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

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 -