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In recent years, yoga has gained popularity as a practice oriented to the search for personal, spiritual and physical well-being. The dominant profile of the yoga practitioner has been defined, mostly, as a woman, middle class and living in cities of the western world. However, recent research shows that yoga, as well as other practices from holistic spirituality, are also gaining ground among the male population. Nonetheless, there are almost no studies that focus on investigating the intersection between masculinity and holistic spirituality. This article is a first step to fill this gap. The objective is to understand sociologically the processes of popularization of yoga in a context with a majority presence of working class men -prison institutions-, and to analyze the impact of the practice of yoga in the emergence of alternative conceptions of masculinity

Abstract
The idea of interreligious dialogue has gained worldwide traction in the last decades and has been promoted as a key component for religious peace. The aim of the article is to examine how interreligious aspirations and practices crystallize in different settings – namely diplomacy, governance and activism – and are shaped by the particular historical and political dynamics of each of these settings. The article explains how the plasticity of the idea of interreligious dialogue contributes to foster its popularity across different domains while serving to convey a wide range of meanings and expectations regarding interreligious pasts, presents and futures. Geographically, the article focuses on Spain and is based on qualitative fieldwork. The article shows that there have been considerable efforts to promote interreligious initiatives and that the global interreligious narrative has been re-fashioned locally, by including the idea of Al-Andalus as a lighthouse. However, the image of Spain and its history, as a foundational space for interreligious dialogue and multi-religious coexistence is contested by the current growth of extreme-right movements, and parties re-claiming the Christian foundational narrative of the country put this kind of initiative in peril.

In the contemporary global context of religious pluralism, the social and institutional recognition of religious groups depends, on the one hand, on the legal framework and the political will of public representatives and public officials; and, on the other, on the strategies adopted by religious groups, such as their visibility in the public space or their participation in the social, civic and political life of the municipality. The analysis of these relations allows for examining the emergence of new models of local governance of religious diversity. Based on the case study of the Bangladeshi Muslim community of Madrid in the Lavapiés neighbourhood, this article aims to analyse Madrid City Council's governance of the city's religious diversity between 2015 and 2019, coinciding with the mayor's office of Manuela Carmena and political citizen platform of Ahora Madrid. ; En el actual contexto global de pluralismo religioso, el reconocimiento social e institucional de los grupos religiosos depende, por una parte, de los marcos normativos y de la voluntad política de los representantes públicos y de sus gestores; y, por otra, de las estrategias de institucionalización que adopten los grupos religiosos, como su visibilización en el espacio público o la participación ciudadana en la vida política del municipio. El análisis de estas relaciones y de su incidencia en la sociedad, permite, analizar la emergencia de nuevos modelos de gobernanza de lo religioso en el ámbito local. Este artículo pretende, a partir del estudio de caso de la comunidad musulmana bangladesí de Madrid en el barrio de Lavapiés, analizar la gestión del Ayuntamiento de Madrid de la diversidad religiosa de la ciudad entre 2015 y 2019, coincidiendo con la alcaldía de Manuela Carmena y la candidatura ciudadana de Ahora Madrid.

Throughout Europe we observe a significant trend of increasing state intervention in the governance of religious practices and expressions. A growing number of policies and procedures seek to define and regulate how religion can, and cannot, be expressed in the public domain. In this article we explore how ideas of 'good' and 'bad' religion are translated into policies in urban contexts. We disentangle the social imaginaries that underlie the symbolic boundaries that distinguish between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' expressions of religiosity, and the repertoires of justification used to enforce them. Drawing on empirical research in cities in France and Spain, we argue that public expressions of religion are more likely to be deemed 'acceptable' in public as long as they meet a series of criteria, namely being perceived as: a) aesthetic and festive, rather than outrageous, b) discrete/decent/decorous rather than interpellating and, more importantly, c) exceptional rather than ordinary, d) freely chosen rather than imposed, e) cultural rather than pious, f) being legible with existing reference frameworks and categories rather than unintelligible. In other words, religious expressions are accepted, and considered to be acceptable, if they 'fit' or can be made 'fit' certain social expectations.

The increasing vitality and variety of religious identities in Europe give rise to new claims and demands by religious minorities. This generates new challenges for the articulation of the religious and the secular in European democracies, which become especially salient in public institutions such as hospitals, prisons, and schools. This special issue focuses on public institutions with the aim to examine how state and religion encounter one another in contemporary Western societies. We take public institutions as privileged observatories for understanding the changing place of religion but also as laboratories in which new arrangements are experimented. The articles analyse the presence, regulation, and negotiation of religion and religious diversity in public institutions across Europe combining innovative empirical enquiries with theoretical and methodological reflections.

This article analyses the roles of Catholic chaplains amidst secularisation and diversification in Spain. Instead of focussing on highly politicised and controversial issues, we examine lower-profile negotiations taking place in secular public institutions. With this micro-sociological approach, we move the analysis beyond the official stand of the national Catholic hierarchy and examine everyday interactions and negotiations between front-line Catholic actors, civil servants, and religious minorities' leaders who share—and compete for—time, space, and material and symbolic resources in public hospitals and prisons. We argue that rather than resisting the changes strenuously, Catholic chaplains strategically re-define and diversify their roles by taking advantage of contextual opportunities, institutional factors, and organisational inertia. This attitude, which diverges from the more confrontational stance of the hierarchy in the public sphere, allows them to adapt to the environment and maintain their position and relevance within these institutions.

This article critically analyses the proliferation and production of what we call "religious maps" in Europe in recent years. Religious maps have emerged as a form of monitoring, describing, and representing spatial processes of (ethno-) religious diversification. Through the comparative empirical analysis of the cases of Barcelona, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, we demonstrate that maps and the knowledge formations they (re)produce have become key tools to govern religious diversity in contemporary Europe. Counting, mapping, and categorizing places of worship provides allegedly objective and stable knowledge about increasingly complex and dynamic religious practices. Religious maps also make religion "legible" for the state through the classification of places of religious practice according to historically contingent categories of religious traditions and groups and by (re)producing what Brian Harley calls "cartographic silences". As such, the practice of mapping religions necessarily reduces the complexity of transnational and translocal social reality. This produces particular forms of intelligibility and representational hierarchy through which policy-makers and citizens in general understand religion in cities. The article shows that the analysis of the ways maps are conceived, produced, and circulated offers a distinctive lens through which to explore entanglements of knowledge, media, and power in the contemporary making of social, political, cultural, and religious landscapes.

AbstractPublic debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy‐related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed "moral entrepreneurs." Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.