Religious and Non-Religious Practices and the City

Abstract

This article explores the complex intersections of religiosity, power and inequality in an inner-city district of Birmingham, England. This deprived area of mainly Muslim residence has been at the forefront of recent debates about social cohesion and is widely portrayed by disparaging outsiders as fostering ‘parallel lives’. Drawing on data from over 100 qualitative interviews with local residents and religious actors, we reveal the manifold, at times contradictory local manifestations of religiosity: as variously reproducing traditional expectations and behaviours and contesting prevailing patterns of stratification; as capable of both entrenching social boundaries and of fostering ‘convivial’, pluralistic co-existence. In wider conceptual terms, we argue for a ‘locality approach’, which acknowledges the importance of religiosity in the area, without reducing all significant social relationships and interactions to it. In particular, we draw on mediated discourse analysis and argue that its distinction between a ‘nexus-’ and a ‘community of practice’ (Scollon 2001) offers much to the sociology of religion in helping to illuminate intra-, inter-, and non-religious discourses and practices, as well as their inter-relationships, unfolding in a locality.

Keywords: Birmingham, deprivation, religiosity, localities, mediated discourse analysis