Abstract
Recently, geography has included in research the increasing role of religion in postmodern Western society and space. Religion is no more being understood as an objective truth, but as an individual experience of a person with a significant impact on the perception of space and place-making. This problematic undoubtedly requires a new theoretical and empirical perception in the new geographies of religion. This paper appeals for the geographical study of the relation between religion and (postsecular) space could be significantly enhanced using feminist approaches, which enable the inclusion of personal experiences and individuality in the geographies of religion. Using the feminist approaches, the changes in religious climate, ongoing currently in the West, including Czechia, could be better addressed in geography. Thus, the paper theoretically discusses the potential of feminist approaches and argues especially for the relevancy of four topics, personal experience of people, emotions, embodiment, and the everydayness, which can offer new insights into understandings of the relation between religion and space. Similarly, methodologies used by feminist scholars provide unique option for getting to know how religious people interact with sacred as well as secular space. Therefore, the paper aims to justify the contribution of feminist approaches and the empirical research considering the creation of sacred space and framing the everyday religious experience of people.
Highlights
Religion is a diverse phenomenon which could be understood in many ways: as a cultural system, an institution, a specific belief in transcendence, or an individual emotional experience
The longstanding development which feminist geographies have undergone from the Geography of women through the Geography of gender relations to the Feminist geographies of difference (Pratt 2009) ended up with the main focus on the construction of identities of different people and emphasizing the plurality of experiences of people
Both these developments follow a similar trend, put, from description to studying relationships between space and person. This common theoretical and empirical development encourages us to study the role of individuality of a person in the dynamic relationship between space and religion. This paper develops this argument, discussing the current research of geographies of religion and arguing for the use of feminist approach
Summary
Religion is a diverse phenomenon which could be understood in many ways: as a cultural system, an institution, a specific belief in transcendence, or an individual emotional experience. Feminist approaches enable to address religious changes at the theoretical, conceptual and methodological level, change emotions and everydayness into analytical problems and, include religion and spirituality as emotional and personal subjects into (empirical) spatial research. All these problems are very relevant in the context of Czech postsecular space and society. I argue that the methodological approach used in feminist geographies provides unique option for getting to know how religious people interact with postsecular private and public space in their everyday life
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