Doctoral Dissertation Research: Governance, Urban Planning and Religious Modernity

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Religious revival movements have become a prominent part of the global political landscape in recent decades. Whereas many once assumed that modernization and urbanization would be accompanied by secularization, faith-based movements and their political effects have only become more relevant worldwide. Religious politics have not only transformed the political sphere; politicization has also changed religion and religious practices. This project, which trains an anthropology graduate student in methods of scientifically rigorous and empirical data collection and analysis, explores what impact the institutionalization of religion in government has on transforming the public sphere, urban space, and practices of piety. By examining the effects of governance on religious practices, urban planning, capitalism, tourism, and identity, the project advances our understanding of modernity and state-building in socio-religious contexts. The project also broadens the participation of groups historically underrepresented in science, contributes the education of underrepresented groups, and builds capacity and scientific infrastructure through international cooperation in these scientific research communities. The Fellow, under the supervision of Dr. Hussein Agrama of the University of Chicago, proposes to explore how shrine pilgrimage and its material relationship to shifting practices of governance, religious pilgrimage, and piety impact the organization of urban space, cultural beliefs about modernity, and conceptions of self and community. This project examines how institutionalization of religion has affected popular practices of religiosity, specifically a network of shrines in a range of urban and non-urban settings with varying levels of state political oversight. The research will be conducted at three sites (in major city, a secondary city that is known for its shrine, and a city that has been rebranded as a hub for religious tourism). Utilizing interviews, participant-observation, and archival, research will investigate how pilgrims, locals, urban planners, architects, and other stakeholders understand the transformation of these sites. This research will contribute to debates in political anthropology about governance, theories in the anthropology of religion about pilgrimage, mobility, and tourism, and analyses in urban anthropology about space and sectarian identity. Findings from this research will provide insight into how religious politics are lived on the ground and how the administrative and bureaucratic practices of governance in a modern state transform the role of religion in public life. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.