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. 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, which condemns them to a perpetual exilic experience. I will do so using Werbner's 'diasporic' and 'exilic' realities and her concomitant notions of peripheries and 'centres/cores', which I extend to the social, economic, and religious realm. Street culture is famously defined by Bourgois as the oppositional culture of marginalised youth, sometimes deploying (semi-)illegal means in their quest for mainstream values such as respect and consumerism. Many in street culture simultaneously cultivate dialogic but divergent religious strivings. I argue that 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. Yet, in contrast to other paths, my interview subjects express how their religion is able to reframe and reconcile this exilic experience while constructively challenging their inequality. I will argue, following Bielik-Robson, that religion helps my respondents accept their de-centred state because of theological notions that acknowledge exile without resigning to it. This partial acceptance of exile brings a sense of rest to the restless and bears the potential to de-centre European societies.