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Volume 2
Articulating Journeys: Festivals, Memorials, and Homecomings
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The Rite of Urban Passage
The Spatial Ritualization of Iranian Urban Transformation
Reza Masoudi
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198 pages, 35 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78533-976-9 25% OFF! $110.00/£78.00 $82.50/£58.50 Hb Published (August 2018)
eISBN 978-1-78533-977-6 eBook
Description
The Iranian city experienced a major transformation when the Pahlavi Dynasty initiated a project of modernization in the 1920s. The Rite of Urban Passage investigates this process by focusing on the spatial dynamics of Muharram processions, a ritual that commemorates the tragic massacre of Hussein and his companions in 680 CE. In doing so, this volume offers not only an alternative approach to understanding the process of urban transformation, but also a spatial genealogy of Muharram rituals that provides a platform for developing a fresh spatial approach to ritual studies.
Reza Masoudi is a native southwestern Iranian who lives in London, where he is currently a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. He has been a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO), Berlin. He is an urbanist whose work focuses on the geography of crowds and protests, urban violence, and studies of religious rituals in public spaces in Iran and India.
Subject: General Anthropology Urban Studies Religion
Area: Middle East & Israel
Contents
List of Figures
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Preface
PART I: THE SPATIAL MANIFESTATION OF RITUAL
Chapter 1. Towards a Framework for Spatially Studying Religious Rituals
Chapter 2. The Spatial Genealogy of Muharram Rituals
PART II: THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF RITUAL
Chapter 3. The Traditional Muharram Processions
Chapter 4. The Rite of Urban Passage
Chapter 5. Entwining Past and Present in Performed Space
Chapter 6. Reinventing Muharram Rites
Conclusion: An Urban-spatial Approach to Muharram Rituals
Bibliography
Index