This article presents an ethnography of makeshift worship space for the minority Muslim community of a university campus and neighborhood in a Midwestern city in the United States. It uncovers how Muslim congregational worship is conducted in this provisional site, which bears competing symbols of Christian worship, to explore how the body plays an active role in perceiving space through rearrangement, reorientation, and auditory inscription. It explores how space is zoned to correspond with boundaries of (im)purity toward the symbolic maintenance of the sacred. In addition, it discusses the play of distance in space along the center to the periphery as spatial markers that correspond with positions of authority and membership. Finally, this article discloses how a lack of ownership of space conditions the disposition of a minority religious community within the larger secular and national landscape.
CarmanT. (1999). The body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Philosophical Topics, 27, 205-226.
2.
CaseyE. S. (1997). How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: Phenomenological prolegomena. In FeldS.BassoK. (Eds.), Senses of place (p. 19). Seattle, WA: School of American Research Press.
3.
CaseyE. S. (2001). Between geography and philosophy: What does it mean to be in the place-world?Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91, 683-693.
4.
CresswellT. (1996). In place/out of place: Geography, ideology, and transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
5.
CsordasT. J. (1990). Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology. Ethos, 18(1), 5-47.
6.
DouglasM. (1984). Purity and danger: An analysis of concept of pollution and taboo. London, England: Ark Paperbacks. (Original work published 1966)
7.
DurkheimE. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life (FieldsK. E., Trans.). New York, NY: Free Press. (Original work published 1912)
8.
EliadeM. (1959). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace.
9.
GierynT. F. (2000). A space for place in sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 463-496.
10.
Gilliat-RayS. (2005). Sacralising’ sacred space in public institutions: A case study of the prayer space at the Millennium Dome. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 20, 357-372.
11.
GoiteinS. D. (1959). The origin and nature of the Muslim Friday worship. Muslim World, 49, 183-195.
12.
GürB. F. (2002). Spatialisation of power/knowledge/discourse: Transformation of urban space through discursive representations in Sultanahmet, Istanbul. Space and Culture, 5, 237-293.
13.
HaliburtonM. (2002). Rethinking anthropological studies of the body: Manas and Bodham in Kerala. American Anthropologist, 104, 1123-1134.
14.
HollowayJ. (2003). Make-believe: spiritual practice, embodiment, and sacred space. Environment and Planning, 35, 1961-1974.
15.
HubbardP.KitchinR.ValentineG. (Eds.). (2004). Key thinkers on space and place. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
16.
JacobsJ. (1993). The death and life of great American cities. New York, NY: Modern Library.
17.
KatzJ. (1999). How emotions work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
18.
KongL. (1992). The sacred and the secular: exploring contemporary meanings and values for religious buildings in Singapore. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 20(1), 18-42.
19.
LakoffG.JohnsonM. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
20.
LivezeyL.W. (Ed.). (2000). Public religion and urban transformation: faith in the city. New York: New York University Press.
21.
LowS. M. (2009). Towards an anthropological theory of space and place. Semiotica, 175(4), 21-37.
22.
MahmoodS. (2001). Rehearsed spontaneity and the conventionality of ritual: Disciplines of Salat. American Ethnologist, 28, 827-853.
23.
McRobertsO. (2004). Beyond mysterium tremendum: Thoughts toward an aesthetic study of religious experience. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 595, 190-203.
24.
Merleau-PontyM. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (LandesD., Trans.). New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work published 1945)
25.
MookherjeeN. (2007). The “dead and their double duties”: Mourning, melancholia, and the martyred intellectual memorials in Bangladesh. Space and Culture, 10, 271-291.
SchutzA. (1970). On phenomenology and social relation: Selected writings (WagnerH. R., Ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
28.
SinhaV. (2003). Merging “different” sacred spaces: Enabling religious encounters through pragmatic utilization of space?Contributions to Indian Sociology, 37, 459-494.
29.
ShindeK. A. (2011). “This is religious environment”: Sacred space, environmental discourse, and environmental behavior at a Hindu pilgrimage site in India. Space and Culture, 14, 448-463.
30.
SmithJ. Z. (1987). To take place: Toward theory in ritual. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
31.
TuanYi-fu. (1977). Space and place: the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
32.
TillmanB. F.EmmettC. F. (1999). Spatial succession of sacred space in Chicago. Journal of Cultural Geography, 18, 79-108.
