Religious institutions and urban politics in middle eastern cities

Like in many other global south contexts, rapid urbanisation in the Middle East is creating extreme inequalities and challenges, including unprecedented gaps in urban infrastructures and services, difficult access to land and housing, deep socio-spatial segregation and radical changes in urban/social identities and power relations between social groups. These processes are coupled with political instability, authoritarianism, practices of insurgency, recurrent revolts, economic crises and militarized conflicts in different parts of the region. 

We propose three complementary angles to approach the religion-urban nexus as a set of contested and productive socio-political and economic processes:

• The political economy of welfare provision and inequalities in segmented cities
• Religious institution and the built environment
• The religious moral geographies of urban transformations and spaces

We aim to develop a symposium proposal/academic special issue and bring together scholars and academics who seek to understand better the activities of religious institutions within wider spatial and political dynamics that connect state, civil society, and markets in the Middle Eastern cities.