Abstract
This study is an investigation of social relations in the interreligious meetings and activities of six women’s interreligious groups in London. The groups were selected to include three from more prosperous middle-class suburbs and three from areas with a lower socio-economic character where women in particular often lead lives isolated from the rest of society. The study asks whether social capital is a condition for or product of interreligious dialogue. It relates the findings to concepts of social capital, in particular as developed by Robert Putnam. The relationship between ‘bonding’, ‘bridging’ and ‘linking’ capital is also analysed. For the middle-class, professional women interreligious activities were largely a continuation of the patterns and structures of existing social practices and networks. For many women of lower socio-economic and migrant backgrounds, interreligious activities constituted a new direction. In their cases interreligious activity helped develop personal capital, but the acquisition of that capital was nevertheless dependent on the mediation of trusted facilitators, institutions and structures to create the right conditions for engagement. While ‘bridging’ across religious difference was the declared purpose of the interreligious groups, the intensification of relationships through ‘bonding’, as women and ‘sisters’, was the powerful experience in all groups.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Personal names in this chapter are pseudonyms.
- 2.
Echoes of this combination of chat and serious religious discussion can be found in other studies of women’s groups, such as Abby Day’s study of as women’s prayer group. (Day 2010)
- 3.
Another family identity category was used to show this close bonding when a young Muslim woman described a middle aged Christian woman in Group 6 as her aunt: ‘I’ve adopted Janet, she’s a sort of aunt to me’.
References
Barnet Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. https://open.barnet.gov.uk/dataset/barnet-joint-strategic-needs-assessment-2015-2020. Accessed May 2017.
Coleman, James S. 1988. Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology 94 (Suppl): S95–S120.
Day, Abby. 2010. Doing Theodicy: An Empirical Study of a Women’s Prayer Group. Journal of Contemporary Religion 20 (3): 343–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537900500249889. Last accessed 25 May 2018.
Halpern, David. 2005. Social Capital. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Woolcock, Michael. 2001. The Place of Social Capital in Understanding Social and Economic Outcomes. www.oecd.org/innovation/research/1824913.pdf. Last accessed 25 May 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ipgrave, J. (2019). Case Study 3: Six Women’s Interreligious Dialogue Groups in London. In: Ipgrave, J. (eds) Interreligious Engagement in Urban Spaces. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16796-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16796-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-16795-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-16796-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)