The Afterlives of Urban Muslim Asia: Alternative Imaginaries of Society and Polity

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Afterlives will research the persistence or avoidance of interreligious relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and the modes by which these elicit or invoke shared urban sensibilities. We will conduct ethnographic fieldwork amongst migrant minority and Muslim communities in London, New York, Vienna, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Vienna and in 3 of the 4 selected cities. The project will document the vitality of legacies of cosmopolitan urban living and the role in these of diasporic communities, and analyse in Muslim Asia how projects of heritage reproduce social boundaries (e.g. between diasporic and settled communities, and urban and non-urban/ not fully urban citizens). Doing so will develop a new and different approach to interreligious relationships that illuminates the importance of shared attachment to urban centres, and enables greater sensitivity in future interventions in the field of tangible and intangible heritage preservation and restoration. First, the project will generate empirical data on the temporal and geographic dispersal of the cities under-study. We will map flows of people through space and time by conducting textual, archival and visual research in countries of origin and sites of migration. Second, Afterlives will investigate how projects of imagination relating to historic centres are produced and sustained, and explore how they point to diversity in Muslim Asia's cultural imaginaries. To do so we will investigate emergent configurations of culture, history, identity and geography in Muslim Asia by exploring the significance of relationships and exchanges between Muslim and ethno-religious minorities to imagination in the region today. We will: interview key actors in the production of imaginaries, focusing especially on cultural elites (intellectuals, musicians, artists, poets, politicians and activists); record the genres (visual, literary, musical, culinary) where such imaginations are generated and sustained and explore ethnographically the sites (digital, political, scholarly, and social) in which they are performed and consumed; explore the implications of architectural reconstruction on such imaginaries by visiting key sites, and interview relevant heritage specialists, local and national policy-makers, pilgrims/tourists, and custodians; trace the use in projects of imagination of knowledge about tangible and intangible heritage preservation. Third, given declining levels of religious diversity in urban centres, it is oft assumed that Silk Road-era commercial relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim merchants are no longer of relevance. Yet our recent fieldwork suggests otherwise: Muslim and Sikh traders from Afghanistan interacted from the 1980s onwards in London and Moscow, for example. To explore such interreligious commercial relationships we will carry out in-depth ethnographic work with diasporic merchants in key trading sites - markets, shops and warehouses - and explore documentary and archival material in the form of autobiographies of merchants and company records.Fourth, to research the 'doing' of connectivity, and the role played by tacit modes of acting across lines of difference in sustaining cultural and religious sensibilities of urban living, we will focus on specific practices, rituals, and expressions of sociality in diaspora communities. We will ask if gender, migration histories, generation, and class position influence the distribution of this skill, exploring the role it has played in facilitating and constraining legacies of collective urban living in diasporas.Beyond our partners, we will share findings with organisations that implement heritage projects (e.g. Aga Khan Foundation, UNESCO, UN Habitat, and Ministry of Culture, Afghanistan), that manage diaspora-homeland relations (e.g. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Afghanistan;) that work on regional conflicts (e.g. Foreign and Commonwealth Office); also with the communities under study and broader publics.