Chaotic charisma: religious noise, crowds, and infrastructural disruption in Dar es Salaam’s Sinza ward

This contribution explores the weaknesses, breakdowns, and possibilities of religious infrastructure in the Sinza ward, a multiconfessional residential suburb in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We focus on instances of infrastructural disruption connected to the grassroots activities of charismatic Christi...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Babere, Nelly John (Author) ; Massawe, Aneth John (Author) ; Benussi, Matteo (Teo) (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge 2024
In: Religion, state & society
Year: 2024, Volume: 52, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 133–157
Further subjects:B Urban planning
B sound pollution
B religion in Africa
B Infrastructural disruption
B traffic
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:This contribution explores the weaknesses, breakdowns, and possibilities of religious infrastructure in the Sinza ward, a multiconfessional residential suburb in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We focus on instances of infrastructural disruption connected to the grassroots activities of charismatic Christian churches and, to a lesser extent, Islamic piety movements. Through interviews, focus groups, fieldwork, and quantitative data, this study shows how the activities of grassroots faith groups exercising their right to the city in an infrastructurally fraught environment may exacerbate urban planning fault lines. This may result in hazards such as noise pollution, traffic congestion, and issues of structural safety and decorum. Religious sites and related assemblages may thus turn into ‘architectures of disruption’ generating uneven geographies of urban wellbeing. We posit that, despite these problems, religiously connoted urban assemblages are here to stay, and infrastructural thinking may productively be applied to this new normal.
ISSN:1465-3974
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion, state & society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2024.2364380