Domestic deities: Indo-Caribbean spatial territorialization and sacred space in South Richmond Hill, Queens

Abstract

ABSTRACT Shaped by immigrants, the occupancy patterns and visual cultures of American urban neighborhoods have continually shifted over time. The South Richmond Hill section of Queens, New York demonstrates the socio-spatial theories of ethnic succession, collective memory, and heterotopia in relation to participatory place-making. Once home to German, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants and their multigenerational descendants from the early 1900s through the 1970s, the spiritual landscape of the neighborhood – today known as Little Guyana-Trinidad and Tobago – has largely shifted away from its European immigrant origins toward Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jain faith traditions. Here, uniquely Hindu spiritual markings reveal a globalized and religiously diverse neighborhood, as well as an increasingly multicultural American society writ large. This research identifies seven primary elements – jhandi prayer flags, ceremonial gates, garden shrines, living room window deities, adapted house temples, storefront temples, and pooja shops – that define the parameters of Indo-Caribbean socio-spatial territorialization in South Richmond Hill.