The Interplay of Religious Discrimination/Segregation with Consumption and Production Activities

This research focuses on the interplay of consumption and production practices with religious discrimination/segregation. Although works of Izberk-Bilgin (2012) and Sandikci and Ger (2010) consider religion as an ideological tool for consumers' identity projects, we analyze a context where a pernicious, discriminating structural order prevents the use of religion as an ideological tool. Instead, the neoliberal market discourses are implicated, which, ironically leads to reproduction of discrimination. We situate this work in prior research on marketplace exclusion (Scaraboto and Fischer 2012), redlining (D'Rozario and Williams 2005), spatial exclusion (Castilhos 2019), and stigmatization (Sandikci and Ger 2009). Our central research questions are: (a) How does religious discrimination shape consumption and production practices of the discriminated? (b) How do these consumption and production practices, in turn, influence segregation and discrimination? The study is set in Ahmedabad (India), which has history of several interreligious conflicts, and majority of its population lives in religiously homogeneous neighborhoods (Field et al. 2009). As the context deals with aspects of distinction (between Hindus and Muslims) and spatial segregation, Bourdieu's 'thinking tools,' such as capital, doxa, interest, and symbolic violence, and Wacquant's analyses of territorial stigmatization, are useful in analyzing the data (Grenfell 2014; Wacquant, Slater and Pereira 2014). Data. Using QGIS application, public/private amenities were mapped onto each of 48 wards of Ahmedabad (Figure 1). This mapping helped us analyze the peripheralization that extends beyond the well-researched residential segregation - to that of access to mainstream marketplaces. We also interviewed 16 Muslims who have been living in Ahmedabad since the 2000s. Participants provided indepth details on the marketplace discrimination experienced in their everyday lives - segregated housing, schooling, employment, bank loans, and public facilities. Furthermore, the authors gained a richer understanding by participating in several inter-community events, thus traveling to otherwise invisible parts of the city. The analyses followed a hermeneutic approach (Thompson 1997) by identifying themes within and between interviews and connecting these themes with theory. Findings. Marketing is suggested to favor the in-group through marketing mix, store location, delivery modes, etc. (Bennett et al. 2016). The GIS