Abstract
This chapter introduces the spatial dimension of interreligious activity using as guidance the research question: What and how are the different meanings produced and contested in places of interreligious activity? An initial trawl through the ReDi project’s research findings through a lens of space and place confirms the dynamic, multivalent and contested nature of the meaning making. It uncovers a number of power issues bound up in the use, ownership and interpretation of buildings and places, and struggles between the pull of past traditions and forces of the present seeking to adapt to changed circumstances of urban plurality and mobility. The chapter engages with a variety of literature in the field as a way of achieving conceptual clarity about the processes involved. From the conversation between research findings and existing theory, six new categories are identified and explained for a more detailed analysis of our material in the case studies that follow. They are occupation, socialisation, abstraction, materialisation, sacralisation and temporalisation.
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- 1.
Elected to replace the previous MP, Sajid Khan, who that May had been elected as London’s first Muslim mayor.
- 2.
Here Massey uses ‘space’, but ‘place’ is more in keeping with the distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’ adopted in this chapter.
- 3.
See use of photo of minaret among the chimney pots to illustrate Philip Johnson ‘Islam poses a threat to the West say 53pc in a poll’. In The Daily Telegraph 25 August 2006.
- 4.
Otto uses heilig which can be rendered in English as ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’.
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Ipgrave, J. (2019). Introduction: Production and Contestation of Meaning in Places of Interreligious Activity. In: Ipgrave, J. (eds) Interreligious Engagement in Urban Spaces. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16796-7_8
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