Urban regimes and the interaction order of religious minority rituals

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article develops a multidimensional concept of urban regimes that allows for explaining racialized asymmetries of access to public space among different religious minority groups. Departing from an empirical study of collective religious rituals in the streets, parks and squares of Barcelona, we compare Buddhist, Sikh and Islamic events in public space. Although all religious events are in theory subjected to the same regulatory regime, we find significant differences in the ways that these regulations are enacted. Making sense of these differences requires a multidimensional concept of urban regimes involving (a) the bureaucratic regulations, (b) the interaction order of the city and the attached emotional registers, and (c) imaginations of public space. The conjunction of all three domains allows for a deeper understanding of how conceptions of ideal public space, urban visibility and public emotional registers are configured in the governance of religious events and partly intersect with institutional racism.