The Fundamentalist City?: Religiosity and the remaking of urban space

This book outlines the emerging relationship between two important phenomena: the historic transition of the majority of the world's population from a rural to an urban existence and the robust resurgence of religion as a major force in the shaping of contemporary urbanism. The international contributors explore the intellectual and practical challenges posed by fundamentalist groups, movements, and organizations. In particular, they seek to understand how such groups are affected by the urban condition, and how they, in turn, affect the urban landscape.With the resurgence of religious and ethnic loyalties across the world, communities are returning to, reinvigorating, and giving new meaning to religions and their common practices. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism are particularly experiencing new influxes of commitments and traditions. Civil-society organizations and other community and religious groups have jumped in to fill the vacuum caused by the state's absence, especially in the provision of social services, infrastructure, and urban order.In many countries, radical religious groups are increasingly providing those services left unattended by state and municipal bureaucracies. The once-accepted divide between church and state or the confinement of religion to the private sphere has been vigorously challenged as these groups not only gain ground within sovereign nation-states but forge enduring and powerful transnational connections by expanding their memberships with blind or obedient recruits from beyond national borders.AlSayyad and Massoumi's book provides fascinating reading for those interested in urbanism and the occurrence of religion within the city. With thought provoking pieces from experts in sociology, anthropology, religious studies, urban planning and geography, it simply raises the question: Is a fundamentalist city possible?