Ambivalence: Towards a New Understanding of Urban Strain

Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 1 Ambivalence: Towards a New Understanding of Urban Strain Martin Fuchs, Susanne Rau, Jörg Rüpke Ambivalence: Towards a New Understanding of Urban Strain ................................................... 1 0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 2 1 Reading cities and urban change in the light of diagnoses of ambivalence and ambiguity ..... 3 2 Opting for ambivalence ......................................................................................................... 6 2.1 The history of the concept of ambivalence ................................................................. 6 2.2 Constitutive tensions in religious practices and beliefs ............................................ 12 2.3 Ambivalent urbanity instead of a globally valid definition of city .............................. 14 3 Ambivalence at the core of urbanity ................................................................................ 16 3.1 Organic unity or diverse conglomeration: the core ambivalence ..................................... 16 3.2 Dimensions of urban ambivalences ............................................................................... 20 3.2.1 Socio-economic and socio-cultural dynamics of differentiation – intersectional tensions and mediations .................................................................................................................. 20 3.2.2 Spatialisation and temporalisation of conflicts versus deterritorialization of the urban ...................................................................................................................................... 24 3.2.3 Individualisation and group formation .................................................................... 27 4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 32 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 33 Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 2 0 Introduction Cases of strives in cities abound. Many consider conflicts a regular, if not symptomatic, feature of urban life. Characteristically, conflicts are classified as expressions of social strains that arise from societal frictions. Conflicts are seen as core features of longer-term processes, considered either as a driving force or as a result of persisting disagreements and altercations. The effects of conflicts on cities tend to be perceived as disruptions or disturbances of the balance of the rhythm of urban life, or in other words, of ‘urbanity’ as the articulation of a balanced urban culture. While these assessments seem convincing, adopting such perspectives risks overlooking a deeper tension in the background of many urban conflicts. We here propose to dwell on urban conflicts as not necessarily only contingent issues but to consider a problématique behind urban conflicts that seems genuinely connected to urbanity in its different shapes. We claim that one can detect a core ambivalence of urbanity across socio-cultural contexts. When using the term ‘urbanity’ we refer to an urban way of life. We conceive of an urban way of life as interplay of urban practices, discourses and spatially anchored material and social arrangements. This includes ideas, mental images, representations, narratives and symbols of ‘the urban’ and emphasizes the self-interpretations of the respective social actors in different epochs and regions. The term is meant also to relate to the institutions and agents that seek to ensure an urban character of social life. Notions of urbanity migrate with the historical actors carrying them. In this sense, urban ways of life are found where those enacting them are located, regardless of whether they live in or outside the city. They can orient their way of life to the city – or alternatively reject an urban way of life categorically. What we argue for in this article has been developed deductively over a long-term engagement with modes of urbanity in various social and historical contexts. By introducing the concept of a core ambivalence of urbanity we want to call attention to a central dimension of urban life without claiming that this would exhaust the idea of urbanity or the conflicts encountered in urban lifeworlds. Our diagnosis does not apply to all forms of urban strain. We rather claim that we can identify a specific différence of the urban that can be traced across times and socio-cultural spaces. This différence concerns the entrenchment of city dwellers in urban life and affects the collective identity, or the imagined identity, of a city. Focusing on this specific urban différence does not pass over Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 3 the otherwise huge differences that exist between modes of urbanity in different types of cities. On the contrary, we think that identifying this core difference of urbanity allows for a new, improved strategy of comparison. It allows a mode of comparison that does not impose a vacuous notional tertium comparationis on highly different contexts but rather allows following the diverse trajectories of a problématique that cities in general face, and thus helps increasing sensitivity for socio-cultural differences of the lives of cities. To sharpen the concept of ambivalence, we take our inspiration from the observation of several constitutive tensions within urban ways of life that we propose to summarize as ‘urban ambivalences’. Employing the concept of ambivalence – in difference to diffusionism, historical dialectics, development, evolution or progress – means to reflect the potential simultaneity of two (or more) tendencies that lead to states of tension with different subsequent effects. These tensions can swing in one direction or the other, they can subside, or they can reinforce each other. The concept of ambivalence stresses constitutive tensions and the bi-valence or bi-polarity of individual and social states, resulting in strain and conflict. The opposition integral to an ambivalent constellation cannot be resolved. Such ambivalences cannot be taken as ephemeral or transitory. When using the concept of ambivalence in research on cities, and on urbanity more particularly, complexity is predicted as condition for the continued existence of a city and an urban way of life. Urban ambivalence has consequences for the spatialization, the social constellations and the relationships between individuals in cities. Focusing on ambivalence is a deeply normative methodological decision but seems a requisite one. 1 Reading cities and urban change in the light of diagnoses of ambivalence and ambiguity Theorizing of life in modern, contemporary cities (and even more so in attempts to theorize the city) has been characterized by identifying constitutive tensions or even opposition right from the start in the early twentieth century. German sociologist Georg Simmel took his starting point from the fundamental tension between the collective and the individual. It is in the necessity of coordinating the myriad movements and activities of the city (Simmel focused, as the title indicates, on Großstädte) that this tension is enormously intensified (Simmel 1908). Flooded by innumerable impressions, the Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 4 individual needs to reduce affective involvement. It is a seemingly arrogant attitude of disinvolvement (Blasiertheit) that Simmel identified as a widespread reaction by those living in big cities. It takes the form of reservation against other individuals, not least in large cities fed by distrust against the hardly known others. This dissociation was, however, not seen as the breakdown of socialising but its specific urban form within an ever larger ensemble of people. This social tension is paralleled by a cultural one. It is in the big cities that the commodification (in material forms invading every household) and the institutionalization of the “spirit” proliferates in an “objectified” form. This objektive Geist dwarfs any individual brain. The reaction is a conscious development of individual particularities to defend one’s individuality. This also helps to display a personal profile (not Simmel’s words) easily recognizable even in short social encounters. In that way, equality and utter distinctiveness coexist. It is such constitutive but likewise historically contingent tensions of the big cities of the early twentieth century that pervaded the thinking of the Chicago School of urban studies, focusing on contemporary American cities instead of Simmel’s Berlin. Yet, where Simmel had focused on the modern Großstadt, city, as something radically new (excluding both ancient metropoles and contemporary Kleinstädte, small towns), Robert Park and his colleagues took a wider, anthropological perspective (Park et al. 1925, 1-3). The starting point (and the reference to Oswald Spengler) suggests an organicist image of a city characterized by well organised division of labour. Yet in the end, a tension comes to the fore which is produced by the necessity of competition and of communication at the same time. Louis Wirth defined tensions in a more precise manner. Urban theory takes the city as being defined by its high number of inhabitants and the density of their living together (Wirth 1938). This leads (and we feel reminded of Simmel) to a higher reach in terms of contacts with different types of people and groups and hence a changing and insecure status. Heterogeneity is experienced and adapted to by being a cultured person and a cosmopolite. It is not reduced into a single hierarchy. Yet, in order to deal with this heterogeneity for economic and political purposes, it is necessary to level people, that is to treat them in a typified way. Wirth assumed that the urbanites reacted by trying to form secondary groups based on like interests. Yet, in order to be efficient, such groups need to take the form of organizations. Communication is typified in their media as well as references. Such tensions are open-ended and a continuing task for urban sociology. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 5 In his long-term perspective on urbanism, Richard Sennett identifies a tension between the development of an ever more neutral city, symbolized by the geometric figure of the grid, and the necessity to preserve humanity under such conditions (Sennett 1990). The necessary answer under such conditions is twofold. On the one hand, aesthetic and artistic articulation allows to stress differences. On the other, one needs to give up oneself to such products of others in order to create relations. Further diagnoses might be added. Spatially, urban agents are torn between topophilia and heterophilia, between focusing and relating to one’s current location and what is associated with it on the one hand and the interest in connectivity beyond the city boundaries, in the distant and including the world in one’s city (Bloomfield 2006). There is a constitutive tension between formal and informal economy in successful urbanisation (López 2020: "dual urbanism"). Saskia Sassen’s concept of “global cities” has drawn attention to the role played by (in particular, large) cities to create global connections by stressing at the same time, how much local, cheap, and even manual labour forms the basis of the transactional networks of, for instance, financing and communication (Sassen 1991, 2013; for an application e.g. Stahre 2004). Even for Religious Studies this has led to a growing focus on the few, even if growing number of, megacities (e.g. Becci and Burchardt 2013) rather than a broader inquiry into fundaments of urbanism or, as we prefer to specify, “urbanity” (Rau 2020; Rau and Rüpke 2020; Christ et al. 2023). Constitutive tensions were not restricted to contemporary “global cities”. Even in ancient cities, in Mesopotamia or around the Mediterranean Sea, such tensions can be observed for instance on the social level. Here too, inclusion is in opposition to exclusion, that is, a tension exists between local rootedness, on the one hand, and the wish to extend networks and to travel, on the other (e.g. Goodman 2007; Algaze 2008; Veenhof 2010; Creekmore and Fisher 2014; Rüpke and Urciuoli 2023). Mesopotamian, Graeco-Roman, and Mesoamerican cities frequently had colonies or trading posts in distant settlements. Building walls was often remembered by city-dwellers as an indication of urbanity, yet chronologically often much delayed or not adapted to subsequent growth; urban historiography and sociology long assumed that it went hand in hand with city status. Being granted and performing citizenship differed widely in its inclusion of small or large parts of the dwelling population. Across periods and regions the urban shares an inclination towards similarity, which is accompanied by an interest in standardisation and effective administration and Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 6 manageability. This is in tension with an inclination towards diversity, which focuses on complex division of labour and creativity. The complexity of urbanity reaches from connotations of moral order, through the necessity of politeness or friendliness and class consciousness for peaceful coexistence, to the differentiation and diversity of the inhabitants and their life practices caused by densification processes (as Berking and Löw 2008 suggest). This complexity also includes the view of the inhabitants beyond their own city. All of this, as we are proposing in this article, can be seen as constitutive of the ambivalences of urban socio-spatial relations and (lasting and larger) urban configurations. It depicts a field of constitutive tensions that can be examined in terms of actors, positions, strategies and phenomena, and permits building on and transcending the observations sketched so far. 2 Opting for ambivalence 2.1 The history of the concept of ambivalence Admittedly, there are other concepts catching constitutive tensions. In philosophical thinking about space, the concept of a polarity between the human subject in its corporeality as an “interior” (Innen) and space as the second pole designated as “exterior” (Außen) has been invoked. This ontological tension connects both and creates a unit that can be experienced (summarily Gosztonyi 1976, 973). In difference to ambivalence, however, the concept of polarity stresses the unity of an experience, even if it allows for switching a temporary focus to the one or the other pole. This is, why we opt for ambivalence and take up several of the lines that have been developed more recently and try to develop them in a more systematic manner. Thus, we acknowledge the conceptual advances in some recent studies but do not agree with diagnoses of whole periods as being characterized by ambivalence or the absence of it. Instead, we propose to use ambivalence as a concept that helps to better catch the dynamics of growing and diminishing tensions in specific spatio-temporal settings. As the sketch from the field of urban studies and religious studies shows, ambivalence is not a completely unknown concept. In any case, it could be well integrated into the discourses of the last approximately 100 years. Since the term has actually already been used as a concept of analysis in other research contexts, a brief overview will be given Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 7 below. In principle, it is also useful to distinguish ambivalence1 from ambiguity2 (as polysemy, uncertainty), although the terms are sometimes used synonymously in everyday life. According to etymological research, the term first appeared around 1900 and was introduced into scientific language by psychiatrists (Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud) to describe the coexistence of opposing feelings in people as “affective ambivalence” (Bleuler 1914). It is probably more than a coincidence that this happened in the same decade as Simmel’s analyses of the mindset of modern city dwellers. To this day, ambivalence is a concept in social psychology (Jonas and Ziegler 2007), but also in musicology, for example when the ambivalence of tonality in the work of Arnold Schönberg is examined (Luchterhandt 2008). Literature and cultural studies scholars examine perceptions of ambivalence in literary texts or in photographs and postcards – then they even speak of “ambivalent images” (Junge et al. 2013; Onken 2016). Ambivalence is often not applied as an analytical term in cultural studies, but is used in the sense of double meaning of a situation, thus basically corresponding to what is also understood by ambiguity (see above). This is different in the new book by the historian Hillard von Thiessen, who employs the concept of ambiguity – i.e. not ambivalence! – as an epochal ‘design’ (von Thiessen 2021). Ambiguity, however, is used by von Thiessen less to describe a structural feature of an entire epoch than as a kind of meta-concept, or at least an alternative to the concepts of process of the early modern period such as rationalisation, secularisation, nationalisation or individualisation, which have been discussed for a long time but are often presented in too linear a way. His analytical model is embedded in another concept, that of norm competitions (Normenkonkurrenzen), produced by the emergence of competing norm systems in the early modern period (honour, common good and faith) which consequently generated competing expectations of behaviour. The explanatory model is very well suited to explain how people in the early 1 On the etymology of the term, see the entry in DWDS (Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache): “Ambivalenz f. ‘Doppelwertigkeit von Gefühlen’, gelehrte Neubildung (1910/11) des Psychiaters E. Bleuler, der unter affektiver Ambivalenz das ‘Nebeneinanderbestehen von entgegengesetzten Gefühlen’ (Zuund Abneigung zugleich) versteht. Das Wort ist wahrscheinlich nach dem Vorbild von Äquivalenz (s. d.) gebildet aus Valenz (s. d.) in Verbindung mit lat. amb(i)- (s. Ambiguität). – ambivalent Adj. ‘doppelwertig (von Gefühlen), zwiespältig’ (Freud 1916), in der Sprachwissenschaft ‘doppel-, mehrdeutig’ (2. Hälfte 20. Jh.)“ https://www.dwds.de/wb/Ambivalenz (1.8.2023), that is "'Ambivalence, n. “Duality of feelings”, a scholarly neologism (1910/11) coined by psychiatrist E. Bleuler, who understood affective ambivalence to mean the simultaneous existence of opposing feelings (attraction and repulsion at the same time). The word was probably formed on the model of equivalence from valence in conjunction with Latin amb(i)- (see ambiguity). – ambivalent adj. dual in value (of feelings), two-faced (Freud 1916), in linguistics ‘double, multiple meaning’ (2nd half of the 20th century). – Interestingly the English term is borrowed from German: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambivalence#dictionary-entry-1 2 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambiguity Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 8 modern period learned to deal with normative ambiguities, how they could potentially perhaps even practise tolerance of ambiguity unintentionally. For the area of longer-term developments, von Thiessen’s book owes readers an explanation, which is perhaps due to his fundamentally dismissive attitude towards linearity. One can only imagine the longerterm perspective, the progression of history, as the sum of many ambiguities that at some point perhaps led to some kind of reversal. However, such longer-term developments could also be integrated by adding a level of the observer. Although von Thiessen works with the concept of ambiguity rather than ambivalence, he has shown the value of applying such a concept to earlier epochs when the word as such did not yet exist. On a wider scale one can discern a shift from demonising ambivalence to recognising and even praising it after the postmodern intervention. In a similar manner, social theorist Peter Wagner, inspired by Max Weber and Cornelius Castoriadis, regards ambivalence as feature characteristic of an epoch, in this case modernity. For him modernity is characterized by a structural ambivalence on the level of the guiding imaginary significations, between the two ideas of human – individual and collective – ‘autonomy’ (and self-determination) and ‘unlimited’ instrumental-rational ‘mastery’ (and control) of the world, resulting in continuing contestations (Wagner 2001, 18, 24, et passim). In Classical sociology, Robert Merton and Elinor Barber in their programmatic 1963 article (reprint, Merton and Barber 1976) introduced the notion of “sociological ambivalence” as a “major source” of psychological ambivalence (7). At the core, or what they call the “restricted sense”, sociological ambivalences refer to “incompatible” normative expectations “inherent” in (the definition of) social roles or statuses, or as “embedded” in statuses (7), and to the conflicts these entail. In an extended sense they apply the term ambivalences to all incompatible normative expectations. In this context, Merton and Barber in some sections try to introduce a hierarchy between lead or “major” norms and “minor counter-norms” (17). They seek the “structural” sources for these ambivalences in the discrepant “attributions” others make regarding the occupants of particular roles. By extension, Merton in a separate article of the same year sees social institutions themselves patterned by “conflicting pairs of norms” and applies the term ambivalence for these conflicting pairs too (Merton 1976). Barber’s and Merton’s conception tries to overcome the individualized, personalized understanding of ambivalence, but their conceptualization of ambivalence remains insufficiently relational. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 9 Differently, the postmodernist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1991) broadens the scope of ambivalence and turns ambivalence into a key concept of critical societal theory (Gesellschaftstheorie). Modernity at its core – Bauman only thinks of Western modernity – means for Bauman a “struggle for order” against ambivalence (1991, 6, 24): “modern times” represent “an era of particularly bitter and relentless war against ambivalence” and “uncertainty” (1991, 3, 242). For him it is “situations” and “conditions” in which people are caught – conditions of “indeterminacy” and “fuzziness” – that appear as ambivalent and against which the modern “ambivalence-eliminating project” is pitched (1991, 2, 7, 9); on the cultural level this is related to a specific mode of social “consciousness” and gets reflected in social values (1991, 2, 75, 98). Significantly, Bauman conflates at several instances in his argument ambivalence and ambiguity (1991, 6-7). Postmodernity then means “emancipation from the characteristically modern urge to overcome ambivalence” and from the values central to uniformity as well as universalism (98). Being lifted from a subjectivist to a social characteristic, ambivalence turns in Bauman’s hands into something valuable, something normatively appreciated in postmodern Western contexts. The plea for ambivalence as a social value in postmodern thinking goes back, on the one hand, to a diagnosis of the present: more and more people seem to feel and behave ambivalently, seem to feel more comfortable in undecided states than with clear decisions, do not want to resolve contradictions. These are the typical signs of a postmodern society. But a large part of the people cannot cope with them either and therefore long for unambiguity and truth again. Above all, they can express themselves accordingly in the social media. And populist parties thrive on this. On the other hand, affirmative ambivalence is also already expressing itself in a new way of writing history that has no clear beginning and (as yet) no end; which are rather ‘open histories’ that go further and in which those still alive can appear as formative, creative actors. Analogous open histories in past times, for example in situations of threat, are also increasingly being studied (Vester 1997; Plattform Offene-Geschichte.de). In postcolonial discourse, on the contrary, it is the modernist project, of which the colonized are the victims, that produces ambivalence. Ambivalence here does not appear as a desired state, but as a state in which one is trapped, above all the colonial subjects, but in a different way also the colonizers. With respect to the colonial differentiation and discrimination of (and between) cultures, Homi Bhabha (1994, 34) diagnoses ‘the Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 16 3 Ambivalence at the core of urbanity 3.1 Organic unity or diverse conglomeration: the core ambivalence Putting urbanity at the centre allows for a broader view on cities than with other approaches. Conventional approaches (including urbanization approaches) take the existence of a city as a given and as their starting point, and try to track what happens in a city and to a city. On such line, urbanity would then in the first instance refer to the ways people, residents, live the city and in a city. However, secondarily and in addition, the focus on urbanity opens a wider perspective and allows looking at how the people, residents, inhabitants, relate to “their” city and how they experience and perceive, as well as conceive, their place of residence. We have to distinguish between different kinds of relating to a city (which is being only partially reflected in the different typologies of cities extant). What this gets us to, is a specific way of connecting internal and external views on a city, moving back and forth between the internal and the external views. In important respects, the analytical perspective follows the internal perspectives. At the same time, listening to, or perceiving, subjective perceptions adequately requires a self-critical stance of the analysts who have to overcome inclinations towards a positivist rendering of urban life. “Members” and inhabitants of a city differ with respect to the degree of anchorage in, and belonging to, their city. Zugehörigkeit, the sense of belonging, is not a negligible question for urban studies. Different from rural life and the attachment to ancestral villages, urban residents are often less permanently grounded in a specific city. They may even feel “displaced”. There are regions, for instance in contemporary India, where even long-term urban citizens continue relating to their ancestral villages as their felt home. In other cases, people want to move on, seek to change places, and, in this sense, may relish the possibilities urban life offers, however show only a shallow degree of belonging towards a specific city. If historians and sociologists state that cities are corporate actors represented by its leaders or governing boards (“city x decided to engage in …”, “city y pursued the strategy of …” or “city z was positioned as successful or as disadvantaged at a particular historical juncture”) this would take all other residents as silent members of a city. This way of speaking also treats all cities as if of one kind, namely a particular variety of collective actors. On the other hand, statements of belonging by the inhabitants of a city, giving a particular city as one’s place of residence (or, one of one’s places of residence), can be Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 17 either simply factual statements (information on where one currently “resides”), or, alternatively, statements of deeper connectivity to the respective city. Phenomenologically and in the eyes of the inhabitants (as well as many visitors), a town can appear as a unit, with some sense of unity, or, otherwise, as just a conglomerate of physical structures, a site where various actors, interest groups and residents of different standing happen to meet or happen to be concentrated. A city can thus be viewed as geared towards integration of its members, or as just a crossing point of networks of different kinds and extent (commercial, political, religious, intellectual) and as a meeting point of varied and diverse “communities”. Asking more specifically, what keeps a city together, possible answers are the various webs of interests or even, simply, the urban administration (be it the administration of an empire or a kingdom, the government of a self-ruling city, a pre-modern “state”, or, finally, a nationstate), or the city’s cohesion is borne by its inhabitants (perhaps, in some meaningful sense, incorporated in forms of “self-governance”)? Do inhabitants identify with a city in strong ways? Do they regard a city as “their” city, perhaps expressed through collective rituals or shared stories, narratives and identity discourses? In their most pronounced form, such practices would allow for involvement with designing and developing the city as well as providing possibilities for inhabitants (members) to unfold their individual potentials. Or, do inhabitants, while being physically close to each other, remain “spiritually remote” to one another (to repurpose a statement of Zygmunt Bauman regarding the position of “strangers”; 1991, 60), and, perhaps, identify with just certain aspects of (life in) a city? The last-mentioned option includes the possibility to keep city life, and the collectives that dominate the life of a city, at a distance. The potential of distancing oneself from the hustle and bustle in a city is itself a very urbanist and individualizing life option, much more than what rural life contexts allow for. In a nutshell, are residents of a city “citizens” (as in certain European traditions) or are they simply inhabitants, or, most radically, just subjects (Untertanen)? Or do we encounter – differing across types of cities and eras – iridescent, shifting, ambivalent combinations of the different possibilities?4 How, and to which degree, do people feel personally as well as 4 Prevalence of subjecthood over citizenship (both in the sense of urban belonging and in the sense of membership in the wider society or, in our days, a nation-state) is not a pre-modern phenomenon only, but is being (and again increasingly) met with under modern conditions too, and this not only under authoritarian regimes. More generally, under modern conditions subjecthood shows in form of control of populations (in Foucault’s sense), the alternative being represented by democratic and participatory practices. On the city level these may take the shape of institutionalized urban self-administration or of unruly and unregulated “political society” (Partha Chatterjee 2004), social and political movements, etc. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 18 interpersonally anchored in – or, conversely, feel alienated from, or subjectively distant from – a city? Are some sections of city inhabitants privileged members of the city, citizens in a full sense of the term? Do other sections have a precarious status only, not belonging, and not feeling to belong, to a city completely, sometimes even being only tolerated temporarily and in a subordinate mode?5 In which way does one “belong” to a city, how far and how deeply does one belong, in what sense does one have “membership” of a city, as a citizen, as someone with a role or function in a city, or as just someone with a serving or subservient function? Or, does a city just represent one’s place of residence that could also be elsewhere, or that is transient and could be shifted? Detached belonging, or selective belonging, shows also in another form. Urbanity can refer to a habitus, or a life-style or mode of life, that is only loosely connected to a particular place: cosmopolitan urbanities that allow changing places (cities), and settling in into other places, with relative ease. On a wider scale this can be encountered in today’s world, but historically it had been characteristic of the transcontinental worlds of many intellectuals and, partly, of certain religious actors as well as long-distance merchants (probably already since the bronze age, if not even earlier). Wherever such people settle afresh, often just for a limited time, they relate to other residents, and to urban institutions and spaces, and tend to identify with their cities of residence more selectively than longerterm inhabitants do. Urban residents at the lower end of the social scale, who sometimes are seen today as representing alternative forms of cosmopolitanism, relate to their momentary cities of residence in again different ways: their selective urban connections are often restricted to groups of peers – workers or migrants in similar conditions, or the “communities” of belonging they bring along. Only under specific conditions, like times of social mobilization (for instance in early 20th century Dublin) (O’Reilly, forthcoming), do such urban residents develop connections across neighbourhoods and peer groups on a city-wide scale, or even beyond one city. We see in the different modalities of relation of inhabitants to cities the core question, or core ambivalence, underlying urbanity, an ambivalence for the inhabitants of a city (the subjective, internal perspective of social actors) as well as for scholarship on urbanity (the analytical perspective of observers). Ambivalence in this case not only concerns the 5 Even where one finds early forms of citizenship, like in parts of late medieval and early modern Europe, full Bürgerstatus was limited to a small layer of inhabitants, often only 10-20% of the population. On premodern urban citizenship see Prak 2018. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 19 individual person, or a particular group of persons, but applies across all inhabitants of a city – an ambivalence of positionality of people vis-à-vis a place and its other occupants. Talking of “ambivalence” is the analyst’s idiom (even though we are, personally, in our own lives, also part of the field researched). Our claim is that this diagnosis reflects the differences in attitude towards urban life among residents. The task would then be to explore the ways, the forms, and the tensions involved, with which city residents are experiencing and expressing the underlying ambivalence. Our further claim is that this diagnosis is valid across times and spaces, of course taking different shapes and showing in varying degrees. We thus modify, or develop, the notion of ambivalence. Referring to the ambivalence(s) of urbanity, we continue with the basic understanding by focusing on the ways people, subjects, relate to cities or to urban life, and by extension, how city residents relate to each other. But we also pick on the structural side of urbanity by claiming that a basic ambivalence, together with secondary ambivalences, is an overall characteristic of the ways a city is lived: the ambivalent conditionality of urbanity (reflected in the attitudes of urbanites or the ways people relate to a city). We also claim that one can distinguish cities according to the degree and the ways in which they are seen by the residents as a unit(y), and a place of belonging, or as rather places or spaces of pragmatic existence, or even just sites of necessity or need. Cities, in a way, are fragile and precarious entities, even where occupation of a place has continued over long periods of time. In concurrence with contemporary theoretical deliberations, we regard ambivalence as a condition that persists. While conceived as condition of being torn between opposing, even contradictory perspectives or attitudes, or, as the other option, by a “unitary tensionfraught attitude” (Razinsky 2017), we do not assume that this usually leads to a resolution. With a view to the dynamics induced by the variations in relating to cities, we do not suggest viewing the reality on the ground in a bi-polar fashion, nor do we want to consider the alternatives as the two extremes of a sliding scale. The very fact of ambivalence characterizing urbanity, and the wide array of mixes, combinations and intersections of integration and aloofness, deep belonging and pragmatic attachment, developing out of the basic ambivalence explains the failure of dichotomous models, and of determinate theories of the urban more generally. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 20 3.2 Dimensions of urban ambivalences The alternatives and possibilities caught by the diagnosis of a core ambivalence inscribed into urbanity regularly find expression in differences of understanding of a particular city, and tensions between different groups or categories of residents in this regard. The layout of a city, at a particular point in time, may even mirror the socio-spatial configuration, namely, the distinction and the tensions between the different residential categories or categories of inhabitants. The ambivalent conditionality of urbanity for a city’s residents finds its expression in forms and degrees of belonging and not-belonging, of exclusion and exclusion (in urban life-worlds), being reflected in the attitudinal ambivalences of the residents vis-a-vis a place and its (other) occupants: connectedness (even identification) and distancing (regarding a place and its occupants); participation in, and detachment from, urban life-worlds; togetherness and segregation. Thus a structural and a subjective dimension. In the following sections we explore the articulations of the core ambivalence in three different directions, reflecting different disciplinary approaches. Our aim is to demonstrate how employing the concept of ambivalence opens up new perspectives on instances or trajectories of urban and religious dynamics. After looking at the formation of socio-economic and socio-cultural dynamics of differentiation (3.2.1) we turn to spatialisations of conflicts (3.2.2) and the urban entanglement of religious individualization and group-formation (3.2.3). We invite readers to identify further dimensions of urban and religious ambivalences and thus sharpen the conceptual tool. This is collective work in progress. 3.2.1 Socio-economic and socio-cultural dynamics of differentiation – intersectional tensions and mediations The diagnosis of a core ambivalence of urbanity provides a key to capturing people’s relationships to a city and helps elucidating the degree to which someone is considered, or feels, to belong to a city. This encompasses the big question of rights to a city (or even to the city in general; Lefebvre 1968), and of the limitation, and even the denial, of rights – the exclusion – of others. It further provides the possibility of tackling constellations in which inhabitants feel alienated from a city. This allows addressing cases in which urban residents show a distancing attitude and have mental reservations regarding city life along with cases in which sections of inhabitants face rejection by others. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 21 The hypothesis of an irreducible core urban ambivalence permits a better understanding of conflicting attitudes vis-à-vis other urban residents – inclinations towards uniformity on the one hand, tolerance, if not celebration, of the heterogeneity of ways of living on the other, or, alternatively, attitudes of simple callousness regarding relationships with other residents. The core ambivalence allows us to ask who has which options in urban life. From the structural angle, the detection of an irreducible core ambivalence of urbanity provides a privileged access to the tensions and conflicting tendencies characteristic of urban life. These comprise policies of homogenisation and endorsements of diversification. To a certain extent the subjective as well as the structural dimensions of urban ambivalence correlate with the social positionalities and alignments of the various sections of the urban population. Here, the intersectionalities of the different positional factors are of major significance. Centrally important, of course, are the socioeconomic – status and class – differences of inhabitants, which again have to be differentiated along gender lines. Gender distinctions take different forms depending on status, including caste, and class distinctions. In many cases, the socioeconomic status becomes the defining criterion for full acceptance and full-fledged inclusive membership in a city and for admission to the circles epitomizing the commanding form of urbanity that sets the tone at a particular place. The way in which this works depends on the respective socioeconomic formation – the forms of labour extraction and dependency, on the one hand, and the types of businesses on the other – and on the modes of interconnection and interaction, or demarcation, between and across classes or strata. What matters in particular, are the ways in which the dominant and the subaltern groups and strata, as well as intermediate strata, are organized, or else lack consistent forms of organization requiring individuals and households to largely fend for themselves. The strength of urban anchorage, however, is not necessarily congruent with the socioeconomic or class status of a city’s inhabitants. The political and socioeconomic circumstances intersect with other factors – most importantly ethnic, linguistic and religious distinctions, not least also patterns of discrimination of others as “polluting”, especially in South Asia and the South Asian diasporas. They intersect equally with diversities of lifestyle and communal allegiance that may or may not coincide with religious and ethnic affiliations or with status and class Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 22 differences respectively. In many cases, not least in our days, ethnic-religious and lifestyle distinctions also entail tensions and conflicts between variant normative orders. Regarding the dynamics and the sway of urban ambivalences, much depends on the extent to which the different factors converge, overdetermining each other’s impact interferentially, or intersect. Politically relevant is whether cultural commonalities have hardened into essentialized identities, self-attributed or ascribed, and in this form become drivers of action. The degree of overlap or congruency of domains and factors has repercussions regarding the strength and size of distinct social units among the urban population and their spatial separation. In cases in which factors do not converge but rather intersect, what to an outsider looks a socioeconomically or religiously circumscribed group or milieu can appear as splintering. The spatial dimension of social segregation is discussed in more detail in the next subchapter. The effects of the respective modalities of different socioeconomic and sociocultural factors, including the power dynamics involved, and of the scale of their intersectionality range from animosity to indifference up to genuine concern for the fate of the other sections of the population and the other sectors of the city; from the marginalization, segregation, and even exclusion of sections of the urban population to a balanced relationship between social and cultural groups (and individuals) up to a (sometimes patronizing) relationship of social responsibility and support for the disadvantaged sections of a city. Intersectional animosities and the segregation and marginalization of groups can take the form of conflicts over cultural norms and behavioural ethics. Tensions and animosities between sections of the urban population can escalate into hostilities against groups, and against the residential areas where they are concentrated, and can result in acts of repression and subjugation. Violence can also result when those who feel marginalised assert themselves. Groups may be othered as cultural ‘strangers’ and can, especially when smaller in size and power, slide into a minority status. People given minority status are not necessarily economically weak, but persecution as minorities may lead to economic marginalization and deterioration. How tensions are expressed and dealt with, and how conflicts are mitigated, is decisive for the future of a city. The emphasis on urban ambivalence also allows a better understanding of how tensions can be attenuated and conditions stabilized. Cities may have mediating formal structures of governance, or – often being more effective – Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 23 informal social self-governance structures that help settle conflicts (e.g. Fuchs 2005 with respect to a district of Mumbai), or cities may feature a ‘cosmopolitan’ self-image (as Mumbai did before 1992; versions of this one can find in other metropolises, both historical and contemporary). This requires an underlying notion of shared ethics of tolerance and of the acceptance of difference and the plurality of worldviews. Attenuation may work for some urban residents, perhaps by way of their spiritual practices or beliefs, and not for others. Cities can be subject to one overall regulatory order, but there have also been many cases in which different religious, ethnic or professional groups operated by their own regulations in many respects and had their separate self-governance and decision-making bodies and in which the overarching authority had a mediating role at best. Examples would be the medieval and early modern kontors – foreign trading posts – of the Hanse in Bergen, Brugge/Bruges, London and Novgorod; of Venetians in early modern Constantinople; of early modern Florentine trading posts in Rome and Lyon; or of Ottoman Tunis up to the mid-nineteenth century (Schubert 2002; Dursteler 2006; Häberlein et al. 2019; Lafi 2005]; trading caste councils in West-Indian cities in precolonial times). Finally, putting the focus on the (experience of the) core urban ambivalence allows a better understanding of other conflictual dimensions that deeply affect urbanity. This concerns above all shaky identities and polarised aspirations attributable to external factors. Particularly glaring examples concern the socio-cultural ‘identities’ of many ethnic, religious and socio-economically demarcated groups in colonial and postcolonial countries as well as today’s diasporic urban contexts that appear as acutely unstable, in constant flux and therefore precarious. Many residents of colonized and postcolonial cities have been victims of eviction and forcible resettlement – ‘unrooted’ from often rural and tribal backgrounds or expelled from the cities of their birth. Similarly, there has been a fast rising number of people who were forced to flee to other countries as a result of military campaigns and conflicts, seeking asylum, or have migrated for security reasons or to find a living away from home. In many postcolonial cities the mix of population keeps changing quickly. In all these cases people struggle for a newly affirmed collective identity. We can spot effects of similar disastrous events with comparable consequences in earlier historical periods, especially in cases of aggressive empires, like the Roman, one Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 24 particular blatant case being the exodus of the residents of Jerusalem after the destruction of the city in 70 CE. Aspirationally, under these conditions people often find themselves in a quandary. Meant to adapt to what is considered the exemplary way of (middle-class or mid-range) life, they are often seen as falling short of meeting requirements and social norms, or they are themselves in two minds regarding which socio-cultural model to follow, that which informed their earlier life or that of their new ‘home’, and feel unable to do full justice to any of them. What had been exemplary life-style models become themselves weakened and torn, become unconvincing and are getting contested, among others by radical alternatives that promise a new holistic life vision. The life perspectives of the resident population, especially of the poorer sections, become upset too in this process. Many local residents feel overrun by rapid global urbanization and rampant gentrification and feel losing their place in the ever more densified cities. The position of more and more city dwellers can thus be regarded as insecure, vulnerable and ‘hybrid’, being caught between prototypical, increasingly globalized aspirational and occupational models that remain out of reach for many, and regionand ‘culture’-specific models and patterns that adapt to, intermix with, or counterpose what seems the socially most prestigious model. All the processes mentioned reinforce the ambivalence of belonging to a city. All the more, cities remain major life anchors. 3.2.2 Spatialisation and temporalisation of conflicts versus deterritorialization of the urban Alongside the socio-economic and socio-cultural factors that differentiate urban societies, we can also consider the spatial and temporal dimensions of urban differentiation. For decades, sociology and cultural studies of space have been working with the thesis that social relationships and social processes are spatialised or lead to spatialisation (Simmel 1992; for a historical methodology: Rau 2019). The constructivist principle that spaces do not already exist but are created first also points in that direction: a social situation, and thus also a conflict or an ambivalence, takes shape spatially. This can be formulated in analogy to Simmel’s famous sentence on the border: “The border is not a Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 25 spatial fact with sociological effects, but a sociological fact that takes shape spatially.”6 That said, we have to concede that once borders have been set, they also influence our thinking and acting. The same applies to other spatial configurations. In this context, the concept of spatialisation is useful to focus on processes that can be triggered as a result of urban ambivalences, although they do not occur exclusively in such contexts (cf. Christ’s 2022 brief discussion of the concept). The interweaving of spatial and temporal levels must always be taken into account – if only when we consider the duration of spatialisation processes. After all, urbanity generally finds its most visible expression in the materialised result of a process of spatial temporalisation (Verzeitlichung), i.e. in an architectural form – be it a house, a square, a settlement or a more complex spatial configuration. What is more, the whole process of urbanisation, from this point of view, can be seen as spatialisation of an always particular, i.e. historically and culturally conditioned, society. The materialised, visible results or built spaces are admittedly only variants, perhaps the extreme ones, because they are most visible and show at the macro level. In what follows, we will deal with the various, by no means only, materialised, permanent forms of spatialisation that can arise from ambivalent situations. If we propose to assume that many social processes or urban ambivalences are spatialised, we should also consider the possibility that they may dissolve their spatial structure, or that their spatial practices may cease, that symbols to mark places lose their meaning. Social relations range from couple or friendship relationships to associations, neighbourhoods and other social groups to relational dynamics among urban populations as a whole and to international relations between nations. The processes themselves can be transversal, but always relate back to the practices and activities of social actorsor also to non-human actors of the wider environment or the imagined world. Here, the actors no longer control the processes (alone), but can at least still observe them. Ambivalent states can endure in different forms of co-existence for long periods. However, whenever when they turn into tensions or conflicts (which often serve as catalysts for development) spatial arrangements become salient. Conflict resolution and conflict strategies can also become spatialised – however, not only in different ‘spatial’ ways. It is important to meaningfully distinguish the ambivalences that manifest 6 https://socio.ch/sim/verschiedenes/1903/raum.htm - in German: „Die Grenze ist nicht eine räumliche Tatsache mit soziologischen Wirkungen, sondern eine soziologische Tatsache, die sich räumlich formt.“ Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 32 spatial relations and communication in such configurations remained primary seedbeds and intensifiers for these processes, offering points of attachment to existing networks or shelters for deviant behaviour. Illustrating the ambivalence of the urban as well as the religious, interests in regulating and standardizing urban behaviour and the concentration of social power and control of knowledge turned cities into centres of organized suppression not least furthered by religion. Religious plurality, confessional strife and exclusion of those classified (on whatever criterion) as “others” have been closely connected if seen through the lens of ambivalence. 4 Conclusion As we have shown the concept of ambivalence can be fruitfully used for analysing urban socio-spatial relations and configurations. Ambivalence is not a just a metaphor for complexity. Instead, identifying a core ambivalence of the urban offers to precisely capture underlying tensions in cities of different epochs, on different continents, and of very different religious constellations. Thus, we suggest this as an important instrument for any comparative study of urban strains. In particular, this instrument allows to investigate the reciprocal formation of urbanity and religion and its many tensions. As we have indicated above (2.2), religion itself can also be fruitfully analysed through the lens of ambivalence. However, the ambivalences for religious practices and beliefs hinted at are very different. Yet, wherever religion and urbanity reciprocally shape each other, the ambivalences at the core of both will have been and will continue to be decisive factors in/of this entanglement. One might use this to better understand the complexity and vast differences that we see at work in urban-religious trajectories in urban settlements and urban thinking across periods and regions. Identifying ambivalence in both dimensions sheds light on the large variety of local and trans-regional urban constellations. We suggest accepting and embracing the complexity of the double ambivalence as a complex model for historical and comparative analyses that are interested in the nuances of similarities and differences without losing sight of the advantages of overarching concepts. It is for this aim that we intend to further develop the ambivalence of religious socio-spatial relations and configurations. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 33 In this article, we focussed on the urban side. Looking at urban ambivalences lays open the inherent frailty of the urban way of life. Despite the repeated growth of urbanism in many epochs and regions and despite the ongoing process that has been called planetary urbanisation (Brenner 2014; Brenner, Schmid 2014), the urban remains a precarious form of humans’ living together. Focusing on urban strain in such a manner foregrounds the volatile balance and the enormous energy put into attaining at least temporarily a state of stability for large scale, urban settlements (Rehberg 2014). This is the core tension of settlements that grow beyond what might be the limits of meaningful face-to-face interaction and whose residents emphatically embrace these possibilities and reflect this as urbanity. Under these conditions, the questions of inclusion and exclusion, or as we foregrounded, of belonging, become a constitutive concern in many forms of urban strain. The concept of ambivalence, as the review of the history of the concept has made clear, is not about situational disputes or political divides. It is about co-existing and enduring powerful normative alternatives. Dealing with these tensions means going into the heart of urban projects beyond all other contingent sources of urban strain. Bibliography Albrecht, Mara. 2024. ‘Claiming the City as Our Own: Group Formation in Contested Cities during the Riots in Belfast (1857) and Jerusalem (1920)’. Religion and Urbanity Online, edited by Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/urbrel.30233699. Accessed 2025-04-10. Algaze, Guillermo. 2008. Ancient Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilization: The evolution of an urban landscape. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press. Anthonioz, Stéphanie. 2019. 'Biblical Prophecy. Writing and Media Associated', in Stéphanie Anthonioz, Alice Mouton and Daniel Petit (eds.), When Gods Speak to Men. Divine Speech According to Textual Sources in the Ancient Mediterranean Basin (Orbis Biblicus Et Orientalis 289), Leuven: Peeters. 65-80. Banerjee, Prathama, Aditya Nigam, and Rakesh Pandey. 2016. "The Work of Theory. Thinking across Traditions." Economic and Political Weekly no. 51 (37):42-50. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity. Beard, Mary 1991. 'Writing and Religion: Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written Word in Roman Religion', Literacy in the Roman World, Ann Arbor, Mi.: Journal of Roman Archaeology. 35-58. Becci, Irene, and Marian Burchardt. 2013. "Introduction: Religon Takes Place: Producing Urban Locality." In Irene Becci, Marian Burchardt and Jose Casanova (eds.), Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces. Leiden: Brill. 1-21. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 34 Becker, Jochen et al., eds. 2014. Global Prayers: Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City (Metrozones 13), Zürich: Müller. Becker, Jochen, Katrin Klingan, Stephan Lanz, and Kathrin Wildner, eds. 2014. Global prayers: Contemporary manifestations of the religious in the city. MetroZones 13. Zürich: Müller. Belayche, Nicole. 2018. 'Content and, or, Context? Subversive Writing in Greek and Roman Religions', in Moshe Blidstein, Serge Ruzer and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (eds.), Scriptures, Saced Traditions, and Strategies of Religious Subversion: Studies in Discourse with the Work of Guy G. Stroumsa, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 13-29. Berking, Helmuth; Low, Martina, eds. 2008. Die Eigenlogik der Städte. Neue Wege für die Stadtforschung. Interdisziplinare Stadtforschung 1. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bleuler, Eugen. 1914. „Die Ambivalenz“. In Festgabe zur Einweihung der Neubauten der Universität Zürich 18.4.1914 (Festgabe der medizinischen Fakultät). Zürich: Schulthess & Co., 95-106. http://www.sgipt.org/medppp/gesch/ambiv-g.htm Bloom�ield, Jude. 2006. “Researching the Urban Imaginary: Resisting the Erasure of Places." In Urban Mindscapes of Europe, edited by Godela Weiss-Sussex and Franco Bianchini. European Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 43-61. Borgolte, Michael, ed. 2001. Unau�hebbare Pluralität der Kulturen? Zur Dekonstruktion und Konstruktion des mittelalterlichen Europa (Historische Zeitschrift Beihefte NF 32), Munchen: Oldenbourg. Boyarin, Daniel. 2004. Border lines: The partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brenner, Neil. 2014. Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis. Brenner, Neil, Schmid, Christian. 2014. The ‘Urban Age’ in Question. In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (3): 731-755. Buc, Phillippe. 2010. 'Religion, Coercion, and Violence in Medieval Rituals', in Axel Michaels (ed.), Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 149-62. Burchardt, Marian & Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika, and Middell, Matthias, eds. 2015. Multiple secularities beyond the West: Religion and modernity in the global age. Religion and its others. Berlin: de Gruyter. Carroll, Clare Lois. 2017. Exiles in a Global City. The Irish and Early Modern Rome, 16091783 (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700), Leiden: Brill. Chakravarty, Uma. 1989. 'The world of the Bhaktin in South Indian traditions: The body and beyond', Manushi 50-52. 18-29. Chatterjee, Partha. 2004. The Politics of the Governed. Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. Delhi: Permanent Black. Christ, Martin. 2021. Biographies of a Reformation: Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, 1520-1635 (First edition edn., Studies in German History). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 35 Christ, Martin. 2022. ‘Spatialisation.’ Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. Retrieved April 6, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/vzu3. Christ, Martin, Martin Fuchs, Elisa Iori, Sara Keller, Asuman Lätzer-Lasar, Klara-Maeve O’Reilly, Susanne Rau, Jörg Rüpke, Rubens Urciuoli Urciuoli, and Simone Wagner. 2023. "Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology." Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 25. 1-72. doi 10.1515/arege_2023-0001. Coates, D. Justin. 2023. In Praise of Ambivalence. New York: Oxford University Press. Correia, Jorge. 2021. 'Displaying Islamic Arts in Global Cities', International journal of Islamic architecture 10 (1), 137-46. Craddock, Elaine. 2007. 'The Anatomy of Devotion: The Life and Poetry of Karaikkal Ammaiyar ', in Tracy Pintchman (ed.), Beyond the Circle: Women's Rituals, Women's Lives in Hindu Traditions, New York: Oxford University Press. 131-48. Creekmore, Andrew T. III, and Kevin D. Fisher, eds. 2014. Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dale, Stephen F. 1975. The Mappilla Outbreaks. Ideology and Social Conflict in NineteenthCentury Kerala. The Journal of Asian Studies 35, 1: 85-97. Dale, Stephen Frederic. 1980. Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier. The Mappilas of Malabar, 1498-1922. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dunwoody, Sean F. 2013, 'Civic and Confessional Memory in Conflict: Augsburg in the Sixteenth Century', in Erika Kuijpers et al. (eds.), Memory before Modernity: Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 176). Leiden: Brill. 77-92. Eck, Diana L. and Mallison, Françoise, eds. 1991. Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India. Studies in Honor of Charlotte Vaudeville, Groningen/Paris: Egbert Forsten/EÉcole Française d'Extreme Orient. Fuchs, Martin 2001. 'A religion for civil society? Ambedkar's Buddhism, the Dalit issue and the imagination of emergent possibilities', in Vasudha Dalmia, Angelika Malinar and Martin Christof (eds.), Charisma and Canon: Essays on the Religious History of the Indian Subcontinent, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 250-73. Fuchs, Martin. 2019. "Self-af�irmation, Self-transcendence and the Relationality of Selves: The Social Embedment of Individualisation in Bhakti." In Religious Individualisation. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Martin Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach, Martin Mulsow, Bernd-Christian Otto, Rahul Parson and Jorg Rupke, 255-286. Berlin: de Gruyter. Fuchs, Martin et al., eds. 2019. Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, 2 vols., Berlin: de Gruyter. Fuchs, Martin, Antje Linkenbach, Martin Mulsow, Bernd-Christian Otto, Rahul Björn Parson, and Jörg Rüpke 2019. "General introduction." In Martin Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach, Martin Mulsow, Bernd-Christian Otto, Rahul Björn Parson and Jörg Rüpke (eds.), Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives. Berlin: de Gruyter. 1-31. Garbin, David and Strhan, Anna, eds. 2017. Religion and the Global City (Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Space and Place), New York: Bloomsbury. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 36 Goodman, Penelope J. 2007. The Roman city and its periphery: From Rome to Gaul. London: Routledge. Goossaert, Vincent. 2015. 'Spirit Writing, Canonization, and the Rise of Divine Saviors: Wenchang, Lüzu, and Guandi, 1700–1858'. Late Imperial China 36, 82 - 125. Gosztonyi, Alexander. 1976. Der Raum: Geschichte Seiner Probleme in Philosophie Und Wissenschaften, 2 vols. (Orbis Academicus), Freiburg: Karl Alber. Gowdy, John M. 2021. Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haines-Eitzen, Kim. 2012, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herborn, Wolfgang and Carl Dietmar. Köln im Spätmittelalter 1288-1512/13. Cologne: Greven Verlag,144-175. Hillen, Christian. 2020. ‚Die Kölner Gaffeln‘, Internetportal Rheinische Geschichte. https://www.rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de/Epochen-und-Themen/Themen/diekoelner-gaffeln/DE-2086/lido/5e98015879dc69.22344533 (last accessed 06.04.2025) Jaleel, K.T. 2020. Revisiting Malabar Rebellion 1921. Kottayam: D C Books. Jensen, Jeppe Sinding 2014. What is Religion? Durham: Acumen. Jobani, Yuval, and Nahshon Perez. 2020. "Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid (Uttar Pradesh): ‘Separation and Division’ at Contested Sacred Sites." In Governing the Sacred. Political Toleration in Five Contested Sacred Sites, edited by Yuval Jobani and Nahshon Perez, Oxford: Oxford University Press (online ed.). Jonas, Klaus and René Ziegler. 2007. „Attitudinal ambivalence”. In The scope of social psychology: Theory and applications, ed. by M. Hewstone, H. A. W. Schut, J. B. F. De Wit, K. Van Den Bos, & M. S. Stroebe. Hove: Psychology Press, 29–42. Junge, Kay, Werner Binder, Marco Gerster and Kim-Claude Meyer, eds2013. Kippfiguren. Ambivalenz in Bewegung. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. Keegan, Peter 2013, 'Reading Epigraphic Culture, Writing Funerary Space in the Roman City', in Gareth Sears, Peter Keegan and Ray Laurence (eds.), Written Space in the Latin West, 200 Bc to Ad 300, London: Bloomsbury. 49-64. Keune, Jon. 2021. Shared devotion, shared food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste question in western India. New York: Oxford University Press. Kindt, Julia. 2012. Rethinking Greek Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kleine, Christoph; Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika et al., eds. 2024-25. Global Secularity. A Sourcebook, 3 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter. Kong, Lily and Woods, Orlando. 2016, Religion and Space Competition: Conflict and Violence in the Contemporary World, London: Bloomsbury. Krueger, Derek. 2004. Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Divinations), Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kulke, Hermann. 1994. ‘Der Babri-Masjid-Ramajanmabhumi-Konflikt: eine ausgewählte Dokumentation.‘ Internationales Asien-Forum 25, 3-4: 345-374. https://doi.org/10.11588/iaf.1994.25.1591 Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 37 Kurup, K.K.N. 1996. ‘The Malabar Rebellion – an analysis of the impact’. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 57: 440-445. Lanz, Stephan 2018, 'Religion of the City: Urban-Religious Configurations on a Global Scale', in Helmuth Berking, Silke Steets and Jochen Schwenk (eds.), Religious Pluralism and the City: Inquiries into Postsecular Urbanism, London: Bloomsbury. 6580. Lätzer-Lasar, Asuman and Urciuoli, Emiliano Rubens, eds. 2021, Urban Religion in Late Antiquity (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche Und Vorarbeiten), Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Law, Danny et al. 2015. 'Writing and Record-Keeping in Early Cities', in Norman Yoffee (ed.), The Cambridge World History 3: Early Cities in Comparative Perspective, 4000 Bce-1200 Ce, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. 207-25. Lee, Emily S. 2014. Living alterities. Phenomenology, embodiment, and race (SUNY series, Philosophy and race), Albany: State University of New York Press. Lee, Emily. 2016. "Postcolonial Ambivalence and Phenomenological Ambiguity. Towards Recognizing Asian American Women’s Agency." Critical Philosophy of Race no. 4 (1):56-73. Lefebvre, Henri 1968. Le droit à la ville. Paris: Editions Anthropos. Leppin, Hartmut. 2018. Die Frühen Christen: Von Den Anfängen Bis Konstantin, München: Beck. Luchterhandt, Gerhard. 2008. “Viele ungenutzte Möglichkeiten“. Die Ambivalenz der Tonalität in Werk und Lehre Arnold Schönbergs. Mainz: Schott. Maier, Harry O. 2021. "New Testament Urbanities." Religion and Urbanity online. https://doi.org/10.1515/urbrel.15247204. Makrides, Vasilios, Rüpke, Jörg and Kasten, Ferdinand. 2005. Religionen Im Konflikt. Vom Bürgerkrieg Über Ökogewalt Bis Zur Gewalterinnerung Im Ritual. Münster: Aschendorff. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. “The Child’s Relation with Others,” The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie, trans. William Cobb. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Mersch, Katharina Ulrike. 2022. 'Religious Violence in European Cities Initiated by Wandering Crowds During the 13th Century', in Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke (eds.), Religion and Urbanity Online, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Merton, Robert, and Elinor Barber. [1963] 1976. "Sociological Ambivalence." In Robert K. Merton, Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays, 3-31. New York: The Free Press. Merton, Robert. [1963] 1976. "The Ambivalence of Scientists." In Robert K. Merton, Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays, 32-55. New York: The Free Press. Narayanan, M.G.S. 2018. Calicut. The City of Truth Revisited, Kozhikode: Mathrubhumi Books. O’Reilly, Klara. 2024. ‘Digging, uncovering, unearthing: Activist and academic approaches to Irish Magdalene Laundries.’ Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. https://doi.org/10.58079/w4dt Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 38 Oexle, Otto Gerhard. 1985. 'Conjuratio Und Gilde Im Frühen Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag Zum Problem Der Sozialgeschichtlichen Kontinuität Zwischen Antike Und Mittelalter', in Berent Schwineköper (ed.), Gilden und Zünfte: Kaufmännische und Gewerbliche Genossenschaften im Frühen und Hohen Mittelalter, Sigmaringen: Thorbecke. 151214. Omvedt, Gail. 2008. Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anticaste Intellectuals, New Delhi: Navayana. Onken, Hinnerk. 2016. “Collecting Picture Postcards of South America.” In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, edited by William Beezley. Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.314) Ozment, Steven, Eire, Carlos and Rittgers, Ronald K. 2020. The Age of Reform, 1250-1550. An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe, Yale: Yale University Press. Panikkar, K.N. 1989. Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar, 1826–1921. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Park, Robert E., Ernest W. Burgess, Roderick D. McKenzie, and Morris Janowitz, eds. 1925. The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Reprint, 2010. Parson, Rahul. 2019. "Individualisation and Democratisation of Knowledge in Banārasīdās‘ Samayasāra Nāṭika." In Religious Individualisations. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Martin Fuchs, Antje Linkenbach, Martin Mulsow, Bernd-Christian Otto, Rahul Parson and Jörg Rüpke, 865-893. Berlin: de Gruyter. Plattform ‘Offene Geschichte.de’, https://offene-geschichte.de/ (7 Aug 2023). Prak, Maarten. 2018. Citizens without nations: urban citizenship in Europe and the world, c.1000-1789. Cambridge: CUP. Rau, Susanne. 2020. "Urbanity (urbanitas, Urbanität, urbanité, urbanità, urbanidad…): An Essay." Religion and Urbanity online. 1-8. doi 10.1515/urbrel.11276000. Rau, Susanne. 2021, 'Canons, Councillors and Confrères: Changing Power Constellations in the City of Lyon (Late Middle Ages, Early Modern Times)', Religion and urbanity. Rau, Susanne, and Jörg Rüpke 2020. "Religion und Urbanität: Wechselseitige Formierungen." Historische Zeitschrift 310, 3. 654-80. doi 10.1515/hzhz-2020-0021. Rau, Susanne. 2014. Räume der Stadt. Eine Geschichte Lyons 1300-1800. Frankfurt/Main: Campus. Rau, Susanne. 2019. History, Space, and Place. London and New York: Routledge. Rau, Susanne. 2022. ‘The City: A Socio-Spatial Configuration – Reflections in a EuropeanIndian perspective.’ In Proceedings of the Kerala History Congress, 6th annual session, edited by T. Muhammedali. Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala History Congress. 1-16. Rau, Susanne. 2024. ‘Urban Ambivalences.’ Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. https://doi.org/10.58079/vmy9. Accessed April 7, 2025. Razinsky, Hili. 2017. Ambivalence. A Philosophical Exploration. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 39 Rebillard, EÉric and Rupke, Jorg, eds. 2015. Group Identity and Religous Individuality in Late Antiquity (CUA Studies in Early Christianity), Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert. 2014. Symbolische Ordnungen. Beiträge zu einer soziologischen Theorie der Institutionen. Ed. by Hans Vorländer, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Riva, Corinna. 2022. Violence, Power and Religion in the South Etruscan Archaic City-State. Religion and Urbanity Online . Rubin, Miri. 2020. Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe (The Wiles Lectures), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rubin, Miri. 2021. 'Religion and Urbanity: Difference and Commonality in Religious Processions', Religion and Urbanity online. Ruddick, Sue, Linda Peake, Gökbörü S Tanyildiz, and Darren Patrick. 2018. "Planetary urbanization: An urban theory for our time?" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36, 3. 387-404. doi 10.1177/0263775817721489. Rupke, Jorg. 2007. Religion of the Romans, trans. Trsl. and ed. by Richard Gordon, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rüpke, Jörg. 2015. "Religious Agency, Identity, and Communication: Reflecting on History and Theory of Religion." Religion 45, 3. 344-66. doi DOI:10.1080/0048721X.2015.1024040. Rüpke, Jörg. 2016a. Religious Deviance in the Roman World: Superstition or Individuality, trans. David M. B. Richardson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rüpke, Jörg. 2016b. 'Religiöse Identität: Topographische und Soziale Komponenten', in Martina Böhm (ed.), Kultort und Identität: Prozesse Jüdischer und Christlicher Identitätsbildung im Rahmen der Antike (Biblisch-Theologische Studien 155), Neukirchen: Neukirchener theologie. 19-43. Rüpke, Jörg. 2018a. 'Temples, Colleges, and Priesthoods', in Amanda Claridge and Claire Holleran (eds.), A Companion to the City of Rome, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. 493510. Rüpke, Jörg. 2018b. Religiöse Transformationen im Römischen Reich: Urbanisierung, Reichsbildung und Selbst-Bildung als Bausteine religiösen Wandels (Hans-LietzmannVorlesungen 16), Berlin: deGruyter. Rüpke, Jörg. 2018a. Pantheon: A new history of Roman religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rüpke, Jörg. 2018b. "Religious agency, sacralisation, and tradition in the ancient city." Istrazivanya 29, 1. 22-38. doi 10.19090/i.2018.29.22-38. Rüpke, Jörg. 2018c. “Living urban religion: Blind Spots in Boundary Work.” Historia Religionum 10. 53-64. Rüpke, Jörg. 2021. Religion and Its History: A Critical Inquiry. London: Routledge. Rüpke, Jörg, and Rau, Susanne 2020. "Religion and Urbanity." Religion and Urbanity online. doi 10.1515/urbrel.13230336. Rüpke, Jörg and Urciuoli, Emiliano Rubens. 2023, 'Urban Religion Beyond the City: Theory and Practice of a Specific Constellation of Religious Geography-Making', Religion 53 (2), 289-313. doi 10.1080/0048721X.2023.2174913. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 40 Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sassen, Saskia. 2013. "Analytic Borderlands: Economy and Culture in the Global City." In Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (eds.), The New Blackwell Companion to the City. Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Geography. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. 210-20. Schliesser, Benjamin et al. (eds.) 2021. Alexandria: Hub of the Hellenistic World (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 460), Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck. Schwerhoff, Gerd. 2008. „Sakralitätsmanagement: Zur Analyse religiöser Räume im späten Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit.“ In Susanne Rau and Gerd Schwerhoff (eds.), Topographien des Sakralen: Religion und Raumordnung in der Vormoderne. München: Dölling und Galitz. 38-70. Schwerhoff, Gerd. 1994. ‘Apud populum potestas? Ratsherrschaft und korporative Partizipation im spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Köln. In Stadtregiment und Bürgerfreiheit. Handlungsspielräume in deutschen und italienischen Städten des Späten Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Klaus Schreiner and Ulrich Meier. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. 188-243. Schwerhoff, Gerd. 2022. ‘Eine neue Signatur der Epoche? Die Frühe Neuzeit als Zeitalter der Ambiguität.‘ Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 49,1: 83-91. https://doi.org/10.3790/zhf.49.1.83 Sennett, Richard. 1990. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. New York: Knopf. Simmel, Georg. 1992. Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 11, edited by Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Simmel, Georg. 1908. "Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben." In Georg Simmel (ed.), Gesamtausgabe 7: Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1901-1908. . Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. 116-31. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1994. Drudgery Divine: On the comparison of early christianities and the religions of late antiquity. Chicago studies in the history of Judaism. Jordan lectures in comparative religion 14. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1978a. "The Temple and the Magician." In Jonathan Z. Smith (ed.), Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion. Leiden: Brill. 172-89. doi 6.17. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1978b. "The Wobbling Pivot." In Jonathan Z. Smith (ed.), Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion. Leiden: Brill. 88-103. doi 0.7.3. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1987. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism. Chicago: UP. Stahre, Ulf. 2004. "City in Change: Globalization, Local Politics and Urban Movements in Contemporary Stockholm." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28. 68-85. Stock, Brian. 1983. The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Princeton: UP. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara. 2019, Rituale (2nd ed.), Frankfurt/Main: Campus. Fuchs, Rau, Rüpke: Ambivalence (preprint, August 2025) 41 Toorn, Karel van der. 2008. 'Votive Texts and Letter-Prayers: Writing as Devotional Practice', in R.J. van der Spek (ed.), Studies in Ancient near Eastern World View and Society, Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press. 39-46. Tweed, Thomas. 1997. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. New York: Oxford University Press. Tweed, Thomas. 2006. Dwelling and Crossing: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tweed, Thomas A. 2020. "Flows and Dams. Rethinking Categories for the Study of Transnationalism." In Philip Clart and Adam Jones (eds.), Transnational Religious Spaces. Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and Beyond. Dialectics of the Global 8. Berlin: De Gruyter. 10-32. Veenhof, Klaas R. 2010. "Ancient Assur: The City, its Traders, and its Commercial Network." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53, 1/2. 39-82. Vester, Heinz-Günter. 1997. ‚Ambivalenzen der postmodernen Geschichte‘. In Ambivalenz. Studien zum kulturtheoretischen und empirischen Gehalte einer Kategorie der Erschließung des Unbestimmten, edited by Heinz Otto Luthe and Rainer E. Wiedenmann. Opladen: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-91433-0_6 von Thiessen, Hillard. 2021. Das Zeitalter der Ambiguität. Vom Umgang mit Werten und Normen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Cologne, Weimar, Vienne: Böhlau. Wagner, Peter. 2001. "Modernity, Capitalism and Critique." Thesis Eleven 66. 1-31. Winter, Franz, ed. 2020. Religion und Gewalt (Theologie im Kulturellen Dialog 37), Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag. Wirth, Louis. 1938. "Urbanism As A Way of Life." American Journal of Sociology 44. 1-24. Woolf, Greg. 2020. The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History, New York: Oxford University Press.