In this article, we explore comparatively how migrant minorities draw from their religious resources to carve out spaces of livelihood in three global cities – Kuala Lumpur, which includes Kajang, Johannesburg and London. We also examine the spatial regimes through which the state and its apparatuses seek to manage the migrants' presence and visibility or invisibility within these urban spaces. In particular, we focus on three of the most salient dimensions of migrants' religious place making – embodied performance, the spatial management of difference and belonging, and multiple embedding across networked spaces. Although these three dimensions intersect in dynamic, often tensile ways to constitute the fabric of the life world of migrant minorities, we separate them for heuristic purposes to highlight the richness and texture of religious place making.
From an examination of recent social and cultura theory and selected work on place and space by scholars of religion I draw together resources for the development of a spatial methodology for the study of religion. In order to identify the key elements of this methodology, I discuss relations between the body and space, the dimensions, properties and aspects of space, the "sacred" and sacralization. Consideration is given briefly to the application of a spatial approach, its strenths and weaknesses.
A 'spatial turn' has been witnessed in the humanities and social sciences since Henri Lefebvre's La production de l'espace, and its translation into English in 1991. Subsequently, the socio-spatial theories of Lefebvre, Foucault, Certeau and postmodern geographers, such as Soja, Massey and Harvey, have had an impact on research in many disciplines, including religious studies. With its own traditions, of geography of religion and sacred space, it contributes theorists of its own, including van der Leeuw, Eliade, J. Z. Smith and Anttonen, but to these must be added those from beyond the boundaries of the discipline whose ideas have been formative for recent methodological and theoretical work by scholars such as Knott and Tweed. The article ends by asking what spatial theory contributes to the study of religion.Spatial Theory and the Study of Religion 1103 physical, social and mental conceptions of space, challenged earlier Cartesian approaches, focused attention on spatial practice and representations of space, discussed historical mediations of space (absolute, abstract, contradictory and differential spaces), and stressed the importance of the production and reproduction of space. Translated into English in 1991 by Donald Nicholson-Smith, this tour-de-force influenced a generation of postmodern geographers who by that time were also becoming familiar with the spatial interventions of Michel Foucault (1986 and Michel de
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.