Antagonisms, Alliances and Friendships: Religious and Sexual Politics in the Polish Public Sphere
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ANTAGONISMS, ALLIANCES AND FRIENDSHIPS: RELIGIOUS AND SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POLISH PUBLIC SPHERE KASIA NARKOWICZ Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography University of Sheffield September 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank the participants in Poland who entrusted me with their stories and made this thesis possible. I am grateful to my supervisors, Gill Valentine and Richard Phillips, whose commitment to my project, critical insights and high expectations of me coupled with patience in times of need were crucial to the compilation of this thesis. I am also greatly thankful to Johan Andersson, who supervised me in the first two years of this PhD. Other people who were involved as advisors and who significantly aided my thinking in the initial stages of this process were Seán McLoughlin, Simon Lightfoot, Robert Vanderbeck and Tariq Jazeel, whose critical suggestions have stayed with me throughout the process. I thank my colleagues in the LiveDifference research team that I have learned a lot from. These are Anna Gawlewicz, Aneta Piekut, Ulrike Vieten, Catherine Harris, Lucy Mayblin, Jo Sadgrove, Nicola Wood and finally Lucy Jackson, who has taken time to read endless drafts and shared her knowledge and insights generously. My friends I thank for their support, particularly Anaïs Pedica whose help with the references for this thesis and whose company at the library made the writing in the last few months more fun. My family in Poland and in the UK have been immensely supportive, especially at the most difficult of times. Most importantly I thank two people. My mother, Dorota Narkowicz, for her support, her strength, her love and everything. My husband, Miqdad Asaria, I thank for being by my side for the last four years, with all that it entailed. His critical and careful reading of my work enriched this thesis substantially. The two people to whom I owe much of the realisations in this thesis, particularly around religious understanding, are my grandmother Barbara Przyradska and my father, Marian Narkowicz. Their humbleness, deep faith and such obvious embracement of my life choices showed to me what strong faith is capable of. Thinking of them, the theories never felt too abstract while writing this thesis. ABSTRACT This thesis is about conflict in the Polish public sphere. It investigates a recent wave of tensions around religious and sexual politics through two case studies: the first looking at mosque constructions and the second at abortion politics in Warsaw. The study is informed by three interconnected theoretical strands: Conflict and the Public Sphere, Secularism and Post-secularism, and Postcolonial theory in a Central and Eastern European context. Mixed qualitative methods were employed during a year-long fieldwork in Warsaw between 2011-2012. These comprised of interviews, focus groups and participant observations with 72 participants from secular, Muslim, feminist and Catholic groups. The thesis puts forward questions about how religious and sexual politics are mobilised in public spaces, to what extent the groups involved rely on secular narratives, how imagined categories of the West and Central and Eastern Europe are constituted, and finally, what possibilities there are to surmount antagonisms and foster alliances between the conflicting groups. With that, the study aims to contribute to geographies of religion and post-colonial geographies, furthering knowledge of the often neglected region of Central and Eastern Europe. The findings of this thesis evidence that there has been a shift in the way tensions around religious and sexual politics are mobilised in public spaces, with a heavy reliance on, on the one hand Western liberal secularism and on the other hand Catholic nationalism. The study engages critically with these categories to channel a broader discussion of the transformative possibilities of thinking differently about antagonisms among these groups in Poland. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 Case studies .................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Research aims and questions ................................................................................................................................. 3 Thesis structure ............................................................................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 2. Theoretical Positioning ......................................................................................... 5 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Conflict, agonism and friendship in the public sphere ................................................................................ 5 Geographies of religion, secularism and post-secularism ......................................................................... 9 Postcolonial theory and/in Central and Easter Europe........................................................................... 15 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Chapter 3. Methodology ............................................................................................................ 21 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 21 Methods......................................................................................................................................................................... 21 Positionality ................................................................................................................................................................ 32 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................... 42 MOSQUE CASE STUDY ................................................................................................................ 44 Chapter 4. A Calling for a place: Mosque Conflict & Spatial Contestations ........... 56 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 56 ‘What is it?’ Defining Muslim space .................................................................................................................. 57 ‘Where will all this take place?’ .......................................................................................................................... 65 Sonic geographies: the silent azan and church bells ................................................................................. 68 First an airport, then a mosque .......................................................................................................................... 74 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................... 79 Chapter 5. Strange Allies? Feminism & Islamophobia .................................................. 80 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 80 Subordination of Muslim women ...................................................................................................................... 81 The woman question ............................................................................................................................................... 85 Countering the narratives ................................................................................................................................... 100 Strange Allies? .......................................................................................................................................................... 105 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................. 107 Chapter 6 Spaces Of Tension, Spaces Of Hope: the secular & the religious......... 110 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. 110 Secular tensions ...................................................................................................................................................... 110 Private Islam, Public Islam ................................................................................................................................. 111 Good Muslim, Bad Muslim .................................................................................................................................. 116 Racialising and Caricaturing Muslims ..........................................................................................................