Panel: THEOLOGY 'WITH' AND NOT 'ABOUT': BRINGING INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK BETWEEN THEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY INTO DISCUSSION OF RELIGION AND INEQUALITY



1024.2 - EXILIC INEQUALITIES: RELIGION, STREET CULTURE AND EXCLUSION

AUTHORS:
Bosscher F. (University of Cambridge ~ Cambridge ~ United Kingdom)
Text:
The religious lives of those engaged in European Street Culture and its musical expression in (street-)rap deal with multiple inequalities that define their peripheral position to a perceived centre of European societies. Through an analysis of dozens of European street rap lyrics and ca. eight interviews with (former) participants of Dutch/Flemish Street Culture, I will argue that religious street cultural agents face a double inequality vis-á-vis mainstream society: religious and socio-economic. Efforts to salvage these inequalities tend to perpetuate their peripheral identity as whether street cultural agents follow their street cultural or religious strivings, they end up on the periphery of mainstream society, which frowns upon and penalises both religious, especially Muslim, and street cultural identities. In addition, following either a street cultural ethos or religious ethos inflicts a peripheral status on the other identity. In this exilic web of centres and peripheries, my respondents make difficult and fractured decisions that both centre and peripheralise. As a prime example, attempts to salvage socio-economic marginalisation through street culture and street rap leads to religious sanctions and theological disputes, making notions of sin, the devil, and hell appear in street rap lyrics frequently. Yet, I will argue that such confrontations with the devil do not (only) condemn rappers, but also open up spaces of rhizomatic, if tense, belongings for marginalised ethno-religious minorities in contemporary Europe. Such belonging carry critical potential to undo stereotypes while challenging dominant notions of national belonging in European societies.