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The difference a wire makes: planning law, public Orthodox Judaism and urban space in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2021

Mareike Riedel Open the ORCID record for Mareike Riedel [Opens in a new window]
Mareike Riedel*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper considers a planning dispute that surrounded the construction of a Jewish religious installation (called an eruv) in the public urban space of an Australian suburb. The aim of this case-study is to examine the role of law in regulating Jewish difference – a topic that has to date received little attention in the socio-legal literature concerned with the governance of religious diversity. In analysing residents’ objections to the eruv, the paper explores long-standing anxieties about Jewish particularity in Australia and beyond as they surfaced in opposition to the eruv. It shows how the law continues to exclude certain forms of Jewish difference that are perceived as transgressing dominant religious and racial norms. Moreover, the paper highlights the particular ways in which planning law assigned value to these anxieties and legitimised the marginalisation of Orthodox Jews, emphasising the significance of local law as a site for exclusion and inequality.

Keywords

planning lawreligious diversityurban spaceJudaismeruvAustralia
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 403 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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