Citification of Religion: A New Approach to the Study of Urban Religion in Mediterranean Antiquity
Lecture by Dr. Emiliano Urciuoli (University of Erfurt).
Info about event
Time
Location
Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg, Denmark (Building 4230-232).
Abstract
‘The path to the study of urban religion has to be cleared,’ Robert Orsi has written in the introductory chapter of Gods of the City, the 1999-volume on contemporary American cities that sparked the study of ‘urban religion’ twenty years ago. This statement holds true also for ancient Mediterranean cities and religion/s. Blending together religious studies, social and political theory, this lecture will set out to propose a serviceable analytical distinction between ‘urbanization’ and ‘citification’ of religion as two sets of processes and states of affairs concerning the role of religion/s in cityspaces. The deep history of religion and urbanism reveals them as cross-cultural, deep-rooted, and inextricably related strategies of handling, enhancing, and buying into human sociality. Yet, after a century and a half of narratives on the rise of the earliest cities, religion still plays a rather standard and one-sided role in the scholarly plots of urbanization: a more or less critical force of political integration and social stratification. A different story needs to be told, starting, for instance, with a new description of the urban history of one of the most fortunate urban religions of the Mediterranean Antiquity: early Christ religion.
The lecture will be followed by a wine reception.