The political geographies of religious sites in Moscow’s neighborhoods (original) (raw)
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History and Anthropology, 2020
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Imagined mosque communities in Russia: Central Asian migrants in Moscow
Asian Ethnicity (Journal), 2018
The article aims to shed light on mosque communities in Russia through the example of mosques frequented by Moscovites and by Central Asian migrants. I will make use of Anderson's theoretical framework of 'imagined community' in analysing the material presented in the article. The main argument is that there are no real mosque communities and rather that the sense of community formed around mosques is imagined. There are nevertheless a variety of networks, groups and institutions within and around mosques. The article is based on fieldwork
Asian Ethnicity Imagined mosque communities in Russia: Central Asian migrants in Moscow
The article aims to shed light on mosque communities in Russia through the example of mosques frequented by Moscovites and by Central Asian migrants. I will make use of Anderson’s theoretical framework of ‘imagined community’ in analysing the material presented in the article. The main argument is that there are no real mosque communities and rather that the sense of community formed around mosques is imagined. There are nevertheless a variety of networks, groups and institutions within and around mosques. The article is based on fieldwork conducted in 2016 and 2017.
The article discusses issues of urban public space in Russian cities within the context of the 2011–2012 anti-electoral fraud protests. The role of urban public space and its contestation has been central to the debate around the worldwide Occupy movement, but it is important to contextualize the protest movements in terms of national and local developments in the uses of public space. Therefore, the article focuses on post-socialist transformations of public space in the Russian cities of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Representations and perceptions of public space are examined via media analysis (including mass media reports, blog entries, and official documents). The analysis shows that public space was important for the Russian anti-electoral protests in 2011–2012: protesters attempted to reclaim central and symbolically loaded parts of the city and thus regain political power as well. Rallies and street protests have not been the only ways of reclaiming public space, however. A variety of direct actions have also been aimed at transforming urban space.
The Diversification of the Muslim Community in St. Petersburg in the 2010s
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2018
Through the intensification of migration, the number of Muslims has multiplied in ethnically Russian areas, including St. Petersburg. Within the heterogeneous Muslim community of the city, countless new communities and initiatives have emerged, but they increasingly face suspicions and restrictions from the authorities. These difficulties reflect the general political urge to exercise more control over religious activity in Russia. Nevertheless, discussions about the need to police Islamic activity contain arguments—similar to those in Western Europe—about the alleged incompatibility of Islam and modern secular societies. This article surveys the development and challenges of new Muslim communities in St. Petersburg in the 2010s. It is argued that the diversification of religiosity is an expected outcome of the pluralization of modern societies. Paradoxically, the restrictive politics that are based on the supposed illiberal, anti-modern nature of Islam promotes religious monopolies and thus a very traditional understanding of religiosity.
Journal of Urban Affairs, 2019
This paper studies local urban activism in contemporary Russia and relates neighborhood protests and urban citizenship to conflicts over housingrelated public space. It situates Moscow as a cumulative space of post-Soviet neoliberal and authoritarian urban development and shows how and why Muscovites have opposed this development by engaging in local grassroots initiatives. The empirical analysis employs data from interviews with participants in two neighborhood protests against unwanted construction in their districts. It reveals patterns of active citizenship related to a rights-based approach to the living environment, the rejection of mainstream politics, and the building of new solidarity-based communities. Russian residents are voicing their dissent and building solidarity in their local living environments while innovatively navigating a highly limited public sphere and insisting on their right to participate in urban governance.
Allegations of ‘communitarian pressures’ remain to be at the center of social, political and cultural debates in Turkey. Such debates particularly increased after the rise to power of the AKP in 2002. Seminal sociologist Şerif Mardin argued that such communitarian pressures, dubbed as the “neighborhood pressure” (mahalle baskısı) constitute one of the dominant characteristics of the Turkish social texture whereby social difference is scrutinized by moralistic and watchful eyes of (Islamic) conservatism. While the neo-liberal ‘global city’ passionately promoted by the AKP increasingly strangles the ‘neighborhood,’ this latter at once seem to exert an intolerant oppression on social difference and multiculturalism, thus further eroding the bases of multi-confessional co-existence. As Istanbul gets ready to be the European Capital of Culture in 2010, it remains to be seen whether multiculturalism and multi-confessionality would only serve as rhetorical advertisement slogans to sell the city to a global clientele or could be revitalized as the bases of religious harmony, cross-borrowings and learning from one another. Perhaps, both the "neoliberal global city" and the "intolerant, repressive neighborhood" have a lot to learn from the Muslim women on headscarves visiting the First Tuesday Greek Orthodox Church in Kuzguncuk.
Social Compass, 2021
This article considers the place religion holds in post-Soviet Russian society, and most importantly, the case of the dominant Russian Orthodoxy. It shows that the gap between low everyday religiosity and high public profile of religion is the key to a specific Russian version of secularity. How religion's spectacular appropriation of physical and social space, up to the imaginative space of the national culture as such, does not cancel the strong counterweight of deeply ingrained secular cultural arrangementseither genetically linked to some European variations or specifically related to (post) communist experience.