Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells
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their existence in and through space (Lefebvre 1991: 404), with social divisions and cultural classifications often being spatialised (Shields 1991: 29). These ideas can be seen to underpin the work of several scholars writing on space and religion to whom I shall now turn (Knott 2005a, 2008).
Contributing to the body of work developed by Eliade and Smith, and building on Durkheimian scholarship on the ‘sacred’, the Finnish scholar, Veikko Anttonen, engaged space and the sacred in two different ways. He used spatial concepts (of body and territory) to develop his theory of the ‘sacred’ as a category boundary, and also examined the topographical use of ‘sacred’ names and references within various landscapes and other contexts (1996, 2000, 2005). He saw body and territory, and the boundary between them, as pre-conceptual structures which humans use in generating discourse and practice about the ‘sacred’. As bounded entities, they are co-extensive (1996: 41): the human body has both an inside and an outside, the latter being co-extensive with the inside of the territory. The boundaries between these pre-conceptual structures of body, territory and the wilderness beyond it have the potential to become markers for distinguishing between things on the basis of their value as well as for establishing rules for their engagement and transformation (1996: 42). This cognitive capacity for using spatial structures to distinguish certain things, events, persons and places as ‘sacred’ is culturally dependent. Anttonen demonstrated this in his work on territorial boundaries in the Baltic Sea area, commenting that the Finno-Ugric word pyhä was used of places that people wanted ‘to demarcate from the rest of the environment as “separate”, “designated”, “prohibited”, “dangerous”’ (2005: 192). But he also noted that, in other cultural contexts, whether religious, national or ideological, a similar process of ‘sacred’ attribution was at work (2000: 280–1). Anttonen’s theory unravels the cognitive and cultural relationship between space (body and territory), language and the process of sacralisation – making things ‘sacred’.
Focusing explicitly on religion, rather than the ‘sacred’ as a category that crosses the boundary between the religious and the secular, Thomas Tweed used spatial tropes to develop ‘a theory that made sense of the religious life of transnational migrants and addressed three themes – movement, relation and position’, a theory with the potential to be applied to other (non-migrant) religious lives (2006: 5).
Starting with a spatialised understanding of theory in which he suggested that ‘theories are embodied travels …, positioned representations …, and proposed routes’ (Tweed 2006: 9), Tweed stressed the particular, located nature of his own and others’ theories (18). At the heart of his work lies a definition of religion which employs spatial and aquatic tropes: ‘Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries’ (54). Breaking this down, he discussed the orienting spatial metaphors of ‘dwelling’ and ‘crossing’ and the aquatic metaphors of ‘confluence’ and ‘flow’, drawing on the theoretical insights of Deleuze and Guattari (hydraulic model), Latour (circulating fluids), Appadurai (cultural flows), Long (religion as orientation; one’s place in the world), and Clifford (dwelling-in- travel) (Tweed 2006: 57–61, 74). Following an examination of ‘dwelling’, Tweed turned to ‘crossing’, developing the three aspects of ‘terrestrial crossing’, ‘corporeal crossing’ and ‘cosmic crossing’. He revealed the potential of this spatial term to connect geographical, embodied and imagined movements and transformations (123–63), concluding that ‘religions are flows, translocative and transtemporal crossings’ (158).
Tweed’s theoretical project shows the rich possibilities of rethinking religion through spatial (and aquatic) metaphors, and – following Smith’s contribution that ‘map is not
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territory’ – may also provide geographers with a new perspective on the relevance of religion for their discipline. Religions facilitate ‘crossings’, movements from one position to another; such crossings are not confined to geographical scales, but may also be corporeal and cosmic.
Moving from theory to methodology now, I turn to my own work, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Knott 2005a). In writing it, my intention was to develop a spatial methodology for locating religion, particularly in ostensibly secular places, things, communities and objects. Whilst this also required theorising a field of religious-secular relations, which I shall not discuss here, it chiefly involved extrapolating tractable ‘tools’ from cultural and social theories of space for the study of religions. I developed a set of terms for analysing the location of religion: (1) the body as the source of space, (2) the dimensions of space, (3) the properties of space, (4) the aspects of space, and (5) the dynamics of space (Knott 2005a: 12–58; 2005b: 156–66; 2008: 1108–11). These analytical terms – which together constitute a spatial methodology – allow for the close and detailed examination of a place, object, body or group by means of its spatial attributes. Beginning with the foundational role of the body for our experience and representation of space, in particular with signs of the body inscribed in the object or place of our investigation, the methodology then requires a consideration of that object’s or place’s physical, social and mental dimensions. The next step involves a study of its spatial properties, that is its diachronic extensiveness and synchronic interconnections, its configuration (the way in which the research object or place is formed by its constituent parts), and its power relations. The final stages entail a consideration of the dynamic aspects of the object or place, first by means of its spatial aspects – the way in which it is practised, represented and lived – and, second, by means of the processes of production and reproduction that form it and allow it to generate new spaces. A methodology based on these spatial elements is an interpretive process which may be employed systematically, though its various elements can also be applied in isolation. It has the effect of opening up the object or place of study to in-depth enquiry whilst at the same time taking seriously its interconnections, whether diachronic or synchronic. As such, it enables a thorough contextualisation of religion. Examples of the application of this methodology can be found in relation to the location of religion in the left hand (Knott 2005a), an English medical centre (Knott and Franks 2007), and an urban high street (Knott 2009).
Reconceived in contemporary theory as dynamic, ‘space’ is no longer merely the passive container or backdrop for human activity that it was once thought to be. It is thoroughly enmeshed in embodiment and everyday practice, in ritual, knowledge and discourse, and consequently it is enmeshed in religion no less than in other areas of social and cultural life. Considering pre-conceptual spatial structures for people’s attribution of the ‘sacred’ as a category boundary (Anttonen), exploring the application of spatial metaphor for theorising religion (Tweed), and opening up ‘space’ and its constituent elements to closer scrutiny in order to examine the location of religion in secular contexts (Knott) are all examples of what thinking spatially has added to the theoretical and methodological resources of the study of religion. However, from the side of geography, it is important to note a complementary process. Adrian Ivakhiv, in an article subtitled ‘Mapping the distribution of an unstable signifier’, calls for geographers to adopt a deconstructive approach to ‘religion’ and the ‘sacred’, and to consider them as ‘ways to distribute a certain kind of significance across geographic spaces’ (2006: 169). Citing Foucault on the recent invention of ‘religion’ and the possibility of its erasure, he suggests that ‘it is the task of geographers of religion to trace the changing orchestrations of those significances across space and place’ (169), noting their relationship to other forms of significance, whether ideological, cosmological or political
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(171). Geographers, he says, are particularly well suited to tracing the ‘(re)distribution and (re)configuration’ (173) of such significances, for example of religious sacrality and irreligious profanity, and their relationship to ethnic or national sacralities. Starting from a base in geography rather than cognition, Ivakhiv nevertheless comes close to Anttonen in recommending a study of the incidence and distribution of the ‘sacred’ in its many forms and contexts.
Geography, space and religion: some contemporary themes
All academic disciplines have their own traditions and bodies of knowledge. Alister McGrath has referred to theology as having an organising ‘architecture’, to which theologians have historically deferred (2001: 141). The agenda of geographers of religion is insufficiently systematic or stable to be referred to in this way. The subject matter of geography of religion has reflected broader intellectual trends, though – as is the case in many disciplines – it has lagged behind them. I shall consider five contemporary themes, several of which have established roots in the discipline whilst others have appeared on the agenda more recently: pilgrimage and movement; diasporas and migration; bodies and space; death and dying; and religion in secular spaces.
Pilgrimage and movement
I begin with pilgrimage because it has repeatedly been drawn on as a theme for treatment by geographers, as well as anthropologists and scholars of religion. From Deffontaines’ consideration of it in 1948 and the ground-breaking study on Hindu pilgrimage by Bhardwaj in 1973, up to the more recent attempt to re-frame it as ‘cultures in motion’ (Coleman and Eade 2004a), it has continued to attract significant scholarly attention (see Park 1994: 258– 85; Stump 2008: 334–45). In the past the focus was on pilgrim distribution, types and levels of sacred space, and motivation for pilgrimage, with scholars from the late 1970s onwards responding in particular to the theoretical contribution of Victor and Edith Turner in Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978). Focusing on the popular and anarchic aspects of pilgrimage, the Turners introduced concepts of ‘anti-structure’, ‘liminality’ and ‘communitas’ which have since become an important focus for the comparative study of both pilgrimage and tourism and for challenging the boundary between religious and secular travel. Nevertheless, they worked within what Coleman and Eade have referred to as a ‘largely place-centred approach to the culture of sacred travel’ (2004b: 2). More recent studies have turned from a focus on place to one on movement to, in and from places, on the journey itself and on mobility.
The instability of place was signalled by the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan who suggested that, both socially and individually, people need to go beyond their own places and their routine experience of place, to be ‘out of place’ and to realise place as ‘a temporary abode, not an enduring city’ (Tuan cited in Park 1994: 260). Articulating the centrality of mobility, however, fell to Morinis (1992) who noted both the intersection of journeying with the embodiment of an ideal, and the structural opposition of stasis and movement as defining features of pilgrimage. Developing these ideas, Coleman and Eade sought to reframe pilgrimage in the context of several interlocking notions of movement (2004b:16–17). In terms of movement as performative action, pilgrimage could be seen as bringing about transformations of various
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kinds, such as invoking the idea of a pan-Hindu sacred space, more than the sum of separate local sites. Movement as embodied action saw pilgrimage as producing bodily effects, practices and experiences: the focus of contemporary travellers en route to Santiago de Compostela was on walking the journey and feeling the journey in the body, rather than on getting to the pilgrimage destination by the quickest route. Pilgrimage, they suggested, was best understood in the context of local conceptions of mobility, place and space (movement as part of a semantic field), there being no fixed, generic notion of movement that could be drawn on to explain different pilgrimages and pilgrim experiences. The final aspect, movement as metaphor, was important to pilgrimage irrespective of whether an actual physical journey occurred. References to the journeying soul, the inner pilgrimage, cosmic crossings, and life as quest all make metaphorical use of movement (see also Tweed 2006).
Coleman and Eade’s reframing of pilgrimage with reference to movement can be illustrated using Paul Basu’s study of ‘roots-tourism’ in the Scottish Highland diaspora (2004). Starting with movement as metaphor, many Scottish diasporic visitors from North America or Australasia describe travelling to and through Scotland in terms of the route metaphors of ‘homecoming’, ‘quest’ and ‘pilgrimage’, which together form a ‘grammar for roots tourism’ (154). In so doing they often draw on local myths of movement such as the Arthurian grail quest and other Celtic narratives as well as discourses of movement informed by their New World origins, such as ‘diaspora’ and ‘return from exile’ (movement as part of a semantic field). Working with the metaphors of quest and pilgrimage, in particular, enables Scottish diasporic travellers to draw on a related repertoire of behaviours and experiences, such as ‘processing barefoot, kneeling, weeping, collecting relics, depositing ex-votos’ (174) (movement as embodied action). Furthermore, in terms of movement as performative action, as Basu suggests, performing these journeys and seeing them through the route metaphors of homecoming, quest and pilgrimage enables Scottish diasporic travellers to imagine their destination as ‘home’, ‘the indeterminate’ and ‘the sacred’, and to experience it as profound, mysterious and enchanted (156).
Diasporas and migration
Basu’s example evokes a second popular theme at the intersection of work on religion, geography and space, and that is diasporas and migration (Park 1994: 138–9, 153–8; Stump 2008: 63–77). The focus of another chapter in this volume, by Séan McLoughlin, this theme is now central for both geographers interested in religion and scholars of religion interested in space. As Kong made clear in her 2001 review of new geographies of religion, the multicultural contexts that arise as a result of population migration and diasporic identifications produce new religious landscapes, complex religious/secular relations and inter-religious contestations (2001: 214–5). The appearance and character of urban space may be changed as new communities transform existing buildings or build new ones; and disputes over planning, changes of usage, and heritage may arise. Different religious groups may vie over control of a particular space or its interpretation and significance; equally they may agree to share space. Kong’s own work on Hindu Thaipusam processions in Singapore – which again highlights the importance of movement – brings to the fore the negotiation of religious and secular agencies, in particular the state’s management of religion and regulation of time and space (2005).
Another important spatial consequence of the migration of religious people is the diasporic identification with and memory of the place of origin – sometimes referred to as ‘home’, as we
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saw in the case of those Americans and Australians who retained an affinity with Scotland. Sometimes what is remembered and longed for is not a physical place but a scattered socioreligious community, such as the Muslim ummah or the Parsi diaspora. Although tangible transnational relationships may be maintained through visits or electronic communications, the imaginative and emotional spaces and connections are just as important, if not more so.
Thomas Tweed – whose theoretical contribution I discussed earlier – provides an example in his poignant account of the Cuban Catholic diaspora in Miami and the hope they placed in ‘Our Lady of the Exile’ to liberate their homeland from communism and return it to the place of their memories (1997). His account of the annual feast day, that recalls the journey by boat in 1961 of Our Lady of Charity from Cuba to the US mainland, reveals a complex politics of identity with multiple spatial referents: the Cuba of the nationalist diasporic imagination, the real Communist Cuba, the socio-spatial gathering of like-minded Cuban Catholics, the memory of the sea journey, the procession and sacred space with Our Lady at the centre, and the moving bodies of the worshippers (1997: 116). In his later analysis of this event, Tweed focuses on the themes of dwelling and crossing (2006: 169–71). He notes that Cubans in Miami, in addition to living in the US, orient themselves around the shrine to Our Lady and around the annual events with which she is associated. They are grounded in their conception of the Cuban ‘homeland’ and use of its associated symbols, the flag, map and national anthem. But their beliefs and practices also involve terrestrial, corporeal and cosmic crossings (169). The crossing from Cuba to Miami by the Virgin and by the migrants themselves is recalled; Our Lady’s help is sought for rites of passage involving bodily crossings; and the ultimate horizon of salvation both for the nation and the individual is invoked and becomes a focus for prayer.
Body
Tweed draws attention to the affective dimension of this event, the weeping, shouting and singing, the swaying and waving of handkerchiefs, the reaching out to touch Our Lady, the pride as the national anthem is sung. The space of the body, as a resource for the expression of love of God and participation in religious community, but also as a site where the order and power of religion may be played out, is important for geographers and other scholars of religion interested in the interface between individuals and religious institutions (Stump 2008: 239–49). Largely ignored in earlier geographies of religion, as Stump suggests, its importance lies in its relationship to religious identity – through dress, ornamentation and body markings – to personal purity, in being the site where religious prohibitions are enforced, to the observance of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, as well as to personal expressions of faith (240). All bodies are differently marked by their social and cultural contexts and inflected by personal preferences and tastes. Their observation and analysis can be productive for understanding larger geo-political and religious/ideological movements and forces, as well as for working at the micro-level of individuals, families, objects, rituals and habits.
A much-studied subject of embodiment in recent years has been the hijab and other aspects of Islamic veiling. In addition to the increased incidence of covering by Muslim women in the Middle East, Asia and Europe since the Iranian revolution, the subject has sparked anxiety in secular liberal societies, contention between Muslims as well as with nonMuslims, and generated public debates about the appropriateness of veiling in schools and other public places. Because of the Islamic association of hijab with purdah, meaning ‘curtain or screen’ – that which separates public from private, and women from the gaze of those