Abstract
This chapter analyzes the spread and global diffusion of interreligious public events that are intended to commemorate traumatic memories, to mourn the victims of violence or disasters, and to perform public celebrations. This chapter takes a double approach to the subject. First, and from a political science perspective, it examines how interreligious rituals are being globally diffused, who their carriers are, and what factors explain their rapid diffusion in diverse local contexts, especially in Europe. Second, by assuming an ethnographic perspective, this chapter explores the microsociology of interreligious public events with the aim of understanding how the idea of the interreligious movement becomes crystalized and materialized in specific settings. This second part is based on the analysis of a specific empirical case—which is the organization and celebration of an interreligious mourning ritual for the victims of the terrorist attack that occurred in Barcelona in August 2017.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
See http://worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/2018-events/ (accessed on April 4, 2018).
- 2.
- 3.
http://www.torinospiritualita.org/ (accessed on April 5, 2018).
- 4.
See https://festivaloffaiths.org/ (accessed on April 5, 2018).
- 5.
The project ‘Religious Expressions in the Urban Space of Madrid and Barcelona’ is an I+D project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the period 2016–2018. See: http://urbanreligions.uab.cat/en. I would like to thank Sergi Monraba and Anna Clot-Garrell for helping me in carrying out the fieldwork for this chapter.
- 6.
More specifically, the project has focused on four public interreligious events: the interreligious event held after the Barcelona terrorist attacks (17/7/2017), the celebration of a public interreligious celebration in the Catalan Parliament during the interfaith harmony week, the organization of an interreligious gathering to celebrate a public iftar in the neighborhood of Raval, and the celebration of the ‘Night of Religions.’
- 7.
See http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/17/europe/barcelona-las-ramblas-van-hits-crowd/index.html (last accessed on October 9, 2017).
- 8.
In this regard, it is interesting to look at Kaarsten Lehmann’s considerations on the unnofficial story of interreligious dialogue. See http://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/authority-communityidentity/a-forgotten-episode-in-the-history-of-interreligious-dialogue/
- 9.
In a more concrete fashion, Veit Bader states that “religious governance implies some regulatory capacity from outside or above (by private or by semi-public and public hierarchies), or through self-regulation (democratic religious congregations, informal religious networks, associations and communities).… For an analysis of ‘governance of religious diversity’, public non-state actors and a variety of semi-public and private actors are important. Government, on the other hand, means regulation by public hierarchies—the differentiated state—and their specific means (legal and administrative rules, jurisdiction and—the threat of—force). Policies of deregulation and privatisation induce shifts from government to governance” (Bader 2007, p. 50).
- 10.
To some extent, the only interreligious events that are not supported by public authorities are the gatherings of the interreligious monastic dialogue groups. All the other events have obtained some sort of support from public authorities, ranging from no more than a small financial contribution to direct involvement.
- 11.
At the risk of stating the obvious, ‘perceived solutions’ are not always ‘real solutions’ but policy responses that aim to show that governments are ‘doing something’ to deal with these conditions defined as ‘public problems.’ In this way, despite the fact that, from a sociological perspective, ending social inequalities and reducing social segregation might be perceived as more useful for fostering good social coexistence, this might not be seen as a ‘feasible’ solution for policymakers.
- 12.
Erving Goffman developed a dramaturgical approach to sociology. He distinguished between the front stage and back stage behavior of people. The front stage behavior is what people do when they know other people are watching, that is, when they have an audience. Here our behavior is shaped by cultural norms and expectations. Back stage behavior, on the other hand, is what people do when no one is watching. Back stage, however, is also where people prepare for what they will do front stage. This is where they make plans, rehearse, and practice.
- 13.
See http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/17/europe/barcelona-las-ramblas-van-hits-crowd/index.html (last accessed October 9, 2017).
- 14.
See http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/20/europe/barcelona-terror-attack-memorial-mass-sagradafamilia/index.html (last accessed October 10, 2017).
- 15.
On March 24, 2015, Germanwings Flight 4 U 9525 took off from Barcelona Airport in Spain heading for Düsseldorf, Germany, with 150 people on board. The copilot of the plane deliberately crashed the plane in a remote area of the Alps, killing all on board.
- 16.
See https://rm.coe.int/compilation-of-good-practices-from-icc-cities-2017/168076fee0 (Compilation of Good Practices from ICC Cities). (Last accessed on May 29, 2018.)
References
Alexander, J.C. 2010. The Performance of Politics: Obama’s Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bader, V. 2007. Secularism or Democracy: Associational Governance of Religious Diversity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Beckford, J.A. 2015. ‘Community’ in the Sociology of Religion: The Case of Britain. Social Compass 62 (2): 225–237.
Berger, P.L. 2014. The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age. Boston: Walter de Gruyter/GmbH & Co KG.
Bramadat, P., and M. Koenig. 2009. International Migration and the Governance of Religious Diversity. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Braybrooke, M. 1980. Interfaith Organisations, 1893–1979: An Historical Directory. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.
Burchardt, M. 2017. Diversity as Neoliberal Governmentality: Towards a New Sociological Genealogy of Religion. Social Compass 64: 180–193.
Casanova, J. 2001. Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization. Sociology of Religion 62: 415–441.
Clot-Garrell, A., and M. Griera. 2018. Las salas multiconfesionales en el context hospitalario catalán: negociaciones y tensiones en la gestión de la diversidad. Salud colectiva 14: 289–304.
Collins, R. 2011. The Micro-Sociology of Religion: Religious Practices, Collective and Individual. Association of Religion Data Archives. Available online at: http://www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers/Collins.pdf
Cossu, A. 2010. Durkheim’s Argument on Ritual, Commemoration and Aesthetic Life: A Classical Legacy for Contemporary Performance Theory? Social Compass 10 (1): 33–49.
Di Maggio, P., and W. Powell. 1983. The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160.
Durkheim, E. 1964 (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press.
———. 1995. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: Newly Translated By Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press.
Falkenhayner, N. 2010. The Other Rupture of 1989: The Rushdie Affair as the Inaugural Event of Representations of Post-Secular Conflict. Global Society 24: 111–132.
Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction Ritual. Garden City: Doubleday.
———. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Social Order. London: Allen Lane.
Griera, M., and M. Forteza. 2011. New Actors on the Governance of Religious Diversity in European Cities: The Role of Interfaith Platforms. In Religious Actors in the Public Sphere: Means, Objectives, and Effects, ed. Jeffrey Haynes and Anja Hennig, 113–131. New York: Routledge.
———. 2013. The Multifaith Movement: Global Risks and Cosmopolitan Solutions. Dordrecht: Springer.
Griera, M., M.C. Giorda, and V. Fabretti. 2018. Initiatives interreligieuses et gouvernance locale: les cas de Barcelone et de Turin. Social Compass 65 (3): 312–328. https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768618787238.
Halafoff, A. 2013. The Multifaith Movement: Global Risks and Cosmopolitan Solutions. Dordrecht: Springer.
Haynes, J. 2014. Religion in Global Politics. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Hedges, P., and A. Halafoff. 2015. Globalisation and Multifaith Societies. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 25: 135–161.
Hurd, E. 2010. The Global Securitization of Religion. Social Science Research Council Blog. Available online at: https://tif.ssrc.org/2010/03/23/global-securitization/. Accessed 20 Feb 2018.
Kingdon, J.W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, vol. 45, 165–169. Boston: Little, Brown.
———. 1995. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers.
Klinkhammer, G., et al. 2011. Interreligiöse und interkulturelle Dialoge mit MuslimInnen in Deutschland: Eine quantitative und qualitative Studie. Bremen: University Press.
Lamine, Anne-Sophie. 2004. La cohabitation des dieux: Pluralité religieuse et laïcité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Martikainen, T. 2013. Multilevel and Pluricentric Network Governance of Religion. In Religion in the Neoliberal Age, ed. F. Gauthier and T. Martikainen, 129–142. Farnham: Ashgate.
Maussen, M. 2007. The Governance of Islam in Europe: A State of Art Report. Amsterdam: IMISCOE Working Paper (16).
Meyer, J.W., et al. 1997. World Society and the Nation-State. American Journal of Sociology 103: 144–181.
Moyaert, M. 2011. Between Ideology and Utopia: Honneth and Ricœur on Symbolic Violence, Marginalization and Recognition. Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 2: 84–109.
———. 2015. Introduction: Exploring the Phenomenon of Interreligious Ritual Participation. In Ritual Participation and Interreligious Dialogue Boundaries, Transgressions and Innovations, ed. Marianne Moyaert and Joris Geldhof, 1–16. New York: Bloomsbury.
Nagel, A.-K. 2015. Religious Pluralization and Interfaith Activism in Germany. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 25: 199–221.
———. 2016. Relational Diversity: Religious Pluralization and Politics of Cohesion. In The Humanities Between Global Integration and Cultural Diversity, ed. B. Mersmann and H.G. Kippenberg, 227–241. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Nicolini, D. 2012. Practice Theory, Work, and Organization: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rath, J., ed. 2001. Western Europe and Its Islam. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill.
Seager, R.H. 1989. Pluralism and the American Mainstream: The View from the World’s Parliament of Religions. Harvard Theological Review 82: 301–324.
Tezcan, L. 2007. Kultur, Gouvernementalität der Religion und der Integrationsdiskurs. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG.
Weller, P. 2009. How Participation Changes Things: ‘Inter-faith’, ‘Multi-faith’ and a New Public Imaginary. In Faith in the Public Realm, ed. A. Dinham et al., 63–81. Bristol: Policy Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Griera, M. (2019). Interreligious Events in the Public Space: Performing Togetherness in Times of Religious Pluralism. In: Moyaert, M. (eds) Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries. Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05701-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05701-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05700-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05701-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)