Geography of Religion

Resumen: Los santuarios religiosos representan, en la actualidad, espacios de atracción de turistas, creyentes o no, y de devotos; sobresalen algunos que, por su magnetismo espiritual, exhiben áreas extendidas de adherencia devocional y turística. Guatemala se inserta en el escenario anterior a través del caso de la Basílica de Esquipulas que resguarda a la venerada imagen del Cristo Negro; ubicada en la Ciudad-Santuario homónima al suroriente del arribo cíclico de miles de turistas y peregrinos que incentivan la economía local. El contexto territorial referido motivó la realización de este trabajo que tiene como objetivo revelar características geográficas del turismo religioso en el Santuario del Cristo Negro de Esquipulas; en una primera parte, se precisan los postulados teórico-conceptuales examinados que atañen al turismo religioso; posteriormente, se describen particularidades geográficas del contexto regional y local; finalmente, se detallan los hallazgos que comprueban la importancia geográfica del turismo religioso en el Santuario a partir de la investigación en gabinete y el trabajo realizado en campo. Palabras claves: Turismo religioso, lugar sagrado, magnetismo espiritual, Esquipulas. Abstract: At present, religious sanctuaries all over the world, attract a considerable amount of tourists, devotees or otherwise. Due to their spiritual magnetism, these places create ample devotional and tourist hinterlands. It is in this context that Guatemala stands prominently; in the southeast of the country, the Esquipulas Basilica homes the wood-carved Black Christ, a popular image which annually attracts thousands of tourists and pilgrims that endorse the local economy. Considering this situation, the city of Esquipulas is recognized as the Faith Capital of Central America. This paper aims at examining the geographical attributes of religious tourism in the Black Christ sanctuary of Esquipulas. In the first part of the text, we present the theoretical platform used to study religious tourism; then, we describe the geographical features of Esquipulas at both regional and local scales. Finally, we present our main research results; they authenticate the geographical importance of religious tourism in this Basilica.

This chapter uses two theoretical approaches – the religious-social shaping of technology (Campbell 2010b) and the mediatisation of religion (Hjarvard 2008)  – to explore some of the main areas of online Christian activity. By combining these two approaches, we can analyze how religious groups create media while also examining how groups are changed by their media practices. After introducing these concepts, I will illustrate them through a case study of the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, an online church in a virtual world.

The thesis explores the function of networks in Yoga associations, how they can be best utilised, the way(s) in which knowledge is transferred and received and how the current network system can be best improved. In particular, it examines what kinds of epistemology were being taught, namely the rational and the sacral and how, if at all, they were being adequatelly utilised once each student earned their professional Yoga teacher qualification. Thus, ultimately, this thesis is an exploration of Western rational epistemology and Eastern sacral epistemology and how both of these can be best transferred on a micro and macro level, between individual Yoga teachers, their students and their respective association(s).

This paper describes recent progress of a GIS project on Chinese Buddhist monasteries. The author of this paper, who is also the principal investigator of this project, intends to present the problems which such a digital project faces and to discuss possible solutions of these problems. This paper demonstrates the success of this project but also points out the future directions for further development. Through an analysis of the different kinds of relationships that this database has to provide for, this paper emphasizes the importance of designing an expandable database structure. The potential of such a database demonstrates that digital descriptions of historical events can be a powerful tool for conducting research in Chinese religion.

Предлагаемый текст является попыткой научной рефлексии над сакральной компонентой храмовой архитектуры молодой новой мировой религии – Веры Бахаи. Главной целью данного исследования есть указание некоторых основных символических атрибутов, которые, будучи неотъемлемой частью храмового строительства вышеназванной конфессии, одновременно содержат в себе религиозно-догматическую составляющую этой же веры. Попытка ипользования в данном тексте феноменологического подхода позволила разъяснить отношения, которые возникают между индивидом и религиозной философией, в которой архитектура выполняет роль наглядного пособия и помощника. Разъясняется теологическое значение и социально-культурная роль феномена Mashriqu’l-Adhkár в идентичности последователей бахайской религии.

The religious geography of Hatay, the southernmost province of Turkey, is shaped through a tapestry of sanctuaries of shared religious heritage. This chapter features four of the most prominent sites that illustrate the religious significance of water, namely a waterfall in Harbiye attributed to the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne; a rivulet ascribed to the water of life through the legend of St. George and al-Khidr, the Green One; a sacred well in the oldest Christian cave church in Antioch associated with St. Luke and a water pool linked to a visit of the Virgin Mary. By reconstructing the legends and rituals in conjunction with the geography and environment of these sacred springs and water wells, this essay demonstrates how devotion to both deities and saints is integrally tied to the materiality and sacredness of abundant water resources providing the basis for interreligious relations in this region.

The entry begins with a definition of geography and with a description of what the discipline shares with the other social sciences and what makes it distinctive among them. Terminological clarifications are provided with regard to the relationship between human geography and physical geography, and between human geography and urban geography. After a brief history and overview of human geography’s engagement with social theory, the entry offers a discussion of the politicization of contemporary human geography and of how this phenomenon is reflected in theory building and concept development.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464

Bachelor thesis on the historical origins of the Dutch Bible Belt as a religious-geographical phenomenon. I review the debate between historians on the matter during the past c. 120 years. The main conclusions were that the geographical distrubution of Catholics and Protestants in the Netherlands was mainly established in 1580-1620 by force during the Eighty Years' War, but it was not until the late 19th century that a clear geographical pattern between liberal and orthodox Protestants could be discerned (generally ranging from Walcheren in Zeeland to Staphorst in Overijssel).

This book provides us with a comprehensive understanding of the arguments regarding religious tourism products and their growing consumer market. It touches upon the secular and the traditional aspects of religion in contemporary society – the believers and faithful on the one hand, and the experience seekers on the other. A well-structured book and a must-read for those interested in religious tourism. Carlos Fernandes, Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, Portugal
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This book will become the new standard work on Christian travel, a significant element in modern day tourism. There is nothing in the current literature which matches the depth and detail of this volume. It is well-organised, raises many important questions, presents well-documented arguments from a sound theoretical base and includes informative graphics and an impressive and highly valuable bibliography. Richard Butler, Emeritus, University of Strathclyde, UK
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This book is the first comprehensive study of the role of contemporary Christian travel and thus fills a huge gap in the literature. It enhances our understanding of the overall subject and offers an innovative look at the complex phenomenon of religious tourism. It reminds us of religion's centrality to our understanding of contemporary society and culture and is an essential addition to the bookshelves of researchers from various disciplines. Noga Collins-Kreiner, University of Haifa, Israel
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The book has been reviewed in four academic journals:
(1) Joshan Rodrigues, Church,  Communication & Culture (2018) 3:3, 410-411.
(2) Bailey Ashton Adie, Journal of Heritage Tourism (2019) 14:5-6, 583-584, DOI: 10.1080/1743873X.2019.1607151.
(3) Shalini Singh, Tourism Recreation Research (2019) 44:2, 278-279, DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2019.1594575.
(4) Nikola Naumov, Current Issues in Tourism (2019) DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2019.1637106

Cette these articule geographie et fait religieux, ce dernier n’etant pas seulement etudie en creux mais constituant au contraire l’objet central de l’etude. Les recherches menees partent d’un paradoxe contemporain particulierement observable dans les societes dites occidentales. Leur secularisation de plus en plus forte, impliquant un effacement progressif de toute reference religieuse dans l’espace public, s’accompagne pourtant, depuis une vingtaine d’annees, d’un regain de frequentation des lieux de pelerinage, qui touche, certes, les sanctuaires les plus connus, a forte valeur historique et culturelle (le Mont-Saint-Michel, Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, par exemple), mais egalement les plus recents et confidentiels (L’Ile-Bouchard, entre autres). Les pratiques des visiteurs oscillent, au cours d’une meme visite, entre pelerinage et tourisme, remettant en cause les categories, jusqu’ici restees relativement etanches dans la litterature scientifique francophone, de « pelerin » et ...

Manuscript; final version published as:
Palmisano S., Vanolo A. (2019), “‘City of Light’: The production of urban space by the esoteric spiritual community of Damanhur, Italy”, in K. J. Fisker, L. Chiappini, L. Pugalis, A. Bruzzese (eds.), Enabling Urban Alternatives: Crises, Contestation, and Cooperation, Palgrave MacMillan, Singapore, pp. 247-270.

In recent years scholars have engaged with explorations that tried to account for the pilgrimage
vs. tourism conundrum. Among the ideas that emerged was defining an integrative category
under the heading of religious tourism. This paper makes the argument that from a purely religious perspective pilgrimage in Islam is nothing but the one mentioned in the Quran; namely
the Hajj. Therefore, it is argued, that all other religious Muslim motivated journeys constitute a
different category which may be termed; religious tourism. By reframing and reconceptualizing
Muslim pilgrimage which is ‘beyond the officially sacred’ as religious tourism the paper accounts
for a plethora of religious voyages and the entire spectrum of Muslim religious voyages

This book is an attempt to shed light on the new way of the complex
problems about geography of religions and sacred geography. Special
attention in the monograph is devoted to the empirical analysis of
specific religions, in their development and mutual coupling with the
environment. The author perceives their creators activities, religious centers, borders and barriers for expansion in the area. It is interesting that all world religions originated in the Eurasian mainland edge zone. It corresponds to contrasts of land and sea, mountains and lowlands, dry and humid climate, forests and deserts, agriculture and animal husbandry. This zone has experienced a significant evolution in human history, such as the creation of a reasonable human being, the origin of agriculture, the rise of agrarian civilization and the establishment of monotheism; it was created in some areas of northwest India, across the Middle East to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This fact proves that is impossible to exclude the geographical factor in explaining the genesis and evolution of the world's religions, as is often the case in various historical, anthropological, sociological and related research.

Most people today are born, grow, learn, work, and live in a world shaped by consumer culture, and this inevitably affects their search for religious and spiritual meaning in life. With this special issue, the Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion extends an invitation to scholars in the field of marketing, consumer research and related disciplines to contribute to the journal with their best work on the marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion.

Historical Atlas of Hasidism is the very first cartographic reference book on one of the modern era's most vibrant and important mystical movements. Featuring seventy-four large-format maps and a wealth of illustrations, charts, and tables, this one-of-a-kind atlas charts Hasidism's emergence and expansion; its dynasties, courts, and prayer houses; its spread to the New World; the crisis of the two world wars and the Holocaust; and Hasidism's remarkable postwar rebirth.
Historical Atlas of Hasidism demonstrates how geography has influenced not only the social organization of Hasidism but also its spiritual life, types of religious leadership, and cultural articulation. It focuses not only on Hasidic leaders but also on their thousands of followers living far from Hasidic centers. It examines Hasidism in its historical entirety, from its beginnings in the eighteenth century until today, and draws on extensive GIS-processed databases of historical and contemporary records to present the most complete picture yet of this thriving and diverse religious movement.
Historical Atlas of Hasidism is visually stunning and easy to use, a magnificent resource for anyone seeking to understand Hasidism's spatial and spiritual dimensions, or indeed anybody interested in geographies of religious movements past and present.

Sati tradition was a social evil associated with the women. A few instances related with this practice are also found in Mandi region of Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. There are many memorial stones and a few descriptions of sati in some books on the history of Mandi. There are mythical and religious causes behind this practice not only in Mandi but also all over India. A widow woman chooses her death willingly or by force and burns herself on the funeral pyres of her dead husband. The aim here is to research on this tradition in Mandi region and how this tradition affected the society. Also, an attempt has been made to trace the connection between folk traditions and historical developments related to sati.

施岑降筆《西山許真君八十五化錄》賴以成立的宗教背景與地方環境
頗值玩味。一方面，鄱陽湖區域一直存在施岑信仰的潛流。另一方面，南宋淳祐間，在金陵天慶觀附近形成以崇真道院為中心的許遜降真之所，隨後分出勇悟道院，遷建於嘉會坊，為施岑降真之地。這兩個道院在元代合併為悟真道院，同時供奉施岑、許遜。從此微觀宗教地理的變遷，可窺見該傳背後所隱藏的述求及其本身的正典化之路。與南宋類似，民國初年成立的《普天福主演玄法懺》亦為施岑降筆。該懺的成立與晚清興起的鸞會活動有關。許遜獲封「普天福主」即屬「鸞會升授」，反映其在地方信仰中的「正神化」與在地化。而西山萬壽宮、南昌萬壽宮由於自身傳統的長期斷裂，在時任住持的推動下匆忙對接作為豐城地區流行文本的《普天福主演玄法懺》，從而將其正典化為「凈明道」的「重要科儀」。
The religious background and local environment that informed the Xishan Xuzhenjun bashiwu hualu 西山許真君八十五化錄, a text formulated by the spirit writing of Shi Cen 施岑, is well worth consideration. On the one hand, an undercurrent of Shi Cen beliefs always existed in the region of Lake Poyang 鄱陽湖. On the other, during the Chunyou 淳祐 reign period (1241-1252) of the Southern Song (1127-1279), the Chongzhen daoyuan 崇真道院, located in the vicinity of Tianqing guan 天慶觀 in Jinling City 金陵 (Nanjing), became a center
associated with Xu Xun's theophany. Soon afterward, it split, and the Yongwu daoyuan 勇悟道院 was established as a new temple in the Jiahui 嘉會 ward as the location of Shi Cen's theophany. These two Daoist temples were merged in the Yuan dynasty to become the Wuzhen daoyuan 悟真道院, where both Shi Cen and Xu Xun were enshrined and worshipped. From these micro-changes in religious geography, we can glimpse the appeal behind this tradition, as well as its path to canonization. Similar to this Southern Song example is the text Putian fuzhu yanxuan fachan 普天福主演玄法懺, formed in the early years of the Republic of China and composed through spirit-writing associated with Shi Cen. The formation of this repentance text was related to the Phoenix Assembly (luanhui 鸞會) activities (spirit-writing) that arose in the late Qing. Xu Sun was conferred the title Putian fuzhu 普天福主 by spirit writing, which reflects the standardization and localization of Xu Sun in local religious beliefs. Due to the long-term disruptions in this tradition itself, at the time, the acting abbots of Xishan wanshougong 西山萬壽宮and Nanchang wanshougong 南昌萬壽宮, quickly promoted the Putian fuzhu yanxuan fachan, which had been the popular text in Fengcheng 豐城 area. Thus, it was canonized as the significant liturgical text of Jingming Dao 凈明道.

Abstract: Shri Balarama’s Sarasvati River pilgrimage from the Mahabharata’s Tirthayatraparva is examined as an archetype for modern Hindu pilgrimage. Exploration of contexts suggests that Shri Balarama enacts His journey in His role Adiguru, the original teacher, and as Ananta-shesha, the eternal servant and support for Shri Vishnu. The Goddess Sarasvati, the patron of education and scholarship, appeared on Earth as a river with a mission to wash away sins. The Sarasvati, which is the river most frequently eulogised by the Rig Veda as a mighty stream, and which is by association is the river of knowledge, culture and learning, was largely lost even in the times of the Mahabharata, although modern scholars believe its waters still flow to Prayaga through the Yamuna. However, Shri Balarama’s
Holy Brahmins had sufficient spiritual vision to be able to detect its route. In Vedic understanding, Shri Balarama’s Tirthayatra was not a pilgrimage in the modern sense but a Yat’sattra, a travelling ritual that took its Brahmin yajman’s self as the sacrifice. Analysis of the blessings offered by each of the Tirthas
shows that the majority concern the satisfaction of individual Earthly desires, some concern social duties and some concern matters of Narrow Religion and mythology. However, there is also a kernel of blessings that directly concern spiritual purification and liberation. These themes confirm the Tithayatra’s true status as prototype for the modern pilgrimage, with all of the diversity of goals and meanings that such journeys involve.
Keywords. Ananta-shesha, Balarama, Chaitanya, Mahabharata, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Madhya Lila, Sarasvati, Tirthayatra.
Introduction

This paper proposes the notion of ReligioCity as an analytical category to account for religious urbanism and urban influences on religion(s). This theoretical notion allows us to explore the ways religion and urban space are transformed together by current socio-political processes, but also to examine the ways the city's landscape encompasses new expressions of religious materiality in the urban environment. Taking Acre, a small multireligious and multi-ethnic city in the north of Israel the paper explores religious processions, parades, and festivities as public rituals which encompass ways of being in the city and of taking temporary control of specific city spaces while engaging with urban infrastructures. In what ways these spatial religious manifestations are dictated by urban infrastructures and at the same time influence the city and how they serve as forms of being in the city for participants? The argument is that these religious manifestations and spatializations are ways of placing religion as an identity marker, with the possibility of sustaining, projecting or even reinventing a sense of self and community in the changing landscape of cities.

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המאמר דן במקרה מבחן של התקדשות אתר ישראלי בידי פעילים רוחניים-אלטרנטיביים, כורסי – אתר נס החזירים שלחוף הכנרת. המקום התקדש לנוצרים עוד בעת העתיקה, אך שב למפת הצליינות רק בעשורים האחרונים עם חשיפתו בחפירות ארכאולוגיות ופתיחתו לציבור בחסות רשות הטבע והגנים. לצד הנוצרים, ניכסו את כורסי פעילים רוחניים-אלטרנטיביים, שתיארו את האתר כ"פורטל" לריפוי אלמנט המים בפלנטה, הנתון בתוך מערך נקודות עוצמה "אנרגטיות". האחרונים עורכים במקום טקסים, ומספרים אודות סגולותיו המיוחדות. לקדושה מיוחדת זכה מרחב הספסלים שהציבה הרשות במקום. המיתוסים אודותיהם הופצו גם בידי הרשות והתקשורת, ואומצו בידי כלל מבקרי האתר. המאמר חושף את תרומתה המכרעת של ההסדרה הממלכתית באתר לשגשוג התאוריה והפעילות הרוחניות-אלטרנטיביות, ומציע מודל, הבוחן היבטים פונקציונליים של תהליך ההתקדשות, ומתייחס לשני צירים – הנגשה פיזית-טכנית ונגישות תרבותית-סמלית. באופן זה, מנותחים ההקשרים והאלמנטים הנוטלים חלק בתהליך היווצרות הגאוגרפיה המקודשת האלטרנטיבית.

The article discusses the sanctification of Kursi (site of the Miracle of the Swine, to the shores of the Sea of Galilee) by alternative-spiritual practitioners. Kursi became sacred to Christianity back in classical antiquity but returned to the pilgrimage map during the past decades, after it was unearthed by archaeological digs and opened to the public by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Beside Christians, Kursi was appropriated by alternative-spiritual practitioners who portrayed the site as a "water portal", set within an array of "energetic" power places, possessing special healing powers.
A special sacredness was attributed to the bench area constructed by the Authority. Myths of these benches were circulated by the Authority and media and embraced by site visitors. The article reveals the critical contribution made by governmental site regulation to the prosperity of alternative-spiritual Kursi-related theories and practices and proposes a model which examines the functional aspects of the sanctification process, addressing two axes: Physical-technical access, and cultural-symbolic accessibility. Thus, the contexts and elements which take part in the formation of an alternative sacred geography are analyzed.

Recognizing alternative understandings of refugee assistance other than the hegemonic account that structures the governance and availability of protection and assistance measures to around 60 million forced migrants today is an important first step towards finding something different. It is with this in mind that this chapter presents alternative readings of refuge, hospitality and protection through a close consideration of Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection on its own terms. By seriously engaging with the socio-cultural life worlds of migrants themselves, we can better build an understanding of what these terms mean to them and uncover an alternative language on refugee protection that has hitherto been made largely inaudible and invisible.

In what follows, three key arguments are presented. First, I interrogate the production of knowledge concerning the international refugee protection regime. Following Haddad (2008) and Malkki (1992), I make the case that hegemonic understandings of refugee protection are anchored in a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’ born of a particularistic European history locking hospitality within a discursive frame of a politics of pity and gratitude. This is exemplified in the humanitarian interventions we see today – a practice of hospitality which renders the refugee as deserving on the condition it is administered from a distance. Part two considers how Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection cannot be disentangled or disembodied from the living practices of historically and socially located communities and their institutions. These alternative discursive understandings form a set of expectations and entitlements forced migrants carry with them as they make their journeys. This approach frames hospitality as a practical ethic embedded in relations of reciprocity. Finally, I question the limits of such readings when mobilized at the scale of the nation state. Taking the Turkish state response to the Syrian refugee crisis as an example, I make the case that religious discourses of hospitality remain subordinate to the fact of the nation state and are doomed to reproduce the hierarchical power relations inherent to the humanitarian endeavour. To mitigate against this fatalism, I suggest that Islamic traditions of hospitality allow for metanoia at the level of the everyday – transforming the rupturing experience of being made into a stranger into not only a guest but a neighbour and in the process reconfiguring and broadening contemporary understandings of citizenship to include those who are present.

This article explores the ways in which religion(s) and religious groups are increasingly contributing to changes in the politics of planning of cities and challenge the hierarchical modern planning order. Following the notion of heterarchy as suggesting a diversity of relationships among elements in a system, the argument is made that the religious-cum-ethnic component is becoming part of an urban habitus that influences and redefines modern urban planning. Taking the case of a recently developed gentrified religious Jewish neighborhood in Acre, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious town in northern Israel, the article follows the ways in which urban planning is being shaped by three interrelated processes: the production of space driven by forms of capitalism intertwined with local heterarchical projects of space and power; a set of social struggles over urban space; and the framing of religious and ethnic urban identity.

Practically invisible to non-Hindus and non-family members are home altars that are essential for the spiritual and material well-being of households. The home is the
a priori sacred space and place in Brahminical Hindu life, particularly in its supporting role for the ritual reproduction of the Hindu family. Predicated on the establishment of this critical sacred space and place, an architec-turally distinctive temple culture in diaspora emerges considering relevant regional styles in India, local cultural aesthetics and available materials, and globalized representations of Hinduism. A synergy between the micro (individual home) and the macro (global Hindu diaspora) sacralization of space and place is key to our understanding of the continued vibrancy of Hindu communities in lands often unsupporting or even antagonistic to their religious life.

This paper explores how the evangelical spatiality of an Asian Canadian senior pastor at a historically Anglo-Saxon congregation has transformed it from an ethnically homogeneous, aging church to a heterogeneously-constituted gathering in an evangelical Protestant tradition. This piece challenges the conventional wisdom of the church growth movement and the new religious economics in the sociology of religion, both of which advise religious groups to construct homogeneity and consensus in efforts for numerical growth over against secularizing forces. The paper argues instead that Pastor Ken Shigematsu’s evangelical spatiality from the mid-1990s to the present must be understood as a theological embrace of difference in a church gifted to him by God over which he prayerfully pastors along with his staff. This paper understands Shigematsu’s evangelical spatiality through his own New Testament exegesis, his denominational affiliation with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, his ancient spiritual practices of indiscriminate hospitality, and his mystical reception of Tenth as a welcoming space toward a multiplicity of ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds. This article contributes to Asian Canadian Christian studies by discouraging a future where pan-Asian churches in Canada are homogeneously constructed and by exploring the concrete possibility of non-strategies in which heterogeneous, complex spaces that include Asian Canadians are received by pastors and studied by academics as a divine gift.

Religious movements tend to be global in their aspirations and
theologies, but they are deeply embedded in local and regional spatial formations. The spaces of religious practices go beyond the physical world, although they may be expressed, imagined and performed as topologies. In using the term “churchscapes,” our aim is to provide a theoretical framework for a cultural analysis of the Brethren movement in Germany and in particular the so-called “Closed” branch of the Brethren. We have analyzed the movement in terms of its historical geography and sociology, which is mutually constitutive to the theological imagination of the Brethren. Religious movements in general are mostly deterritorialized phenomena regarding their distribution and diffusion, even though they form specific passage points, hubs, travel practices and spatial communalizations. To understand these community formations we focus on Closed Brethren musical practices.

Resumo: As novas conjunturas sociais e culturais possibilitam ao homem religioso ter acesso a di-ferentes mídias que proporcionam novas interações e conexões com o sagrado, gerando, assim, novos campos de análises e pesquisas sobre o universo midiático e do ciberespaço. Essas mudanças propiciam diferentes campos de pesquisa, em especial para a Geografia. Apoiado na tríade entre o homem, a tecnologia e o sagrado, as religiões se apropriam dessa novidade buscando, entre disputas políticas e econômicas, a manutenção de seus territórios religiosos e devotos. Buscando descortinar essas conjunturas hodiernas, o objetivo deste artigo será de apresentar ao leitor: a) a Geografia da Religião como campo de investigação em transformação; b) as novas transformações socioculturais na sociedade capitalista hipermoderna e; c) hipermodernidade digital, novos aportes teóricos e metodológicos na ciência geográfica. O campo de investigação empírico se dará através da Igreja Católica Apostólica Romana.

Palavras-chave: Hipermodernidade. Ciberespaço. Capitalismo Artista. Estética. Religião e Mídia.

Abstract: The new social and cultural conjunctures allow the religious man to have access to different media that provide new interactions and connections with the sacred, thus generating new fields of analysis and research on the media universe and cyberspace. These changes provide different fields of research, especially for geography. Relying on the triad between man, technology and the sacred, religions appropriate this novelty by seeking, among political and economic disputes, the maintenance of their religious and devout territories. Seeking to uncover these current conjunctures, the objective of this article will be to present to the reader: a) the geography of religion as a field of investigation in transformation; b) the new sociocultural transformations in hypermodern capitalist society and; c) digital hypermodernity, new theoretical and methodological contributions in geographic science. The field of empirical research will take place through the Roman Catholic Church.

Keywords: Hypermodernity. Cyberspace. Capitalism Artist. Aesthetics. Religion and Media.

Gender inequalities are geographically determined and inuenced
(among others) by dominant culture and religion. For example, the
inuence of Muslim cultural rules and traditions (not necessarily based
on Quran) on the status of women is frequent topic of geographical and
popular studies in recent years. Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity
form characteristic behavioral patterns of women and men and also
hierarchical organization of society, which more or less discriminates
women. The aim of this paper is to analyze the normative framework
of the role of women in the biggest world religions in social, economic
and political sphere and to compare this religions using statistical
analysis.

O livro pretende interpretar como diferentes religiões articulam seus territórios e gestam a relação com outras religiões, sistemas de compreensão e espaços cotidianos múltiplos, numa dinâmica que não só é um componente da realidade contemporânea, mas é central para vivê-la. A tese de fundo que se levanta é que a religião é a grande questão geopolítica de nosso tempo, mas só é possível uma interpretação no plano da pluralidade religiosa e de como ideias, simbolismos, subjetividades e práticas são incorporadas na vida diária dos que partilham os tempos e espaços religiosos, produzindo identidades territoriais e cartografias imaginariamente concretas como projetos de mundo.
O volume conta com artigos que enfocam o espaço religioso sendo gestado, expandido, contraído, celebrado ou representando como fundamento para a vida comum, bem como os conflitos inter-religiosos decorrentes em um mundo de coexistência diverso e diferencial. Não é um debate de uma geopolítica clássica, mas como o as relações geopolíticas atravessam a experiência cultural-religiosa.

O objetivo deste trabalho é destacar o tempo a partir da análise geográfica dentro de um contexto da hipermodernidade, marcada pelo individualismo e a busca pelo self tomando por base o homem religioso. Desta maneira buscaremos identificar de que maneira a Igreja Católica Apostólica Romana tem se inserido nesse contexto atual do tempo como categoria de análise geográfica para criação de
estratégias para difusão da fé. Visando atender o objetivo proposto no âmbito da geografia da religião e geografia cultural pós-1980 no Brasil, o presente trabalho será dividido em três partes: a) O estudo do mundo contemporâneo interconectado através de redes de informação e o ciberespaço; b) O movimento de Renovação Carismática Católica na hipermodernidade e; c) Novas Comunidades
Católicas como estratégias políticas, econômicas e sociais para difusão e manutenção da fé.

Drawing on qualitative interview research conducted with undergraduates at English universities, this article examines Christian students’ experiences of living out their religious identities at university. Noting the transitional nature of the higher education experience, which often destabilizes existing identities, we explore how, for students self-identifying as ‘Christian’, the enactment of faith helps to form experiences of continuity between pre-university home-life and their university career. Religious beliefs and practices foster a sense of familiarity and offer cultural resources that assist in the forging of relationships among like-minded students. However, university-based Christian gatherings and groups are presented as less stable resources, and can come to symbolize heightened social difference amongst Christian students from different social backgrounds, provoking some to question, modify or give up their religious identities. In keeping with recent scholarship that stresses the dynamic, lived, continually negotiated nature of religious identities, we trace these patterns as contours within Christian identity construction, illustrating how religious and non-religious social factors interact as individuals navigate a key transitional stage in the life-course.