121 – Religious Infrastructures and City-Making: Governance, Governmentality and Urban Moral Geographies

October 2, 2025
8:30 am
H08
This panel invites presentations that investigate the role played by religious organisations in providing infrastructures that sustain social, cultural and economic life in cities with long-standing histories of civic instability, disorder or state incapacity. These forms of ‘religious infrastructure’ might include administrative and residential arrangements; mechanisms for resource allocation, procedures for dispute resolution and financial transactions; and networks for providing educational, health and social services. In the absence, disruption or collapse of state-led activity, numerous traditional and new religious organisations have played a significant role in establishing vernacular forms of governance, government and governmentality across cities in South Asia (and, indeed, in the Global South). Infrastructures of these kinds supplement and, sometimes, replace those of the state, providing succour and sustenance under stressful conditions of postcolonial urbanism. What does urban religious infrastructure tell us about forms of sociality, governance and religious and everyday life on South Asian cities?

Convenors

Sanjay Srivastava
Filippo Osella

Presentations

“God Gives Hope”: Navigating Marginality, Health and Gender through Religious Infrastructure in Delhi’s Informal Settlement”
Singh Prerna - University of Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Festival Infrastructure, Neighbourhood Clubs and the Affective Governance: The Politics of Spectacle and Urban Transformation in Contemporary Kolkata
Mukherjee SOUNITA - University of California, Davis, University of California, Davis, United States
Religious city-makers and the civic: Tamil religious infrastructures in (sub)urban Paris
Lang Natalie - Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Pilgrimage, Wellness, and Development: The Role of Global Buddhist Networks in Bodhgaya’s Transformation.
Kumar Siddharth - Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India
Moral entanglements and youth culture in India’s North East borderland town
Haokip S. Seigoulien - Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, London, United Kingdom
Religious media infrastructures and the right to the city in Twelver Shi‘i Mumbai
Eisenlohr Patrick - Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Hagiographic Practices and Place-Making by Subaltern Guru-cults amongst displaced Sylhetis in post-Partition Shillong
Bhattacharjee Tannishtha - Department History, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, United States
Languages at the edge of silence. Religious-work, affects and the making of moral geographies in Srinagar.
Srivastava Sanjay - Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, LONDON, United Kingdom
Wani Ibrahim - Kashmir University, Kashmir University, Srinagar, India
Religious Therapy, Healthcare and Governance in Urban Spaces: A Sociological Study of the Brahma Kumaris Traditions
Sinha Priyanka - Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India
Abandoned Bodies and Eternal Souls: Mother Teresa’s Shelters and Biopolitics in Kolkata
Novikov Egor - SAI, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany