Writing Religion
in British-Asian Diasporas
Seán McLoughlin
(University of Leeds) &
John Zavos (University
of Manchester)
1) Introduction / Overview
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Critical perspectives on ‘religion’ in academic texts writing
British-Asians
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City vignettes + key processes in reconstruction &
recognition of ‘religion’:
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Religious Reconstruction in Urban Contexts: Re-location &
Universal-isation, Fusion & Fission
Religion, Multiculturalism & the Local/National State
Religion & Multi / Trans-local Imaginaries
Demotic Resistance: folk religioning & hybridising popular multicultures
2) The Category of Religion
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Sociology Anthropology Cultural Studies:
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Religious Studies:
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1970s & 80s: Political economy of immigration, race / culture /
nation & urban ethnicity
1990s & 2000s: Diaspora hybridity transnational consciousness,
flows & cultural production
1980s & 1990s empirical mapping & religion / ethnicity
1990s modern secular construct ‘segregated from power’. Study
culture & power. Particular temporal/spatial locations.
Religion in Postcolonial British-Asian Cities:
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Global religioscapes. Diasporic & transnational. Universal & local.
Dominant & demotic discourses - dual discursive competence
The Secular State, Multiculturalism & Religion
3) Religious Reconstruction in Urban
Contexts
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Birmingham - Nishkam & Sikh values. Planning, volunteering, selfsufficiency. Dynamic tension origins & diaspora. Multifunctional
centre. Enterprise, well-being, heritage & multi-local ICT.
Leicester - elaborate public ritual / festivals. Vaisnavite garba at
Navratri - religious, gendered, adaptive, multi-local, commodified
spaces but also caste specific.
Cityscapes most tangible signs of relocation & adaptation
Fusion & fission during soujourning & later institutionalisation
What religioning travels?Continuity & transformation, ritual
abbreviation & expansion, in local & universal traditions
Innovation / objectification of new vernaculars in transmission
Struggles for power, authority & leadership: gender, class,
generation, caste, kin, denominations
4) The State & Public Recognition of
Religious Identities
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‘Encorporation’: the state writes religion as community identity
The language of ‘faith’ and ‘community cohesion’
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Bradford - from AYM to BCM, the story of ‘race relations’ in the city
Manchester - Religious education as a language of cohesion
Birmingham - the development of religious institutions, from the
unmarked terrace to multicultural icons
Planning religious institutions in the multicultural milieu, a
narrative of developing public recognition
Erasing localised practice
dominant voices and discourses in the construction of
multiculturalism and religion
5) The multilocal and the translocal in the
religious imaginary
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resisting postmodern dislocation through spiritual location (re.
community cohesion and faith relations)
refracting globalisation through the multilocal
Dominant voices, dominant discourses
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Birmingham - Guru Nanak Nishkam Seva Jatha and the Nishkam
Centre for Excellence, Soho Rd, in a network of institutions
(Birmingham, Kericho, Amritsar)
Birmingham: ‘getting in touch with my spiritual side’ in the context
of the Bosnian war
‘turning the world inside out’ to ‘say something about the world
today from a position that is not centred on the West’
(McLoughlin)
Translocality/religion as an alternative moral space…
6) Demotic Resistance:
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Tower Hamlets - Baul singer, lacking institutional support / wider
funding in UK ... But new cultural forms. Communications
technology & commodification e.g. qawwali. Roots & routes?
Birmingham - from kirtan to bhangra. Tension. Bhangra semiautonomous folk / pop cultural space. Dance & self-spirituality?
‘Religion’ & culture versus pan (Br)Asian spirituality? Memory,
resources, generation. Fusion now = matter out of place?
Challenge to discrete bounded religions & category itself.
Non-institutionalised domestic, women’s & children’s spaces?
Ethnography of melas?
More or less institutionalised ‘in-between’ traditions: Valmikis,
Ravidasis, Baba Balaknath, kismetic pirs
7) Re-thinking religion in the localities of the
project
Recognising narratives of British Asian religiosity:
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A tale of transplantation (the ‘nostalgia for culture’)
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Fusion-fission-fusion
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Boundaries, separation and cohesion
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From the margins to the centre
7) Re-thinking religion in the localities of the
project
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Nye: ‘a theoretical approach that assumes religious and cultural
identities to be situational, based on syncretic and hybrid
processes of construction and innovation, and that manifestations
of a particular religious tradition within a particular multicultural
context will give rise to certain religious forms’
Knott: ‘an investigation of particular, local spaces provides a
different perspective on the location of religion to those
approaches which take ‘World Religions’ and generic religious
categories and dimensions as their objects of study’
Carrette: ‘a location for understanding a regime of knowledgepower’
Unwritten narratives and transgressive forms of ‘religion’
Using locality to decentre the category?