Toward Multiscalar Analyses of Religions

Abstract

The scholarly study of religion has experienced substantial change over the past quarter-century. Central among these was recognizing religions as existing within and shaped by spatial relations—a.k.a. religious studies’ “spatial turn.” Engaging geographic theory offered several benefits, particularly concerning interreligious conflicts, religions and secularisms, and religions’ intersections with other, seemingly divorced facets of lives and livelihoods. Yet religion's spatial turn remains incomplete. One striking omission is that of scale. A nuanced concept central to understanding spatialities and their relations, geographers have recently centered on scale and multiscalar relations when theorizing spatialities. Greater engagement with scale and especially multiscalarity would similarly benefit the scholarly study of religion.