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Constructing Subjective Spiritual Geographies in Contemporary Bristol, UK

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Constructing Subjective Spiritual Geographies in Contemporary Bristol, UK Everyday mobilities, place and spirituality: Constructing subjective spiritual geographies in contemporary Bristol, UK Edward Wigley A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Environment and Technology, University of the West of England, Bristol April 2016 Abstract: The New Mobilities Paradigm (Urry, 2007) and contemporary geographies understand places as sites of movement and flow that are dynamically related to other spaces (Massey, 1994). However religious places are traditionally treated as static or fixed entities and privilege institutional, rather than personal, spatialities of religion. As contemporary sociologies of religion (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005; Davie, 2006) recognise a shift from communal obligation models of social life to an emphasis on personal fulfilment and wellbeing, geographies of religion (Kong, 2010) have also addressed the individual’s spiritual practices and beliefs outside of the ‘official’ institutional spaces of religion. This research examined the interaction between everyday mobilities and personal spiritual practices of Baptist church and Buddhist meditation centre attendees using a mixed methods approach (participant-observation; questionnaires; diary-interviews) to evidence a variety of practices at home, work, recreation and the journeys made between such sites. Local and global flows of virtual, communicative and imagined mobilities in the churches and meditation centres were also identified. Participants were found to thread together a variety of sites on their everyday time-space paths into what I term ‘subjective spiritual geographies’ in which they could engage and maintain their spiritual practices and beliefs. Participants drew upon a wide range of materials and mobilities in both pre-planned ‘strategic’ and improvised ‘tactical’ sets of response to situations and in doing so created critical spaces of contemporary secular, mobilities infiltrated society. The thesis contributes to existing geographies of religion literature by evidencing the personal spiritual practices of the individual as well as local and global scales of religious places of congregation. It builds upon this literature by suggesting the implication of a range of mobilities is a key component in constructing places for spiritual practices and destabilises assumptions of the identity and distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ spaces. i Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the invaluable guidance (and ears) of my director of studies, Avril Maddrell and my supervisory team, Juliet Jain and Veronica Della Dora. Many thanks also go to the milestone examiners, Katie McClymont and Tim Gale as well as the examiners David Green and Tim Edensor for all their helpful and constructive comments that have informed the work. Jennifer Lea and Michael Horswell were also a significant source of help and inspiration during the early stages. Of course, the work also required the help, time and effort of those directly involved in the research from the survey respondents in churches and meditation centres around Bristol, the ministers, elders and session leaders who allowed me to collect this data and of course the 17 marvellous participants who donated their time, energy and cups of tea to this enterprise. I am hopeful that these generous individuals also got something out of this research as well but am truly grateful to their involvement. Other people to thank for their support and help along the way include my geographically dispersed family Ma, Pa, Emma, James, Jitka and Liz, many friends particularly the crew of the good ship 4q57: Carmel, Hannah, Owen, Nick, Shadan, Jenna, Tom, Anna and Michael for making the even the most anxious days during this study some of the most enjoyable. Immeasurable gratitude goes to Julie and Charlotte Smith, Jenna and Graeme Brown and John Bowman who have provided me with two resonate components of this thesis, place (twice!) and mobility. If I have forgotten anybody, please be assured this a failing of my memory and not an indication of your contribution. Finally, this work is dedicated to the memory of Betty and Willis Nicholls. ii CHAPTER 1: EVERYDAY MOBILITIES, PLACE AND SPIRITUALITY: INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT AND RATIONALE 8 1.1. Context and rationale: disenchantment of everyday time-spaces 10 1.1.1 Geographies of religion and spirituality 10 1.1.2 Place 11 1.1.3 The New Mobilities Paradigm 12 1.1.4 Changing religious landscape of the UK 14 1.1.5 Section summary 15 1.2. Research questions 15 1.3. Thesis structure 16 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW PART 1: PLACE, SPACE AND TIME 20 2.1. Place, sacred space and glocalisation 21 2.1.1 Place 21 2.1.2 The disenchantment and colonisation of everyday space and the challenge to religion 25 2.1.3 Loss of place? 31 2.1.4 Global and the local 35 2.1.5 Sacred and profane space 37 2.1.6 Social construction of sacred space 39 2.2. Time, rhythm and discipline in the making of place 41 2.2.1 Rhythmanalysis 42 2.2.2 Religious and secular time 45 2.3. Chapter summary 50 iii CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW PART 2: MOBILITIES AND RELIGION IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 52 3.1. Michel de Certeau 53 3.2. New Mobilities Paradigm 55 3.2.1 Increase in travel-time 57 3.2.2 Systematisation of everyday mobility 59 3.2.3 More-than-travel time 61 3.2.4 Place-making in the time-spaces of mobility 65 3.2.5 Liminality and communitas in contemporary pilgrimage 71 3.3. Contemporary geographies of religion and spirituality in a changing society 76 3.3.1 Transforming society: Declining religion, sustained beliefs 78 3.3.2 Subjective turn of modern society and the Spiritual Revolution 80 3.3.3 Strategic and tactical religion 82 3.3.4 Subjective sacred space in contemporary geographies 83 3.3.5 Space: sacred and secular 86 3.4. Chapter summary 90 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY 93 4.1. Overview 93 4.1.1 Ontology and Epistemology 94 4.2. Defining ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ 96 4.2.1 Religion 96 4.2.2 Spirituality 97 4.3. Geographical framing 99 4.3.1 Bristol mobilities 99 iv 4.4. Approach to sample groups: 103 4.4.1 Selecting religious groups for research 103 4.4.2 Baptist churches 103 4.4.3 Buddhist meditation centres 106 4.5. Methods 108 4.5.1 Phase 1: Participant Observation 109 4.5.2 Phase 2: Questionnaire 113 4.5.3 Phase 3: diary-interviews 122 4.6. Ethical considerations 141 4.7. Chapter summary 142 CHAPTER 5: JOURNEYING TO THE ‘OFFICIAL’ SITES OF RELIGIOUS PRACTICE 143 5.1. The journey 145 5.1.1 Social ties 146 5.1.2 Active travel (walking, and cycling) 150 5.1.3 Driving 159 5.2. The centre 164 5.2.1 Churches and meditation centre space as set apart 164 5.2.2 Communitas 169 5.3. Chapter summary 173 CHAPTER 6: SPIRITUAL PRACTICES IN EVERYDAY TIME-SPACE MOBILITIES175 6.1. Travel-time practices and activities 176 6.1.1 A (travel) time for news, prayer and meditation 176 6.1.2 Time-space for worship music 181 v 6.2. Encounters and situations within travel-time 188 6.2.1 Strangers and dangers 189 6.2.2 Movement 193 6.2.3 Slowing down 199 6.3. Chapter summary 203 CHAPTER 7: PLACE-TEMPORALITY AND DISCIPLINE IN RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL HABITS 206 7.1. Habits and place 207 7.1.1 Mornings 208 7.1.2 Throughout the day 214 7.1.3 Evenings 218 7.2. Rhythms of renewal embedded in time-space 225 7.2.1 Official sites 226 7.2.2 Unofficial time-spaces 232 7.3. Chapter summary 242 CHAPTER 8: ENTANGLEMENTS OF LOCAL AND GLOBAL MOBILITY IN RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL PLACE-MAKING 244 8.1. Reassembling global religion in personal time-space 246 8.1.1 Re-territorializing global materialities in the local and personal 246 8.1.2 Teachings and information 255 8.1.3 Broadcasts 258 8.2. A global sense of religious place 262 8.2.1 Imaginative travel 263 8.2.2 Communicative travel 267 vi 8.2.3 Virtual travel 273 8.2.4 Corporeal travel 275 8.3. Chapter summary 278 CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSIONS 280 9.1. Thesis summary and findings 280 9.2. Conclusion and contribution to knowledge 286 9.3. Reflections and future research 289 REFERENCES 291 APPENDIX 309 Appendix 1: Phase 2 Questionnaire 309 Appendix 2: Time-space diary (for Baptist church sample) 314 Appendix 3: Time-space diary (for Buddhist meditation centre sample) 315 vii Chapter 1: Everyday mobilities, place and spirituality: Introduction, context and rationale Sacred spaces and places have traditionally been conceptualised as fixed and unchanging, as the centre of pilgrimage, ritual and worship, and in opposition of the non-religious or profane spaces. Yet more recent geographical and sociological accounts of place pay attention to the relationality of space to other places and the network of flows and mobilities that construct ‘place’. This thesis examines the nature of sacred space and place in everyday contemporary British society, characterised by such flows of people, products and information. The increase in speed and mass accessibility of everyday corporeal and virtual mobilities has emerged as part of a wider subjective turn of contemporary society away from centralised sources of authority. Mobility has traditionally been perceived as a threat to the existence of ‘place’ (Cresswell, 2015) however this thesis argues that everyday mobilities are a constitutive element of the temporality and spatiality of religious and spiritual phenomena. This builds on recent literature in geography to examine personal scales of religion and spirituality, outside of the official spaces of religion.
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