A Tale of Two Façades: Archaeology and the Secularization of an Islamic Past

Abstract

This article examines how certain forms of preservation work to recast the past in rigid terms of secular and religious. Focusing on a series of early Islamic period sites in the Levant, collectively known as the Umayyad qusūr (sometimes referred to as “desert palaces”), this essay traces the ways in which scholars signal the realms of the secular through interpretation of architectonics and iconography. This process of secularization is then further advanced through practices of preservation and display within colonial and nationalist museum contexts on a grand scale. At stake are ethical claims about the value of religion, specifically Islam, in larger discourses of culture and civilization. The paper explores the role played by these approaches to the material past of the early Islamic world for how they perform and police the boundaries of religious and secular materiality.     

Is Planning ‘Secular’? Rethinking Religion,Secularism, and Planning

ABSTRACT

Responding to the call for a deeper understanding of the religious phenomenon in planning – advanced, among others, by Leonie Sandercock and June Thomas in this journal – this paper argues that understanding religion in planning entails understanding religion’s constitutive other: secularism. This position draws on the burgeoning field of secular studies as well as examples of entanglement of religion, secularism, and planning in the United States and France. It problematizes a long-held assumption that good planning is based upon the notion of ‘religious indifference,’ for the assumption is conceptually anachronistic and practically untenable. This paper offers a set of methodological considerations as to how planners can radically rethink this assumption while effectively attending to the religious subjectivities of their constituencies and actively working through the structures of the modern state. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this analysis for planning practice against the backdrop of recent improvements fostered by the American Planning Association as well as the relevance of this analysis across international contexts.     

社会转型时期大学生价值观走向剖析

当前，中国社会正处于转型时期，由于现代社会格局的多元化，商品社会消费型经济和市场经济中日益觉醒的主体意识和西方化思潮的影响，当前大学生价值观呈现主体化、世俗化、多元化和复杂化的趋势。针对这些特点作研究认为应该对大学生加强集体主义原则的价值观教育，提高德育的实效，加强心理健康和心理素质方面的咨询和指导。     

Brain—mind

ABSTRACT

In this article I explore the attitudes of humanist celebrants in England to the presence of the coffin at the funerals they conduct. For these celebrants, who are members of the British Humanist Association, the coffin is something that can disrupt the integrity of “the immanent frame.” Throughout the course of the article, I relate this concern to questions of materiality and material culture, arguing, in line with a growing number of others in the human sciences, that we cannot understand secular formations without attention to its embodied and material dimensions.