Geography Of Religion Research Articles

Multi-scaled secularization or postsecular present? Christianity and migrant workers in Shenzhen, China

This article provides a multi-scaled, grounded understanding of how secularization and re-sacralization occur simultaneously in a context of rapid modernization. Recent geographical scholarship in the geography of religion have exhibited deficient reflection over the geo-historical contingencies and complexities of secularization and secularity. This article seeks to re-conceptualize secularization as a multi-scaled, grounded and self-reflective process through an empirical study of the hybrid, contradictory processes of secularization and postsecular religious revival in a ‘gospel village’ in Shenzhen, China. In this rapidly urbanizing village, Christian belief inherited from Western missionary work has gradually lost its hold amidst modernization and urbanization. However, the inflow of rural migrant workers has re-invigorated the church. Christianity has created possibilities for postsecular ethics and resistances, enabling migrant workers to materially, symbolically and emotionally settle in a new socio-economic environment. Also, new situated religiosities arise as theological interpretations are used to negotiate and even legitimize social inequalities and alienation. This article therefore argues that the postsecular turn in human geography needs to consider how the postsecular articulates, and co-evolves with, secular conditions of being in the world. It highlights the hybrid and contested nature of the secularization process, which gives rise not only to disengaged belief and immanent consciousness but also to new aspirations for, and formations of, religiosities.

Women’s everyday spirituality in Diamond Way Buddhism: an auto-photographic study

ABSTRACTThe Western world is experiencing increasing popularity of new religious movements whose adherents tend to spirituality, a subjective, personal form of religion. These spiritual forms shape the spaces of everyday life, their meanings, perceptions, and experiences, which is starting to be reflected in new geographies of religion. In Czechia, one of the most rapidly growing new religious movements is Diamond Way Buddhism. This contribution focuses on how Diamond Way spirituality is lived and experienced in space. The paper explores this phenomenon using the method of auto-photography. We asked six women to photograph places important to them in their daily lives and interpret their spiritual meaning. This method allows exploration of women’s spirituality in the everyday spaces where it is perceived and experienced, such as kitchens, buses, or natural sites. The results show that women have a specific way of experiencing Buddhism in seemingly secular space which they describe through feminine characteristics of transcendence. Everyday spaces become spiritual through the subjects’ emotional and continual experiencing of Buddhism, while the officially sacred space of a Buddhist center is incorporated into everyday life activities of women. The division between sacred and secular spaces often described by scholars is therefore challenged.

Everyday mobilities and the construction of subjective spiritual geographies in ‘Non-places’

Traditional geographic approaches depict sacred spaces, religion and spirituality as places of stillness and tranquillity, this paper challenges such fixity and instead uses the mobilities lens to analyse the dynamic and fluid nature of contemporary spirituality. It builds on recent work that draws on mobilities and geographies of religion by shifting focus away from the extraordinary journeys of pilgrimage to the ordinary, the mundane and everyday routines and movements; trips for economic, recreational or utilitarian purposes. The findings illustrate the activities that people do when they are on the move that can be related to their personal sense of spirituality and the ways in which religion interweaves in the movements and routines of everyday life and mobilities – from the radio playing in the car to the use of meditation. Often, activities became associated with specific parts of the journey and are threaded together to form ‘subjective spiritual geographies’ and significant elements of individual spirituality challenging secular pre-conceptions of mobilities time-spaces and characterisation of ‘non-places’.

City with or without God? Features of post-secularism in religious landscape of post-communist Prague

ABSTRACTThe religious climate caused significant changes over the last few decades which led to intense debates about post-secularism in Western Europe. However, there is particularly a distinct lack of analyses of the features of post-secularism in post-communist cities. The paper draws on the case study of Prague where the religious landscape is in many ways unique in a European context because of its highly secularized society. Nevertheless, Prague also experienced a revival of religious life, which has found expression in the religious landscape (not only) through the emergence of new sacral structures, pluralization of religion and post-secular rapprochement in religious institutions. The paper examines the convergent and contradictory processes shaping the religious and non-religious landscape in Prague and therefore opens the discussion about post-secularism in post-communist context. The results point to the importance of historical, social, and urban development for the new geographies of religion. New areas of research should also draw attention on the new religious movements and alternative spirituality which helps to explain the relationship between sacred and secular phenomena in current European society and space and the re-definition of the minority role of religion in the secular society.

MATSUI Keisuke: <i>Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior</i>

MATSUI Keisuke: <i>Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior</i>

Book review: Keisuke Matsui, Geography of Religion: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behaviour

Book review: Keisuke Matsui, <i>Geography of Religion: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behaviour</i>

Guest Lecturing on Geographies of Religion

This 'Teaching Tips' article focuses on my recent experience of guest-lecturing in colleagues' classes. Influenced by Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, my initial guest-teaching revolved around posing an argument about geographies of religion as 'grounded theologies' as a problem for students to challenge. However, my recent guest lectures have involved interviewing my colleagues' students to discover why they find grounded theologies interesting. I show that this new mode of guest-lecturing - also influenced by Freire - has opened up new conversations at a primal ontological level through a wider breadth of topics discussed, including occupy movements, Game of Thrones, Black Nordic Metal, and modern imperialist ideologies. Following Sam Rocha's folk phenomenology, I suggest that the primal depths that this interview-lecture style of guest lecturing is perhaps worth a try, even though I plan to use the argumentative lecture in the future as well.

Theography

This paper intervenes in the recent movement in religious geographies to produce more nuanced understandings of the religious subject. By introducing the concept of theography, this paper explores a religious reflexivity that directs subjects towards struggles over the content of theology, its effects on their spatial imagination, and their praxis. Theography advances conversations about praxis in the geography of religion by tying together poststructural scholarship regarding the religious subject’s potential to subvert abstract categorization, geographies concerning the subject’s reframing of theology, and philosophical contributions vis-à-vis praxes that stem from particular understandings of transcendence.

Dreams of an Iconic Mosque: Spatial and Temporal Entanglements of a Converted Church in Amsterdam

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the making of iconicity through religious architecture in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Examining the Fatih Mosque housed in a former Catholic church in the city center, we show in what ways the efforts at making this mosque iconic are shaped by the building’s iconic field, by which we denote its entanglement with other (religious and non-religious) sites in the past and the present. This iconic field is characterized by the conversion chains that preceded the mosque, material and discursive legacies of “hiddenness” and contemporary symbolic interactions with nearby sites such as the Western Church. By developing an analysis of the mosque’s temporal and spatial entanglements in Amsterdam’s urban space, we seek to revitalize a relational and diachronic approach that has suffered from neglect, particularly in social-scientific studies of mosques in the West. Rather than looking at a singular place of worship at a particular moment in time, we draw attention to the relations between Islamic and other religious architecture and to the ways in which this mosque intersects with broader genealogies and geographies of religion, not only by association but also by actual links in relationships, politics or material culture.

Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior By KeisukeMatsui. New York: Springer, 2014. Pp. vii +199. Hardcover, $129.00.

The key and absolutely important premise of this book, as stated in its preface, is that “[t]o understand the function of religion it is essential to examine it in the context of local societies.” But what does this mean, and how does one go about doing it? The author argues that in geographical study of religion in Japan four common approaches are employed—studies focusing 1) on the relation of nature and environment, 2) on how religion shapes local society, organizations, and landscapes, 3) on pilgrimages to sacred places, and 4) thick descriptions of the structure of actual religious spaces—the web of landscape, temples and shrines, people, communities, and ritual activities that complexly coexist in a given sacred space. The study investigates each approach in turn, focusing on a specific Japanese sacred area for a detailed analysis of lived religion on the ground. Chapter 2 is a study of tree worship and forest culture at Suwa Taisha's Onbashira festival. Here the author builds on the famous thesis of Watsuji Tetsurō that Japanese climate (fudo) directly affects the structure of Japanese sacred landscapes. Chapter 3, which makes up most of the book, is a detailed study of the “belief areas,” that is, the different “zones” in the areas around a sacred space that are filled with their religious organizations and belief systems. He closely examines two Shintō shrines, Kasama Inari in Ibakaki prefecture and Kanamura shrine in Saitama prefecture. Chapter 4 looks at tourism and pilgrimage in the marketplace by focusing on the changing types of businesses at Narita Shinshiji-Monzenmachi, and how world heritage status has effected the revitalization of local communities in Japanese sacred areas. This is a data-rich study that shows the complexities of faith in local settings in Japan not only spatially, but temporally as well—as new global forces, like the possibility of receiving World Heritage Site Status, transform the way people understand local manifestations of the sacred as a cultural resource. This is definitely not a text for the classroom, but for serious researchers interested in Japanese religion, sacred geography, and pilgrimage and religious tourism.

特集「宗教の地理学」によせて

特集「宗教の地理学」によせて

Performativity and the Art of Tai Chi: Understanding the Body as Transformative

El arte del Tai Chi se puede examinar como una práctica espiritual así como una forma de ejercicio meditativo; al hacer Tai Chi, la práctica corporal es transformadora. Este trabajo añade a la reciente investigación reciente sobre la geografía de la religión y examina individuales experiencias corporales del espacio sagrado a través de una investigación empírica cualitativa de la rama de la sociedad Taoista Tai Chi de Tallahasee. Las entrevistas con sus miembros reflejan que la conciencia del cuerpo se transforma a través de la práctica de Tai Chi y que el conocimiento del cuerpo es algo separado de uno mismo, y por lo tanto algo que es capaz de transformarse. La práctica del Tai Chi presenta evidencia de la importancia de examinar la relación física del cuerpo con lo espiritual, reflejando la noción de Eliade de la concepción hierofánica del espacio sagrado. La ejecución del Tai Chi desencadena un evento transformador hierofánico con el cuerpo en el centro de la experiencia espiritual.

Spatial turn, beyond geography: a new Agenda for sciences of religion?

Relying on a review of recent literature (and, sometimes, older publications), this paper attempts to highlight issues relating to the ‘spatial turn’ in religious studies. It outlines a series of developments in the study of religions related to issues in space, location and territory that have been enhanced by the intellectual framework of globalism and the empirical context of globalization. The challenges of such a geographic focus on religions are epistemological, theoretical and methodological. An examination of new and not-so-new issues in geographic approaches to religion shows how topical the perspective is, and how necessary it is to think the geography of religion beyond the boundaries of geography. In what ways do these new regimes of territoriality, these new concepts of religious space, and these new methods to understand the changes of material and cultural expressions of religion, whether wide-scale or local, partake on a paradigmatic shift? And how promising is it?

Continuity and Adaptation: Archway Central Hall, 1934–2010

Around one-third of Methodist Central Halls were located in Greater London. They catered for religious worship as well as providing community spaces in a programme of activities that drew on both sacred and secular references. Yet they are entirely neglected in the academic literature. Archway Central Hall is one of the few remaining examples of the Methodist Central Halls built throughout the capital in the early twentieth century that also remains in use as a place of worship. Drawing upon approaches to the study of buildings that emphasize the fluid networks that comprise them, as well as recent scholarship into geographies of religion, this article presents a detailed case study of its genesis and evolution. In doing so, the study contributes to this scholarship by setting the building within its wider context and considers how the structure and its users have adapted to changing social, cultural, and environmental circumstances.

El lugar de la religión. Espacios sagrados y prácticas de sacralización de los alemanes de Rusia en la Pampa Central. Colonia Santa María, 1908-1939

&lt;p&gt;¿Cómo el espacio puede ser pensado, organizado y controlado a partir de lo religioso? En los últimos años, los estudios provenientes de la “geografía de las religiones” han aportado un nutrido herramental para analizar la dimensión espacial de lo religioso. A partir de esta propuesta, el presente artículo aborda las prácticas religiosas de los habitantes de Santa María, una colonia fundada por alemanes de Rusia en el territorio pampeano. Específicamente, estudia la apropiación y redefinición del espacio rural desde lo religioso y la construcción de un circuito sacro a partir de las prácticas de sacralización de los colonos, desde su arribo a la región hasta 1939, periodo en el cual la colonia funcionó como una “aldea étnico-religiosa”, con sus líderes e instituciones. Mediante un abordaje histórico-cultural y el análisis de fuentes diversas (escritas, orales, materiales), el trabajo analiza las relaciones entre el espacio, la religión y la etnicidad y su importancia en la preservación de la identidad comunitaria.&lt;/p&gt;

Sealing future geographies: religious prophecy and the case of Joanna Southcott

This paper seeks to contribute to an emerging debate in human geography concerning the spatialities of the future, and aims to address a gap in work on the geography of religion regarding the temporalities of faith. Through a focus on religious prophecy, the paper seeks to examine how different spaces, temporalities, identities, practices and dispositions (both religious and secular‐scientific) are generated through and generate this religious future. The paper argues that prophecy is a particular form of making the future, and advances the dual notions cosmic‐divine time and preparatory assured readiness in order to understand and underline this specificity. Through the example of the prophetess Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) and an event involving a box of her prophecies publically opened in 1927, it argues that prophetic space‐times presence the future through multiple and intersecting ‘not‐yets’, hesitancies and assurances.

Religious experiences of stasis and mobility in contemporary Europe: undocumented Pentecostal Brazilians in Amsterdam and Barcelona

Discussions related to contemporary religious diversity in urban contexts often presume that people who form part of the public life of cities are citizens or have the right to move and dwell in the city. This article reminds us that when asking how certain religious movements become public in European cities, we also need to ask how possibilities of becoming public are tied to exclusionary citizenship regimes. By way of research among undocumented Brazilian migrants who attend Pentecostal churches, this article argues that contemporary European transformations of citizenship regimes influence religious perceptions of dwelling and movement within Europe and current experiences of urban space. The opportunities for undocumented Brazilians that allow them to move or to stay somewhere are dependent on legislation, the functioning of state institutions, the family's origins, and on contingency. In the experience of Brazilian Pentecostal adherents, acquiring legal status, to dwell or to be able to remain mobile within this assemblage of processes is dependent on their relationship with God. This article contributes to discussions in mobility studies and the geography of religion that highlight the need for more attention on mobility and stasis in relation to state actors.

Critical Realism and Emergence in a Scaled Geography of Religion

Scale is a contested concept in human geography fostering debates and contestation that have escalated to the point where some have argued for the term to be expunged from the geographical lexicon. Yet, despite the importance of scale in the geography of religion, the scalar debates in human geography have only rarely penetrated the conceptual base of the sub-discipline. This article addresses the scale debate through a case study of adherents in three churches in West Virginia, USA. The study explores these highly theoretical scalar issues through an empirical analysis of adherents, congregations and denominational leaders. A critical realist framework of emergence is used to demonstrate the value of a stratified, non-reductionist approach to the geography of religion. An emergent geography of religion is considered alongside other forms of religious social analysis such as poststructural ‘crossings and dwellings’ and actor network theory, and the role of critical realism in the broader scale debates in geography is evaluated.

Intimate Geopolitics: Religion, Marriage, and Reproductive Bodies in Leh, Ladakh

Bodies not only are territory but also make territory. Recent scholarship interrogates the utility of hierarchical scale, attends to everyday practice and geopolitical strategy, and thinks through geographies of religion in terms of intersectionality and embodiedness. I build on these developments by reading them through the lens of territory and territoriality to explore how babies and reproductive bodies are caught up in geopolitical projects and religious narratives in the Leh district of India's contested Jammu and Kashmir State (J&K). J&K's Ladakh region has experienced the politicization of religious identity over the course of the twentieth century, culminating in the Buddhist majority's social boycott of Ladakhi Muslims and the subsequent territorialization of marriage and reproduction as sites of geopolitical possibility. This research explores the territorial logic manifest in a pronatal campaign and a ban on religious intermarriage, as well as the ways that people respond to this logic. The research draws on seventeen months of fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2010, including a survey and interviews, as well as two oral history and photography projects with Ladakhi youth.

Globalisation and new geographies of religion: new regimes in the movement, circulation, and territoriality of cults and beliefs

Globalisation and new geographies of religion: new regimes in the movement, circulation, and territoriality of cults and beliefs