo…
Religious governance in the Spanish city: Hands-on versus hands-off approaches to accommodating religious diversity in Barcelona and Madrid
This contribution examines divergent trajectories of religious governance in Madrid and Barcelona, two cities that have pursued distinct approaches to accommodating religious diversity despite being located in the same national context. Whereas Madrid has dealt with religious diversity under the broader rubric of immigration and culture, and has been largely passive and ‘hands-off’ in its approach to governance, Barcelona has demarcated religion …
Street Performance, Public Space, and the Boundaries of Urban Desirability: The Case of Living Statues in Barcelona
How do cities determine who has the right to station themselves in iconic public spaces? This article explores this question by analyzing the evolution of Barcelona's approach to regulating street performance, with a particular focus on regulations pertaining to ‘living statues’. Although most buskers have been expelled from the Ramblas, one of the city's most emblematic walkways, living statues remain permitted on the promenade. This, I argue, i…
Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage
Knocked out: Ritual disruption and the decline of Spanish boxing
Scholars have written extensively on the emergence of mass sports in modern industrial societies, and the factors that have facilitated the development of 'hegemonic sports cultures'. Less has been written on how the structure and content of 'national sport spaces' change over time, and the reasons that certain sports cultures have failed to sustain their popular appeal amid processes of political, social and cultural transformation. This article…
The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to Religion as Culture in Spain
This article contributes to sociological theorizations of religion as heritage through analyzing the politics of religious heritage in Spain since its transition to democracy during the late 1970s. Our analysis is organized around three historical sequences of critical importance for understanding the political and legal significance of discourses that frame religion as cultural heritage in Spain: (1) negotiations that took place during Spain's d…
Social Position and Place-Protective Action in a New Immigration Context: Understanding Anti-Mosque Campaigns in Catalonia
This article examines the structural conditions and cultural narratives underlying the high frequency and intensity of anti-mosque campaigns in the Spanish region of Catalonia. Drawing on Blumer's theory of prejudice as a sense of group position, as it has been elaborated and extended to multi-ethnic settings by subsequent scholarship, I contend that local reactions to mosques in Catalonia have been shaped by context-specific configurations of id…
Religious Governance and the Accommodation of Islam in Contemporary Spain
This article analyses the governance of Islam in contemporary Spain. Rather than presuming the existence of a singular and all-encompassing ‘Spanish model’ of religious governance, I focus on the critical role of actual practices of modelling in shaping the institutions and organisations implicated in the regulation of Islam, as well as the concrete strategies that have guided policies of Muslim accommodation. Modelling practices, I argue, have b…
The Battlefield and Beyond: Essays on the American Civil War
Memory, community, and opposition to mosques: The case of Badalona
The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to Religion as Culture in Spain
This article contributes to sociological theorizations of religion as heritage through analyzing the politics of religious heritage in Spain since its transition to democracy during the late 1970s. Our analysis is organized around three historical sequences of critical importance for understanding the political and legal significance of discourses that frame religion as cultural heritage in Spain: (1) negotiations that took place during Spain's d…
Memory, community, and opposition to mosques: The case of Badalona
Physician migration: Views from professionals in Colombia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan and the Philippines
Social Position and Place-Protective Action in a New Immigration Context: Understanding Anti-Mosque Campaigns in Catalonia
This article examines the structural conditions and cultural narratives underlying the high frequency and intensity of anti-mosque campaigns in the Spanish region of Catalonia. Drawing on Blumer's theory of prejudice as a sense of group position, as it has been elaborated and extended to multi-ethnic settings by subsequent scholarship, I contend that local reactions to mosques in Catalonia have been shaped by context-specific configurations of id…
Religious Governance and the Accommodation of Islam in Contemporary Spain
This article analyses the governance of Islam in contemporary Spain. Rather than presuming the existence of a singular and all-encompassing ‘Spanish model’ of religious governance, I focus on the critical role of actual practices of modelling in shaping the institutions and organisations implicated in the regulation of Islam, as well as the concrete strategies that have guided policies of Muslim accommodation. Modelling practices, I argue, have b…
Religious governance in the Spanish city: Hands-on versus hands-off approaches to accommodating religious diversity in Barcelona and Madrid
This contribution examines divergent trajectories of religious governance in Madrid and Barcelona, two cities that have pursued distinct approaches to accommodating religious diversity despite being located in the same national context. Whereas Madrid has dealt with religious diversity under the broader rubric of immigration and culture, and has been largely passive and ‘hands-off’ in its approach to governance, Barcelona has demarcated religion …
Unauthorized Immigration, Securitization and the Making of Operation Wetback
Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage
Street Performance, Public Space, and the Boundaries of Urban Desirability: The Case of Living Statues in Barcelona
How do cities determine who has the right to station themselves in iconic public spaces? This article explores this question by analyzing the evolution of Barcelona's approach to regulating street performance, with a particular focus on regulations pertaining to ‘living statues’. Although most buskers have been expelled from the Ramblas, one of the city's most emblematic walkways, living statues remain permitted on the promenade. This, I argue, i…
Performing heritage at Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral
This article explores the politics of cultural heritage in societies experiencing secularization and religious diversification by examining recent efforts made by Cordoba's Cathedral Chapter to emphasize the Christian origins and identity of the iconic Mosque-Cathedral. We argue that the Cathedral Chapter's approach to managing and narrating the building over the past two decades responds largely to tensions stemming from the divergence between t…
Transforming the sacred: A neo-Durkheimian analysis of the aesthetic modification and cultural resignification of Barcelona’s municipal crèche (1961–2021)
Religion and its modifiers: Making Sense of the Definition and Subtypification of a Contested Concept
Physician migration: Views from professionals in Colombia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan and the Philippines
Unauthorized Immigration, Securitization and the Making of Operation Wetback
Memory, community, and opposition to mosques: The case of Badalona
The Battlefield and Beyond: Essays on the American Civil War
Religious Governance and the Accommodation of Islam in Contemporary Spain
This article analyses the governance of Islam in contemporary Spain. Rather than presuming the existence of a singular and all-encompassing ‘Spanish model’ of religious governance, I focus on the critical role of actual practices of modelling in shaping the institutions and organisations implicated in the regulation of Islam, as well as the concrete strategies that have guided policies of Muslim accommodation. Modelling practices, I argue, have b…
Social Position and Place-Protective Action in a New Immigration Context: Understanding Anti-Mosque Campaigns in Catalonia
This article examines the structural conditions and cultural narratives underlying the high frequency and intensity of anti-mosque campaigns in the Spanish region of Catalonia. Drawing on Blumer's theory of prejudice as a sense of group position, as it has been elaborated and extended to multi-ethnic settings by subsequent scholarship, I contend that local reactions to mosques in Catalonia have been shaped by context-specific configurations of id…
The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to Religion as Culture in Spain
This article contributes to sociological theorizations of religion as heritage through analyzing the politics of religious heritage in Spain since its transition to democracy during the late 1970s. Our analysis is organized around three historical sequences of critical importance for understanding the political and legal significance of discourses that frame religion as cultural heritage in Spain: (1) negotiations that took place during Spain's d…
Knocked out: Ritual disruption and the decline of Spanish boxing
Scholars have written extensively on the emergence of mass sports in modern industrial societies, and the factors that have facilitated the development of 'hegemonic sports cultures'. Less has been written on how the structure and content of 'national sport spaces' change over time, and the reasons that certain sports cultures have failed to sustain their popular appeal amid processes of political, social and cultural transformation. This article…
Religious governance in the Spanish city: Hands-on versus hands-off approaches to accommodating religious diversity in Barcelona and Madrid
This contribution examines divergent trajectories of religious governance in Madrid and Barcelona, two cities that have pursued distinct approaches to accommodating religious diversity despite being located in the same national context. Whereas Madrid has dealt with religious diversity under the broader rubric of immigration and culture, and has been largely passive and ‘hands-off’ in its approach to governance, Barcelona has demarcated religion …
Street Performance, Public Space, and the Boundaries of Urban Desirability: The Case of Living Statues in Barcelona
How do cities determine who has the right to station themselves in iconic public spaces? This article explores this question by analyzing the evolution of Barcelona's approach to regulating street performance, with a particular focus on regulations pertaining to ‘living statues’. Although most buskers have been expelled from the Ramblas, one of the city's most emblematic walkways, living statues remain permitted on the promenade. This, I argue, i…
Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage
Religion and counter-state nationalism in Catalonia
Catalonia is simultaneously the most secular region in Spain and the region that places the greatest priority on actively managing religious affairs. Moreover, parties comprising the Catalan Left have been particularly assertive in pushing for legislative proposals to reduce the privileges of the Catholic Church and the general presence of religion in the public sphere. This article examines the sources of Catalonia’s exceptionality in religious …
Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research
Scholars have taken a growing interest in what we call “culturalized religion”—that is, forms of religious identification, discourse, and expression that are primarily cultural in character, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual. This article aims to clarify our current thinking about these phenomena so as to facilitate future theoretical and empirical work. Drawing on recent work in the …
A Latin Can Be Worth Just as Much or More than a Saxon’: Boxing, Gender, and Transnational Latinity in Late Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Spain
This article examines Spanish press coverage of boxing upon its entry into Spain’s ‘media space’ during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our analysis highlights how the mix of fascination, repugnance, and admiration displayed toward the sport were shaped by the broader context of imperial rivalry and anxieties about the purported decline of Spain and other Latin nations vis-à-vis the ascendant Anglo-Saxon nations. Criticizing bo…
Marian Burchardt, Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West
Marian Burchardt’s Regulating Difference is an original and innovative comparative study of the complex entanglements of secularization, religious diversification, and national identity in Quebec and Catalonia, two regions that are comparable in a number of key respects. They are both stateless nations with predominantly Catholic populations. And both have been transformed significantly by the processes of secularization and religious diversifica…
Nationalist Mobilization, Ethno-Religious Contention, and Legal Innovation in a Stateless Nation: Explaining Catalonia’s 2009 “Law on Centers of Worship”
This article analyzes the development and framing of Catalonia’s “Law on Centers of Worship”, an innovative law dedicated exclusively to the regulation of religious temples that was passed by the regional Parliament in 2009. The law was a legal novelty in Spain, as well as in Europe, where regulations pertaining to places of worship are typically folded into regional or municipal laws and ordinances dealing with zoning and construction. My analys…
Religion and its modifiers: Making Sense of the Definition and Subtypification of a Contested Concept
Religious representation and performative citizenship: The civic dimensions of Shia lamentation rituals in Barcelona
In diasporic contexts, religious representatives play a key role as cultural ambassadors for their respective communities and religions. This article examines religious representation as a form of civic engagement among Shia Muslims who have assumed representational responsibilities in Barcelona. Our study focuses on their interactions with municipal authorities and the wider public amid the planning, organization, and enactment of public lamenta…
Transforming the sacred: A neo-Durkheimian analysis of the aesthetic modification and cultural resignification of Barcelona’s municipal crèche (1961–2021)
Ashura in Barcelona: Spatial Adaptations of a Shia Islamic Ritual in a Diasporic Setting
Ashura en Barcelona: Adaptaciones espaciales de un ritual islámico chiita en la diáspora
Anonymity and Digital Islamic Authority
Much of the literature on digital religious authority has focused on spiritual "influencers" and the challenges they pose to traditional religious hierarchies and structures of authority. Less attention has been dedicated to religious websites, social media pages, and digital feeds whose popularity and influence do not hinge on the personalistic qualities of their creators. There is a wide assortment of generic religious reference sites that, alt…
L'Achoura à Barcelone: Adaptations Spatiales d'Un Rituel Islamique Chiite en Situation Diasporique
Barcelone, capitale de la Catalogne et deuxième ville d’Espagne, est aussi une métropole méditerranéenne qui a connu d’importantes transformations sociales et urbaines au cours des dernières décennies. Parmi ces évolutions, on peut souligner la remarquable et rapide pluralisation de son paysage religieux qui a remplacé l’ancienne hégémonie sociale (et politique) du catholicisme et semble avoir bouleversé un processus de sécularisation présenté co…
Performing heritage at Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral
This article explores the politics of cultural heritage in societies experiencing secularization and religious diversification by examining recent efforts made by Cordoba's Cathedral Chapter to emphasize the Christian origins and identity of the iconic Mosque-Cathedral. We argue that the Cathedral Chapter's approach to managing and narrating the building over the past two decades responds largely to tensions stemming from the divergence between t…
The “publicness” of urban religious rituals: A comparison of Shia lamentation processions in Barcelona and Birmingham
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (12 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (10 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Islam (8 works) · History (7 works) · Law (7 works)