O'Mahony, Eoin
(2015)
Religious and secular places: understanding the changing geographies of religion in Ireland.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
The secular and the sacred have long been placed in opposition to each other. This has
been accompanied by a series of assumptions about the decline of religious faith and an
increasing secularity. A re-evaluation of this is currently underway within human
geography. This takes account of the fact that the secular does not so much replace the
sacred as exist in relation to it. This is a productive relationship and is seen in
distinctions made between private and public space. In her most recent review of the
literature, Kong (2010) asks that geographers of religion go beyond the micropolitics of
religious spatial expression to connect with broader political processes. I apply three
examples from Ireland to show how a relational geography of religion can respond
adequately to her call to move beyond the micropolitical. The boundaries between
private and public space thus become more porous.
Firstly, I examine the geography of Marian statues on ostensibly public ground in
Dublin city. Secondly, I outline how pilgrimage practice lies on the boundaries of
tourism and religious devotion. Thirdly, I examine the discourses surrounding the recreation
of Catholic primary schools in Ireland as sites of the secular, within a broader
political process. These examples show that distinctions between private and public
space break down on some scales. However, in connecting the micropolitical with a
broader spatial politics in these examples, how we conceive of scale remains important.
The political significance of spatial practice on one scale is often subsumed within other
scales. Using Marston et al.’s (2005) work on geographic scale, I propose a new set of
relations between the religious and the secular. In this way, I draw the outlines of a map
which reconfigures the relationship between religion and the secular as open-ended and
contested.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
| Keywords: |
Religious places; secular places; changing geographies; religion; Ireland; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography |
| Item ID: |
6037 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
17 Apr 2015 10:17 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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