Sacred Space and Globalization

Abstract

Although research and discussions of sacred space began to capture the attention of geographers in the late 1970s, the subject of sacred space has factored in the scholarship of religious historians, sociologists and philosophers since the early twentieth century. This chapter provides an intellectual history of the concept of sacred space and examines the ways in which globalizing processes transform sacred space. I engage with key ideas from Mircea Eliade and Gerardus van der Leeuw and focus particularly on the numerous criticisms of Eliade’s work, which is often dismissed as simplistic and anachronistic. I then consider the contributions of the eminent historian of religion, Jonathan Z. Smith. His articulations on the metaphors of locative and utopian maps are profoundly geographic and significantly resist the notion that sacred space is spatially fixed. I also examine other scholarship that deals with the contested nature of sacred space, embodiment, ways of encountering sacred space, sacred ecologies, and the ways in which globalization enables the creation of new sacred spaces through virtual pilgrimages, religious Web sites, religious transnationalism, and commodification. Development practitioners and those involved in disaster recovery now confront very real challenges of grappling with the politics of sacred space as faith-based organizations increasingly participate in recovery efforts. I recommend that contemporary scholarship on sacred space reclaim a place for some of the early foundational works, and identify possible directions for future research.