Religion

Abstract

The study of religion in geography focuses on the ways in which matters of faith, belief, and spirituality interconnect with, and shape, everyday landscapes, identities, practices, and spaces. Labeled as depleted and marginalized in the early 1990s, the field has now developed considerably, particularly as a result of the cultural turn and the ongoing development of social and cultural geography as a significant subfield of the discipline. Building on early work about patterns of religious affiliation and segregation, coupled with contestations over the location of places of worship, research has diversified to include debates about gender relations, children's geographies, and political geographies and geopolitics. The most recent debates to find their way into geographies of religion focus on the place of emotions and the currency of discussions about postsecularism for understanding contemporary engagements with matters of faith.