Religion,Violence and Cities: An Introduction

Abstract

The catalyst for this special issue was a symposium entitled Religion, Violence and Cities, held under the auspices of a five year inter-disciplinary research project on ethno-nationally divided cities.¹1. Conflict and Cities and the Contested State: Everyday Life and the Possibilities of Transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and Other Divided Cities (2007–2013), ESRC Large Grant No. RES-060-25-0015. Principal Investigators were: Wendy Pullan (University of Cambridge), Liam O'Dowd and James Anderson (Queen's University, Belfast) and Mick Dumper (University of Exeter). The ‘Contested State’ of the title refers to states where the central political dynamic concerns the boundaries, or even the existence, of the state itself. While this project expressly addressed cities divided by ethno-national conflict, it was clear from the beginning that there was an important religious dimension to such conflicts in most, if not all, the cities being studied.²2. The two main cities studied were Belfast and Jerusalem while other cities researched by project personnel included Vukovar (see Baillie, 2013 Baillie, B. (2013) Structural Violence and the (Re)construction of Vukovar's Churches, Space and Polity, 17(3). [Google Scholar], this issue), Beirut, Kirkuk, Nicosia, Mostar, and Brussels. The rationale of the Special Issue is to examine how this religious dimension exacerbates (or moderates) urban violence within a broad comparative context. Although three of the following articles are informed by Project research, we draw the net wider to encompass a broader geographical spread from the Balkans, the Middle East, Nigeria and Japan.