Abstract

Infrastructure forms a critical piece of urban life, shaping the way people move through space and what mobility itself means. As a function of political and social realities, infrastructure constitutes a productive point of engagement for religion scholars, particularly those who work in urban contexts. Yet, like the concept of religion, infrastructure is a slippery and contested term available for a wide range of descriptive and creative applications. This essay introduces perspectives on infrastructure from the fields of anthropology and geography and attempts to untangle some of the definitional and methodological problems of the term at its points of connection to religious studies.