Julia Martínez-Ariño

Demonopolisation and dislocation: (Re-)negotiating the place and role of religion in Spanish prisons

The aim of this paper is to analyse the reformulation of the place and role of religion in Spanish public institutions after the constitutional disestablishment of the Catholic Church and religious diversification of society. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork in six Spanish prisons, we argue that there is a process of the realignment of forces between the religious groups that provide services in such institutions, the Catholic Church adopting an attitude in between adaptation and subtle resistance to the loss of a number of its previous prerogatives. This incomplete demonopolisation of public organisations can be explained as the result of two opposing forces: (a) convergence towards the European standards of accommodation of religious diversity; and (b) Catholic resistance to the loss of established advantages.

Economy or Justice? How Urban Actors Respond to Diversity:

The diversification of population, demands for recognition, and the spread of diversity policies present new challenges to European cities. Do urban actors respond to this development in different ways across cities? Can we distinguish a logic determined by economic considerations or rather a justice-oriented logic? This article presents evidence from 20 German cities based on an original survey of important urban actors. This design reflects current realities of urban governance. Results indicate that, across Germany’s biggest cities, there is a normative consensus over the benefits of diversity. However, other positions are controversial and views seem partly incoherent. Cities neither clearly position themselves as pro- or antidiversity cities nor do most of them adopt clear market-oriented or justice-oriented approaches. We conclude that, in a relatively new field, positions are still uncrystallized, and hybrid combinations of perspectives may remain typical in societies with strong social-welfare traditions.

Conceptualising the role of cities in the governance of religious diversity in Europe

The sociological literature has devoted less attention to cities than to nation-states as contexts for the regulation of religion and religious diversity in Europe. Drawing on ideas from the literature on migration, urban studies, geography and the sociology of religion, as well as empirical material from fieldwork conducted in three medium-size cities in France, the author conceptualises the governance of religious diversity in cities as complex assemblages where (1) the political interests and claims of various unequally socially positioned actors over (2) a number of domains and objects of the public expression of religiosity are (3) subjected to a variety of municipal interventions, which are (4) shaped by the interplay of supranational legal frameworks, national legislation, policies, institutional arrangements and local contextual factors. The result of these regulation processes are particular (and often contested) normative definitions of ‘accepted’ or ‘legitimate’ public expressions of religiosity, subsequently enacted by a variety of local actors through both formal procedures and informal practices.

The Evolution of Religious Diversity : Mapping Religious Minorities in Barcelona

Spain can no longer be considered a religiously homogeneous country. Despite the still strong preeminence of (nominal) Catholics, the number of those declaring no religious affiliation and those belonging to religious minorities has increased steadily in the last years. Census data on religious affiliation is not available in Spain due to constitutional ban, but survey data and information about the number of places of worship of religious minorities can be used as a proxy to the transformations occurred in the religious field.

“Being Jew is like travelling by bus”: Constructing Jewish identities in Spain between individualisation and group belonging

Individualisation theory has mainly focused on the deregulation of religion and dissolution of traditional majority churches, but there is less evidence of its appropriateness for religious minorities. In this paper I contribute to this debate by analysing how Jews in Spain construct their Jewish sense of belonging in the context of a diverse, traditionally Catholic society. My main argument is that Jews, as a small and invisible minority, confronted by the exigencies of a secular and plural context, combine notions of religious choice and ethnic ascription in narrating their individual and collective identities. Consequently, while the theory of individualisation partly accounts for this identity construction, the specificities of the context and the minority condition require additional conceptual tools about collective identities and symbolic boundaries.

L'Acomodació de la pràctica funerària a Barcelona: diferències entre comunitats islàmiques i jueves

Through cooperation agreements the Spanish Government grants recognition to the different funeral rites practiced by different religious minority groups. These same agreements also recognise the right of these religious minorities to create their own denominational plots within municipal cemeteries and guarantee the observation of their funeral practices. In our article, we compare the funeral practice and management of Barcelona’s Muslim and Jewish