Speaker
Description
This study explores analytically and critically perspective religion-based intentional communities in contemporary contexts as geographies of voluntary segregation and commitment. These religious communal settings intentionally formed by individuals seeking to freely and collectively practice their religion. They purposefully create self-segrageted closed entities where religious practices and identities can be preserved. Such communities often formed based on the specialized rules of a particular religion, sect, congregation, or religious movement frequently adopting a stance that challenges mainstream societal norms (i.e., secularizaiton, modernizaiton). They offer a distinctive model of rule-based entities where the religious principles governing communal living practices have often defined by sacred prescript.
Through empirical evidence from diverse religious traditions, this research aims to first understand the dynamics of the normative and organizational structures shaped by the prescribed and pre-consensused religious principles, and then analyze their reflections in spatial configurations and land-use characteristics. The research investigates how fundamentalist religious motivations shape the socio-spatial characteristics of these communities through an analysis of empirical data derived from religioun-based intentional communities (i.e., Bruderhof communities, religious kibbutzs, sufi settlements) across diverse geographical contexts and teachings. Specifically, it examines the interplay between the normative and organizational frameworks of religious-based intentional communities and the dynamics of spatial organization. Furthermore, the study comparatively analyzes how diverse religious teachings influence spatial production and explores the similarities and differences among these communities. By adopting an interdiciplinaty and multiscalar perspective, this study suggests that normative and spatial characteristics are two central forces shaping the dynamics of religious communal living. It aims to expand the limited body of knowledge on contemporary religion-based intentional communities and to integrate this subject into the urban planning agenda.
References
Fishman, A., 2002. Judaism and Collective Life: Self and Community in the Religious Kibbutz. London: Routledge.
Kanter, R.M., 1972. Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Manzella, J.C., 2010. Common Purse, Uncommon Future: The Long, Strange Trip of Communes and Other Intentional Communities. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Mazumdar, S. and Mazumdar, S., 2013. Planning, design, and religion: America's changing urban landscape. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 30(3), pp.221–243. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43031006
Miller, T., 2016. Spiritual and Visionary Communities: Out to Save the World. New York: Routledge.
Sager, T., 2018. Planning by intentional communities: An understudied form of activist planning. Planning Theory, 17(4), pp.449–471. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095217723381 [Accessed 12 Jan. 2024].
Shlomi, H., Meir, A. and Alfasi, N., 2024. Whose city is it: The impact of an intentional community on the city—A case study from Israel. The Geographical Journal. [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12575 [Accessed 23 Oct. 2024].
| Keywords | Religion-based intentional communities, fundamentalist religious movements, normative frameworks, spatial organization |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
