CSWR Resources: Religion and Place

A recent speaker at CSWR, Professor Anne Feldhaus, states in her 2003 monograph, Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India: "Many recent scholars of the humanities and social sciences who are interested in 'place' define it in opposition to 'space.' Whereas space is abstract, homogeneous, unmarked, and neutral, place is concrete, particular, and differentiated." Contemporary scholars such as Feldhaus look beyond traditional hierarchical distinctions between the sacred and the profane, distinctions that have tended to privilege "sacred space" set apart from the mundane, daily realities. They tend, instead, to focus on "place" as embodying a multitude of complex cultural and religious meanings contained in a given area, meanings that might be contradictory and vary from person to person. Arguably, this shift from a focus on "space" to "place" heightens a sensitivity to one's physical environment. Nature is not vaporized in a transcendent vision, but becomes an integral part of one's understanding of the Real, inseparable from concepts of identity and community. Physical place, no longer a separate, subordinate, profane world, is the very foundation and container of religious experience.

This exchange of ideas is indicative of the kinds of discussions that have taken place within the walls of the CSWR over the years. The following resources demonstrate these concepts by examining the meaning ascribed to various places.

Lectures

Publications