Ritualistic urbanism: habitualism, mutualism and multinational coexistence in Johannesburg

Abstract

This article deploys the concept of ritualistic urbanism to understand the production of everyday urban social regularity in multinationally diverse metropolises. The article mobilises ethnographic vignettes from Johannesburg in this regard. The study hypothesises that it is everyday ethno-mutualism, underpropped by layered everyday routines, rhythms and rituals, which can enable a sustainable economy of social order – arguably more than is possible through statist and top-down regimes of social control. Pursuant to this standpoint is an attempt to extrapolate the order-generating potentialities of everyday urban habits, routines and religio-rituals. The study demonstrates how the habitualisation of ethno-national difference can come about as a function of everyday inter-ethno-national immediacies, constancies and postures that have the capacity to enhance positive and effortless mutuality. The city, therefore, is conceptualised as providing spaces – in the form of its streets, parks, places of worship or work and various institutional or spatial structures – for the sustenance of difference habitualising routines and rituals.