Routes and Rites to the City

"Focusing on the particular global character of post-apartheid Johannesburg, this engrossing collection shows how the mobile bodies, practices, materialities, discourses and images that enact religion and spirituality are also fundamentally constitutive of urban social space." (Mary Hancock, author, "The Politics of Heritage from Madras to Chennai") "This book magisterially unpacks the movements and traces of religious practice in Johannesburg's urban space. With its incredible attention to both the visible and the invisible, the evanescent and the more permanent features of urban religious life, it represents a masterpiece of urban scholarship. Through marvellous ethnographies an unseen city emerges in front of us. Highly recommended to students of urban studies and religion alike." (Marian Burchardt, author of "Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa", and researcher at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany)

This thought-provoking book is an exploration of the ways religion and diverse forms of mobility have shaped post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. It re-theorizes urban ‘super-diversity’ as a plurality of religious, ethnic, national and racial groups but also as the diverse processes through which religion produces urban space.This thought-provoking book is an exploration of the ways religion and diverse forms of mobility have shaped post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. It analyses transnational and local migration in contemporary and historical perspective, along with movements of commodities, ideas, sounds and colours within the city. It re-theorizes urban ‘super-diversity’ as a plurality of religious, ethnic, national and racial groups but also as the diverse processes through which religion produces urban space. The authors argue that while religion facilitates movement, belonging and aspiration in the city, it is complicit in establishing new forms of enclosure, moral order and spatial and gendered control. Multi-authored and interdisciplinary, this edited collection deals with a wide variety of sites and religions, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism. Its original reading of post-apartheid Johannesburg advances global debates around religion, urbanization, migration and diversity, and will appeal to students and scholars working in these fields.