Space and the Geography of Religion: A RejoinderAuthor(s): Adrian CooperSource: Area, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 76-78Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003216 .

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76 Comments

in a social fabric that closes into a prison of space and resources which sustains these values. More recently, Beauregard (1989) casts space as a mediative causal variable that can help fragment a unified low income political opposition to inequitable urban development. He highlights the spatially and temporally uneven character of urban restructuring, a process that ostensibly cross-cuts such potential opposition by introducing residents to the complexities of divergent and conflicting growth ideologies.

The commonality that runs through such studies is the attempt to link social processes with spatial constructs in a way that elucidates the mutually constructive

and contingent nature of each. These studies assiduously avoid the determinist trap whereby space is cast as active and the social the passive or vice versa; individuals become cast as producers of their everyday lives whose unique and frequently idiosyn

cratic negotiation of causally endowed space engenders certain social outcomes. As Wolch and Dear (1989) note, social practices are intrinsically spatial, at all scales and at all sites of human behaviour. In this vein, social practices are constituted through space, constrained by space, and mediated by space. The social and the spatial emerge as ceaselessly penetrative, complexly intertwined, and mutually constructive.

Cooper presents an eclectic subdiscipline of cultural-religious studies that promises to tie strands of hermeneutic and materialist analysis in new and exciting ways. The infiltration of structuration theory, variants of phenomenology, and other innovative theoretical frameworks testifies to the infusion of novel methods and practices. A critical issue left virtually untouched, however, is the question of how active spatial constructions and active social processes interconnect and help to build one another. Left unexplored, consequently, are questions about space and its relation to the production of such things as religious meanings, religious experiences, and political opposition to religions. To a growing number of human geographers, space is an intensely active variable in everyday lives whose full influences are only beginning to be understood. How space actively intersects with the realm of religiosity, which we know too little about, is one arena that needs more critical attention.

References Beauregard R A (1989) 'Space, time and economic restructuring' in Beauregard R S (ed) Economic

restructuring and political response (Sage, Beverly Hills), 209-14 Cooper A (1992) ' New directions in the geography of religion ' Area 24, 123-9

Dear M J (1981) 'Social and spatial reproduction of the mentally ill' in Dear M and Scott A J (eds)

Urbanization and urban planning in capitalist society (Methuen, London), 481-97

Soia E (1980) 'The socio-spatial dialectic ' Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70, 207-25

Soja E (1985)' The spatiality of social life: towards a transformative retheorization 'in Gregory D and Urry J

(eds) Social relations and spatial structures (St Martins, New York), 90-127

Soja E (1989) Postmodern geographies (Verso, London) Wolch J and Dear M J (1989) The power ofgeography: how territory shapes social life (Unwin Hyman, Boston)

Space and the geography of religion: a rejoinder Adrian Cooper, Department of Geography, Birkbeck College, 7-15 Gresse Street, London WIP IPH

David Wilson's response to my article 'New directions in the geography of religion' is extremely welcome. It points toward a fascinating wealth of important questions on the role of space within religio-geographical reciprocity, as well as further questions concerning various conceptions of space in other elements of the

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Comments 77

religio-geographical research agenda. In this rejoinder, I will reflect briefly upon four sets of questions which remain pertinent to this spatial concern. In doing so, I will illustrate the discussion with reference to my recent work in Suffolk (Cooper 1991, 1992).

First, I found that among the parishioners with whom I worked, space was acknowledged frequently as embodying an active quality, and that, as Wolch and Dear (1989) anticipate, elements of their interpretations of everyday experience were intrinsically spatial. For example, the teenagers with whom I worked, discussed fre quently their experiences of the Parish as being a distinct locality which embodied a ' peninsula mentality' for many of its inhabitants. Felixstowe, many of these teenagers suggested, is ' an end-of-the-line town ', ' cut off' from other social and cultural inter action. Within their rhetoric therefore, there remained a naive but consistent appreci ation of space actively contributing to their perceptions of everyday social and cultural life in the Parish. Similar dialogue was also contributed frequently from the adult parishioners with whom I worked.

However, against this general and largely unspecified acknowledgement of the active contributory role of space in their everyday lives, no such acknowledgement was forthcoming from the parishioners' discussion of the reciprocal interaction between their interpretations of personally significant places and landscapes, and their attitudes toward Christian belief. Space therefore became a passive' silence 'within those specific religio-geographical texts. Consequently, the second set of questions I want to identify here concerns the significance of this spatial silence. Why is it, for example, that this silence does not appear within broadly based dialogue concerning parishioners' interpretations of the Parish as a locality, but only becomes consistently manifest when discussion is turned specifically to the exchange of meaning between religious and geographical experience?

I suggest the principal answer to this inconsistency concerns the point that discussion of space as a facilitative constituent of everyday experience arose among these parishioners in an intuitive, naive and, most significantly of all, an un-schooled

manner. In other words, these individuals have not learned the formally consistent ' ways of seeing' space which professional geographers have. Consequently, there remained important hermeneutic limits beyond which these parishioners could not and did not travel. In discussing these questions of active and passive space within cultural geographical contexts therefore, serious attention must be paid to the details of the rhetoric used by the individuals and groups under consideration (Draper 1988).

Leading on from the importance of this single, spatial silence within some religio geographical texts, there is the need to consider the ways in which it can be linked to other silences within those same texts. That is, finding a link to other themes which might be anticipated being a part of such texts, but which consistently remain absent. Within the Suffolk Parish Project for example, two further silences remained alongside

the spatial ' gap'. First, there was a virtually complete absence of discussion from the parishioners regarding the connections between place, landscape, religious experience and political processes. Secondly, there was a further silence regarding the additional linkage with capital formation. By setting these three silences together: space, politics and capital, it appears clear from the first six years of my research that religious experience for these parishioners is almost a wholly compartmentalised element of their everyday lives. That is, it is not at all integrated with other aspects of their everyday thought, action and experience.

The fourth set of questions which I want to identify therefore locates geographers of religion, and other cultural geographers, as being in a position to move beyond the

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78 Comments

level of identifying and analysing these textual silences. Specifically, I suggest there are opportunities for geographers to work alongside religious leaders, and others as necessary, with a view to modifying the form of their teaching in order to present religious belief as being more integrated within the currents of political process, and social and material relations. Some work in developing and applying this analysis of text to the level of informing Church and inter-Church policies has already begun (Cooper 1991, 313-34), but there is a great deal more work on that theme still to do.

Wilson's valuable response therefore points toward the significance which space can play within religio-geographical texts. Further, the respective presence and silence of that active spatial awareness may be further linked to other textual elements, including other silences, as an essential part of textual interpretation for cultural geographers. Finally, the detailed analysis of such silences may be used to develop an active contribu tory participation for cultural geographers in the design and implementation of cultural policies and change.

References Cooper A R (1991) Landscape, place and personal Christian commitment Unpublished PhD thesis. Depart

ment of Geography, Birkbeck College, University of London

Cooper A R (1992) ' Landscape, place and personal pilgrimage experience ' Geographiea Religionum 8

Draper S (1988) 'What's going on in everyday explanation?' in Antaki C (ed) Analysing everyday

explanation (Sage, London) Wilson D (1992) 'Connecting social process and space in the geography of religion' Area 25, 75-6

Wolch J and Dear M J (1989) The power of geography: how territory shapes social life (Unwin Hyman,

Boston)

Square pegs and round holes: more on the contract researcher James Barlow, Susan Halford and Linda Merricks, Centre for Urban and Regional Research, Sussex University, Brighton BN1 9QN

Peter Wells' comment (Wells 1992) struck a chord with the research fellows at the Centre for Urban and Regional Research. We strongly agree with the arguments he puts forward and welcome the much belated appearance of the subject of contract research in recent discussions on the future of higher education. This debate is obviously crucial to individual researchers attempting to build careers. However the issues raised also have significant implications for the future development of educational institutions. Here we

make some additional points to those made by Wells and suggest ways in which the problems currently inherent in contract research could be challenged.

The career paths of contract researchers may in fact display a far greater diversity than those suggested by Wells. In particular, there are increasing numbers of independent research fellows generating research proposals and securing funding on a rolling basis. Successive projects may well add up to' long-term 'employment within a single institution. Indeed, the three authors of this note have a combined total of 16 years continuous employment at Sussex University. This form of contract research enables individuals to avoid many of the problems identified by Wells, especially the high levels of geographical and job mobility and the enforced abandonment of expertise built up on previous projects. Additionally, this path does not relegate researchers to being simply a flexible resource in the career plans of tenured faculty.

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