in the neighborhood. This suggests a history of suburban dissent and contested space—when a geographic location becomes a site of conflict over power and resources ( Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003b: 18–19 ). To answer the question and understand its
Search Results
Sacred Spaces and Civic Action
Topographies of Pluralism in Russia
Melissa L. Caldwell
This article examines several key sites where Russia’s civic and religious bodies intersect in pursuit of social justice goals. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among religious communities and social justice organizations in Moscow, the article focuses on the physical, social, and legal spaces where church and state, secular and sacred, civic and personal intersect and the consequences of these intersections for how Russians understand new configurations of church and state, private and public, religious and political. Of particular concern is the emergence of new forms of religious and political pluralism that transcend any one particular space, such as for worship, community life, or political support or protest, and instead reveal shifting practices and ethics of social justice that are more pluralist, progressive, and tolerant than they may appear to be to outside observers.
Religion, Space, and Place
The Spatial Turn in Research on Religion
Kim Knott
Following a consideration of the impact of the late twentieth-century spatial turn on the study of religion by geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and religious studies scholars, two trends are distinguished: the poetics of place and the sacred; and politics, religion, and the contestation of space. Discussion of these reveals substantially different approaches to religion, space, and place—one phenomenological, the other social constructivist. The spatial turn has been extremely fruitful for research on religion, bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines, and connecting not only to traditional areas such as sacred space and pilgrimage, but to new ones such as embodiment, gender, practice and religious-secular engagements.
Adjudicating Religious Intolerance
Afro-Brazilian Religions, Public Space, and the National Collective in Twenty-First-Century Brazil
Elina I. Hartikainen
Allegations of religious intolerance push courts to deliberate on questions that are constitutive of the problem space of secularism. In addition to legal opinions on the character and scope of religious freedom vis-à-vis conflicting rights, these arbitrations result in authoritative statements on what constitutes religion, how it may inhabit public space, and, ultimately, what interests and values underpin the national collective. This article analyzes three high-profile court cases alleging religious intolerance against Afro-Brazilian religions that were tried in Brazil during the first two decades of the 2000s. It demonstrates how at this time of rapid religious transformation the adjudication of such cases acted as a key site for the Brazilian legal establishment to redefine the place of religion in the broader context of rights and laws that regulate religion in public spaces.
Along the Lines of the Occupation
Playing at Diminished Reality in East Jerusalem
Fabio Cristiano and Emilio Distretti
spaces, politics, and narratives are assembled and reproduced in rarified ways, often in contrast to the complexities on the ground. Particularly in the context of disputed areas, overlaying a virtual world over a disputed space remains a problematic
The Chaco Skies
A Socio-cultural History of Power Relations
Alejandro Martín López and Agustina Altman
The purpose of this article is to analyze the ways in which indigenous Guaycurú groups from the Argentine Chaco have constructed their relations with powerful non-human beings in the celestial space throughout time. This study is based centrally on
Space of Hope for Lebanon’s Missing
Promoting Transitional Justice through a Digital Memorial
Erik Van Ommering and Reem el Soussi
a sense of community with fellow survivors (see, e.g., Church 2013 ; Moncur and Kirk 2014 ; Roberts 2004 ). The literature identifies the decontextualization of the memorial as a consequence of its lack of anchoring in physical space, as well as
Religious Tourism
Analytical Routes through Multiple Meanings
Emerson Giumbelli
Translator : Jeffrey Hoff
” in 2016 that is presented as “a space of leisure and shopping.” The sanctuary website systematically uses the terms “devotee” and “pilgrim,” but at one point identifies itself as a “tourist complex.” In 2015, the Sanctuary of Saint Paulina hosted the
Occupied Territory at the Interstices of the Sacred
Between Capital and Community
Paul-François Tremlett
In the autumn of 2011 and the spring of 2012, the Occupy London protests, informed by the ideal of a moral, territorially defined community, caught the imagination of British and global publics. For a short while, this moral imaginary was mobilized to contest some of the most glaring contradictions of the neo-liberal city. I argue that the Occupy protests in London registered a sense of public outrage at the violation of certain 'sacred' norms associated with what it means to live with others. More concretely, I contend that Occupy London was an experiment initiated to open out questions of community, morality, and politics and to consider how these notions might be put to work. These questions were not merely articulated intellectually among expert interlocutors. They were lived out through the spatially and temporally embodied occupation of urban space.
Introduction
Religious Plurality, Interreligious Pluralism, and Spatialities of Religious Difference
Jeremy F. Walton and Neena Mahadev
The introduction to this special section foregrounds the key distinction between ‘religious plurality’ and ‘interreligious pluralism’. Building from the example of a recent controversy over an exhibition on shared religious sites in Thessaloniki, Greece, we analyze the ways in which advocates and adversaries of pluralism alternately place minority religions at the center or attempt to relegate them to the margins of visual, spatial, and political fields. To establish the conceptual scaffolding that supports this special section, we engage the complex relations that govern the operations of state and civil society, sacrality and secularity, as well as spectacular acts of disavowal that simultaneously coincide with everyday multiplicities in the shared use of space. We conclude with brief summaries of the four articles that site religious plurality and interreligious pluralism in the diverse contexts of Brazil, Russia, Sri Lanka, and the Balkans.