Spaces of Spirituality (Routledge Research in Culture, Space and Identity)

Spirituality is, too often, subsumed under the heading of religion and treated as much the same kind of thing. Yet spirituality extends far beyond the spaces of religion. The spiritual makes geography strange, challenging the relationship between the known and the unknown, between the real and the ideal, and prompting exciting possibilities for charting the ineffable spaces of the divine which lie somehow beyond geography. In setting itself that task, this book pushes the boundaries of geographies of religion to bring into direct focus questions of spirituality.

By seeing religion through the lens of practice rather than as a set of beliefs, geographies of religion can be interpreted much more widely, bringing a whole range of other spiritual practices and spaces to light. The book is split into three sections, each contextualised with an editors’ introduction, to explore the spaces of spiritual practice, the spiritual production of space, and spiritual transformations.

This book intends to open to up new questions and approaches through the theme of spirituality, pushing the boundaries on current topics and introducing innovative new ideas, including esoteric or radical spiritual practices. This landmark book not only captures a significant moment in geographies of spirituality, but acts as a catalyst for future work.

Nadia Bartolini is an associate research fellow at the University of Exeter. Her work has looked at how tangible heritage is incorporated in contemporary urban planning in Rome. Prior to undertaking her PhD, she worked in Indigenous research and policy in the Canadian Federal Government. Her research focuses on issues surrounding urban cultures, heritage and the built environment. She has published on spiritualities that lie outside mainstream religions in London, Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent, in particular how spiritual values are transmitted through communities and across generations.

Sara MacKian is currently Senior Lecturer in Health and Wellbeing at The Open University. Her research to date has been driven by a curiosity for how people and organisations interact around issues of health, wellbeing and meaning making. More recently she has developed research around alternative spiritualities in contemporary society, based on a fascination with the relationship between the real and the imaginary, the body and the spirit, this world and the otherworldly. She is author of Everyday Spirituality (2012).

Steve Pile teaches Geography at The Open University. He has published on issues concerning place and the politics of identity. Steve is author of Real Cities (2005) and The Body and The City (1996), which both develop a psychoanalytic approach to geography. It is through these projects that he became interested in alternative spiritualities and their relationship to contemporary modernity. His many collaborative projects include the recent collection, Psychoanalytic Geographies, edited with Paul Kingsbury.