Organizer 1
Katherine Pestieau
Senior Project Advisor
Metropolis Project
365 Laurier West, 15A, Ottawa ON K1A 1L1 Canada

Tel: (613) 957-5979
Fax: (613) 957-5968
Email:katherine.pestieau@metropolis.net


Organizer 2
Julie Elizabeth Gagnon
PhD Candidate and research officer
INRS Urbanisation, Culture et Société
3465 Durocher, Montréal QC H2X 2C6 Canada

Tel: (514) 499-8270/277-5078
Fax: 514) 499-4065
Email:Julie_Gagnon@INRS-UCS.uquebec.ca





Workshop description:
Religion, either directly through religious practice or indirectly through values and worldviews, is fundamental to many people's identity, not least to immigrants who recreate their lives in a new environment. The implications of increasingly diverse ethno-religious collective identities and practices run deep for both minority groups, who must adapt to a new social context, and for various institutional actors representing society at large, who often have to devise new policies and management philosophies to adapt to changing needs and preferences in the general population. This workshop will examine how minority religious communities create religious space in the multicultural and often secular-oriented metropolis by looking into how these groups produce symbolic landscapes; this can be done by setting up or building places of worship (mosques, synagogues, temples, etc.) or through various spatial expressions of their ethno-religious distinctiveness (such as installing an eruv, holding outdoor prayer sessions or religious marches, etc.) Often, issues of integration, identity and relating to "otherness" crystallize around the concrete need of one community to gather for worship and the response of local citizens, interest groups and municipal governments. The negotiated outcome for these requests for religious space reflects the responsiveness of local governments to immigrants and minority religious groups, as well as critical issues associated with secularity and the expression of religious beliefs in public space. Drawing on case studies from Amsterdam, Oslo and different Bristish and American cities, the workshop will compare the responses to different attempts by immigrants to carve their religious space in the city. The goal will be to demonstrate how different contexts and responses have resulted in different outcomes.





Presenters / participants /other information
Final list of presenters:
Patrice Brodeur,
Connecticut College (Religious Studies), USA,
pcbro@locust.conncoll.edu

Karen Kraal,
IMES (University of Amsterdam), Netherlands,
kraa@pscw.uva.nl

Ceri Peach,
University of Oxford (Geography), UK, ceri.peach@geograhpy.oxford.ac.uk

Susan Thompson,
University of New South Wales (geography), Australia, s.thompson@unsw.edu.au




Summary:
This workshop will examine how minority religious communities create religious space in the multicultrual and often secular-oriented metropolis. Issues of integration, identity and "otherness" often crystallize around a community's concrete need to gather for worship and the response of local citizens, interest groups and municipal governments to this need. The negotiated outcome to the requests for religious space reflects the responsiveness of local governments to immigrants and minority religious groups, as well as critical issues associated with secularity and the expression of religious beliefs in public space.




Date: 10 September


(1 session is 3 hours)
Number of sessions: 1

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