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Book: Religion and Senses of Place

Chapter: Groundwork: Setting the Scenes

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.42580

Blurb:

Precisely because religion involves physical, bodily, sensual activities, it happens in places. Some of these are identified as ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’ places. Special or required ways of behaving in religious places might be definitive of the rituals and other practices that define some acts as ‘religious’. But religion also happens in ‘ordinary’ or everyday places like kitchens and care homes. And there are vigorously defended ‘secular’ spaces which cast an invaluable light on what people mean by ‘religion’. Attention to senses of place is therefore a promising way of improving our understanding of the lived realities of religion(s). Religiously significant locations include some that are constructed—and perhaps enhanced over generations—and others that are ‘found’ in the larger-than-human world.

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