CFP: Special Issue "Non-sacred Spaces for Religious Practices and Spirituality"
The goal of the Special Issue is to resituate the now largely discarded historiographical concept of sacred space within the context of an apparently secular, rationalized, pluralistic and globalized modern world and to ask “How does this concept—or does it—remain generative and how has it been reimagined, repurposed, and reinscribed with new and surprising meanings in order to fit the changing historical situation?” To achieve this, our focus is intentionally interdisciplinary, bringing together different discourses and specialists to go beyond traditional academic disciplinary aggregations. Such an approach was devised with the intent of evolving our understanding of the concept of sacred space outside of phenomenological and constructivist lenses, in hopes of germinating fresh interpretations on the type of space that is and has been referred to as “sacred” in the present and past.
The issue will supplement the already existing reorientation in religious studies that has been ongoing for the last three decades, namely, material and spatial turns, which seek to interpret religious phenomena outside the traditional categories of dogma, belief and ritual practice, focusing instead on configurations of space and relations, how religions ideas are lived out in a concrete way and how they are instantiated materially and socially. As an interdisciplinary issue, we hope this collection of research will also contribute to building bridges between academic disciplines, will the aim of reinvigorating dialogue between religious studies and built-environment-related disciplines.
Dr. Krzysztof Nawratek
Dr. Asma Mehan
Dr. Aaron French
Guest Editors
This Special Issue of Religions aims to re-think and re-contextualise the notion of sacred space, questioning both phenomenological (Eliade) and constructivist (Knott) approaches. With this in mind, this issue hopes to study, analyse and map different intellectual and religious perspectives concerning the spatiality of religious practice and the notion of the sacred space itself.
Furthermore, this Special Issue intends to provide a dialectical space to foster intellectual exchange and cross-fertilisation among architecture, the built environment and religious studies. Our focus will shift attention to less-known and marginalized religious traditions utilizing the insights of spatial and religious studies and drawing on the extensive academic literature of religious studies, cultural geography, urban anthropology, architecture and urban sociology, as well as that of the broader humanities, including the social and political sciences.
Dr. Krzysztof Nawratek
Dr. Asma Mehan
Dr. Aaron French
Guest Editors
