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Unifying and Decomposing Building Types: How to Analyze the Change of Use of Sacred Buildings

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Abstract

What do churches do? What do mosques do? Constructivist sociology has usually argued that buildings do not do anything, but are enacted by users. Conversely, actor-network theory has interpreted buildings as actants that are stabilized by architect-controlled networks. In this article, I argue for a differential theory of objects, which conceives of the specific agency of different kinds of objects. Buildings can be understood as mutable immobiles, objects that are immovable and thus likely to be changed on the level of their social classification, or in architectural terms, their building type. Drawing on fieldwork in and around Berlin, Germany, I use two different kinds of change of use to show the agency of buildings as mutable immobiles. First, I show that in the case of churches that are changed to other uses, the church attempts to discursively associate the buildings to religion primarily and then uses large scale interventions to preserve the unity of the church if change of use cannot be avoided. Second, I show that in the case of factories that are turned into mosques, very small material interventions with furniture change the buildings.

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Notes

  1. For an excellent introduction to the problem of building types see the various contributions of Franck and Schneekloth (1994).

  2. Matthias Kärrholm (2007), starting from similar observations, has coined the term “territorial sort” to indicate a very similar effect as the one described here. However, he begins with the problem of how stability is achieved in a particular location or territory, and not the problem of what buildings do. For him, a territorial sort is a particular effect, stabilized in a particular location, by whatever means. For example, the effect of a library, i.e. a quiet atmosphere for reading, can be achieved by stacks of books, by signs indicating that “this is a library, please be quiet” or by users admonishing other users to be quiet.

  3. The material for these case studies was produced during the year 2007 in and around Berlin. I analyzed four churches and four Muslim prayer spaces. For each building I spent several days in the building for ethnographical fieldwork. In the Muslim prayer spaces, I attended Friday prayers as well as other prayers. I interviewed visitors, as well as people who work in these buildings, such as architects, caretakers and builders. In the case of the church, I also interviewed a number of church officials, who deal with change of use in a more general way (the parallel positions do not exist for the mosques). All interviews were semi-structured, digitally recorded, transcribed and coded with tams-analyzer.

  4. In the following, whenever I speak of buildings I mean “buildings as building types,” but I omit “as building types” to make reading easier. Obviously, all buildings under consideration still feature as technologies (such as when they keep rain away, or act to maintain inside temperature), or pure carriers of meaning (such as when they are classified as beautiful or ugly).

  5. Also see Die Wolfsburg (katholische Akademie) et al. 2005; Die Wolfsburg (katholische Akademie) et al. 2005; Evangelische Kirche von Westfalen et al. 2007; Ludwig and Schwebel 2006; Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 2003; Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands 2003

  6. Some theologians continue to object to this reversal of Lutheran theology (see, for example, Mertin 2002).

  7. For a history of the church and the subsequent conversion, see Kambartel (Kambartel 2006)

  8. Recently, the building of new mosques has spurred many debates in Germany, particularly the new Mosque in Köln Ehrenfeld, designed by Paul Böhm, a scion of a family of church architects and a church architect himself. However, even these debates are primarily about non-typological issues: The central bone of contention was the height of the minarets and in general the size of the mosque. A second debate centered on subsequent disputes between the client (Ditib) and the architect, and a third about the fact that Ditib is backed by the Turkish state. The question of how a mosque in Germany should be designed is rarely discussed.

  9. Kelek uses the term “Kosher” in German, even though the term Halal is well known.

  10. During the last few years there has been a long and complex attempt by the German state to establish a stable, regular and inclusive forum of discussion with Muslim groups called “Islamkonferenz” (Islamic conference). It was seen as an attempt to unify muslim representation, hampered by the fact that there is no single organization to represent Muslims. But it has been marred from the beginning by debates about its status, who should be a member, who should attend and what kinds of decisions such a conference could make, see http://www.deutsche-islam-konferenz.de/SubSites/DIK/EN/Startseite/home-node.html?__nnn=true. Some commentators claimed that it amounts to constructing Muslims as a social problem; that it confuses religious Muslims and Turkish immigrants in general; that the large organizations do not represent all Muslims and are undemocratic, both in their constitution and their policies. During the first meeting of the Islamkonferenz, the biggest religious organizations (and at the same time, the biggest mosque organizations) founded the “Koordinationsrat der Muslime” (coordination board of Muslims), which would act as a single voice of organized Islam in Germany, similar to the churches, but again, questions regarding its legitimacy arose and it has not assumed a role comparable to that of the Christian churches as of yet.

  11. But obviously, Catholic churches additionally attract money with an offertory box in the church building.

  12. In 2012 666 mosques participated in the day of the open mosque, see http://www.tagderoffenenmoschee.de, accessed on April 5th, 2013.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the special issue editors, three anonymous reviewers and Monika Krause as well audiences of presentations in Darmstadt, Rotterdam, Zürich and Munich, for their comments and particularly Rebecca Hanson, who did an amazing job bringing this article to publication. Research for this article was sponsored with a Post-Doctoral Resarch grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Project Nr. PA0011-113035.

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  1. Department of Sociology Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross, London, SE14 6NW, UK

    Michael Guggenheim

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Guggenheim, M. Unifying and Decomposing Building Types: How to Analyze the Change of Use of Sacred Buildings. Qual Sociol 36, 445–464 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-013-9262-8

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