How might we best understand the relationship between the vibrant religious landscapes we see in many cities and contemporary urban social processes? Through case studies drawn from around the world, contributors explore the ways in which these processes interact in cities.

This book argues that religious events – including rituals, processions, and festivals – are not only choreographies of sacred traditions, but they are also creative disruptions that reveal how urban cultural hierarchies are experienced and contested. Exposing the power dynamics behind these events, this book shows how performative uses of urban space serve to destabilize dominant genealogies and lineages around urban identities just as they lay claims to cultural supremacy or heritage.

Through exploring the affective disruptions and political controversies caused by religious events, the contributors engage theoretical discussions in urban studies, the sociology of religion and the ethnography of ritual. This book is a significant contribution to understanding emerging patterns in contemporary religion and also for theories related to heritagization, eventization, and urbanization.

Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces is a truly enjoyable read. The lively writing creates a vivid picture of processions, festivals and spectacles from Moscow to Rio de Janeiro and Madrid. The innovative concept of ‘urban religious events’ provides a convincing overall prism for analysis of events from lighting the hanukkiah in Barcelona, to jiu-jitsu parades in Brazil and practicing yoga on a bridge in Vancouver. * Lene Kühle, Professor of Sociology and Religion, Aarhus University, Denmark *

Paul Bramadat is Professor and Director at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, Canada.
Mar Griera is Associate Professor and Director at the ISOR Research Centre, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
Julia Martinez-Ariño is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Marian Burchardt is Professor of Sociology at Leipzig University, Germany.