Social and spatial visibility of religion in question: The case of pluricultural and multiconfessional France

Abstract

This chapter seeks to unveil the complex relationships of scientific, moral, and political geography of religions in the context of secular, yet culturally Catholic, France. Issues in geography of religion have surfaced in France, somewhat independently from the spatial turn in social sciences and humanities. The sociological focus on territories relates to the politics of visibility where the spatial dynamics of religions allegedly disappeared from “public spheres.” But “sect” affairs and the claims of newly arrived religions like Islam and Buddhism, and the return of religion at the forefront of public (political) debates required a revision of theories and methods in religious studies. Spatial and territorial metaphors came before scholarly interest in concrete sites and geographic methods for understanding a pluralizing landscape. Religious issues are slowly expanding in geography whereas geographic approaches have been quickly rooted in disciplines studying religion empirically, especially sociology or anthropology. We explore reasons for this gap and underscore the theoretical challenges, methodological limits and empirical difficulties in a transdisciplinary yet geographically-based understanding of religious dynamics in France. Each religion is presented alongside the ways they are connected to spatial issues. An emphasis is placed on less visible, more “fluid” religious movements. We examine how public spaces have become strategic sites where religions are organizing regime of visibility or invisibility, notwithstanding the modern “privatization” of religion. Secular places and spaces are paradoxically converted into site of religious performance. Religion in France demonstrates how spatial and territorial processes are of primary importance and relate to shifts in (a) patterns of religious territorialization through migration and mission, (b) relationships between the whole society and spaces of religion, and (c) modes of religious expression that play out in the claims of confessional groups. Calls are made for new methods of “mapping” such complex processes.