Nadia Bartolini

The place of spirit Modernity and the geographies of spirituality

In this paper, we seek to map out the key coordinates in debates in Human Geography about the secularization and postsecularization of western modern societies. In particular, we spell out the specific geographies through which geographies of religion have been imagined. These commonly involve such spatial metaphors as islands, networks, spheres, and the like. Less attention has been given to spirituality in non-religious contexts. We conclude that adding non-religious spiritualities to the mix of geographies of religion requires rethinking more than the boundary between secularity and religion, but rethinking what we understand by secularity and religion themselves.

Psychics, crystals, candles and cauldrons: alternative spiritualities and the question of their esoteric economies

Studies of alternative and ‘New Age’ spiritualities and of the paranormal in popular culture hint at the existence of underlying economic relationships that are, though small in size by some measures, both significant and influential. This paper seeks to foreground the economic relationships underpinning the beliefs, practices and activities associated with alternative spiritualities. For, as we argue, these have either been marginalised in most studies of alternative spirituality or been understood in very limited terms, as a narrow reflection of contemporary capitalist consumer culture. This paper consequently asks how we might bring to view the economic relationships that necessarily accompany alternative spiritualities by exploring their size, shape and reach. Here, we draw on UK-based case studies of Manchester and London. Our exploration of alternative spiritualities and their economic relationships concludes that even while alternative spiritualities are woven into, and out of, ordinary economic relationships, there remains an intriguing sense that there is something distinctively esoteric about their economies. This, we believe, warrants further investigation (in the UK and beyond) into this too often marginalised aspect of contemporary culture and modern economic life.

The politics of vibrant matter: Consistency, containment and the concrete of Mussolini's bunker

This article explores the idea of how vibrancy can be produced. Specifically, the attempt is to investigate the multiplicities of vibrancy by considering one of Mussolini’s bunkers. The author examines the location of the bunker in the EUR (Esposizione Universale Romana) neighbourhood in Rome, the bunker’s materiality, and the context and social meaning of the bunker through a contemporary art exhibition called ‘Confronti’ (Confrontations) that took place in the bunker in 2009. The article argues that while emphasizing matter’s inherent vibrancy may be useful in some cases, there is also merit in further unpacking the ways in which vibrancy is produced. In this example, the concrete bunker expresses vibrancy through the processes involved in the emergent material form, and in the sustained politics and social considerations embedded in valuing tangible urban heritage.

Critical urban heritage: from palimpsest to brecciation

This paper explores the commonly used metaphor of the palimpsest prevalent in urban studies, and suggests that there are realities in the field that are overshadowed by the dominant use of the metaphor. Whilst the palimpsest is a useful metaphor to illustrate chronological superimposition or traces of the past that remain hidden, it is inadequate in describing sites that feature material, spatial and temporal juxtapositions. To remedy this gap, the paper introduces the concept of brecciation, inspired by Sigmund Freud, to provide an alternative means to consider how the accumulation of materials affects planning in the city. Examples from two specific sites in Rome illustrate how brecciation enhances an understanding of the sites and enables to evaluate the practices of urban heritage in recent urban initiatives. By way of conclusion, the paper highlights the benefits of engaging with a concept that reveals concatenations at a site, and suggests that further work on brecciation could be expanded to include the exploration of intangible entanglements.

Rome’s pasts and the creation of new urban spaces: brecciation, matter, and the play of surfaces and depths

In this paper I look at how the discovery of remnants contributes to creating new spaces in the city. I use the geological metaphor of brecciation drawing upon the work of Sigmund Freud to elaborate on how materials from the past and the present are jumbled in a nonlinear fashion to enable spatial multiplicity. I then illustrate these ideas through the case study of the Sala Trevi/Mondadori building in Rome which exemplifies the ongoing dynamics of the play of surfaces and depths when remnants are featured as part of the design. This is done by outlining ways in which the building unfolds spatial and material juxtapositions, and by elaborating on three elements that are indicative of the metaphor of brecciation. I conclude that when material and spatial entanglements occur, the metaphor of brecciation goes further than the metaphor of the palimpsest in facilitating spatial transformation in the city: spaces can be modified and create new possibilities with the past, enabling tensions to coexist in the present whilst not limiting reconfiguration in the future.

Spirit knows: materiality, memory and the recovery of Spiritualist places and practices in Stoke-on-Trent

Abstract Much has been written about constructing memories of place, yet few speak of the difficulties in dealing with lost, partial and fragmented histories of place. We argue that behind the idea of ‘memory of place’ is an assumption that these memories are recoverable and can build a sense of place. Our research has led us to assume the opposite: not just that the fragments of history cannot build a complete memory of place, but that this understanding of memory and place is itself skewed by its reliance on materiality. This paper stems from a project that explores the place of spirituality in everyday life through insights from Spiritualist churches and their congregations. Whilst evidence of Spiritualist locations can be partially obtained through documentary records, a key challenge has been in understanding practices in the context of Spiritualism’s disassociation with materiality and the centrality of Spirit. The paper concludes that retracing Spiritualism’s past, and capturing its contemporary spiritual practices, uncovers a ‘memory of place’ that is not only in constant transience, but that can only be known through Spirit.

Spaces of Spirituality

The spiritual sector is growing in economic, social and cultural significance in the UK. Particularly significant are those practices grouped under the term ‘New Age’ or ‘spiritualities of life’, such as yoga, massage, reiki and meditation (Sointu 2006). At the same time as the sector is growing, the practices that constitute it are changing (Carette and King 2004) and new geographies of spiritualities are emerging. This chapter draws on a wider research project that attempted to trace the formation of some elements of these new geographies on the ground, taking Brighton and Hove (a south coast UK city, home to many spiritual practitioners) as a case study for the emergence of an ‘everyday urban spiritual’ landscape. The broader project asked how far, and in what ways, the spiritual comes to matter both in explicitly spiritual spaces (e.g. Buddhist centres, Natural Heath centres), and also across the kinds of mundane spaces of everyday life that are often seen as resolutely non-spiritual, notably workplaces and homes. The chapter draws on extracts from diaries completed by research participants which offer an understanding of spiritual practices (here chiefly yoga) as constituted by the broader contexts within which they are pursued. In enabling us to develop an understanding of how such spiritual practices relate to other aspects of people’s lives, the chapter contributes to wider debates emerging in response to the growth and proliferation of the spiritual sector, as well as to the small body of geographical work on spiritualities (e.g. Bartolini et al. 2013, 2017; Conneely 2003; Holloway 1998, 2000, 2003, 2011; MacKian 2011, 2012).

Reconfiguring ruins:Beyond Ruinenlust

What explains the global proliferation of interest in ruins? Can ruins be understood beyond their common framing as products of European Romanticism? Might a transdisciplinary approach allow us to see ruins differently? These questions underpinned the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded project Reconfiguring Ruins, which deployed approaches from history, literature, East Asian studies, and geography to reflect on how ruins from different historical contexts are understood by reference to different theoretical frameworks. In recognition of the value of learning from other models of knowledge production, the project also involved a successful collaboration with the Museum of London Archaeology and the artist-led community The NewBridge Project in Newcastle. By bringing these varied sets of knowledges to bear on the project’s excavations of specific sites in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan, the article argues for an understanding of ruins as thresholds, with ruin sites providing unique insights into the relationship between lived pasts, presents, and futures. It does so by developing three key themes that reflect on the process of working collaboratively across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including professional archaeology: inter- and transdisciplinarity, the limits of cocreation, and traveling meanings and praxis. Meanings of specific ruins are constructed out of specific languages and cultural resonances and read though different disciplines, but can also be reconfigured through concepts and practices that travel beyond disciplinary, cultural, and linguistic borders. As we show here, the ruin is, and should be, a relational concept that moves beyond the romantic notion of Ruinenlust.

Provocations of the present: what culture for what geography?

Abstract Cultural geography finds itself in a very different place from when Peter Jackson’s Maps of Meaning first appeared in 1989. Provocations for culturally attuned spatial thinking made at that time have either altered or at least been significantly reframed when issues of wider public engagement, collaborative arts practice and new ICT-based social and creative media are changing the terrain on which cultural geography is made and practiced. We introduce a collection of 11 short essays that set to provoke questions relating to cultural geography today. The essays stem from the Doreen Massey Annual Event ‘Provocations of the Present: What Culture for What Geography?’ that took place at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, in June 2014. We are not suggesting that there is a ‘malaise’ requiring revitalization, neither are we proposing a single best way forwards. Rather we suggest that a collective focus on how cultural geography can remain a lively place from which to engage with might provide a moment in which the diversity of cultural geography would be profitably mobilized for the future. In this introduction, we encourage geographers to think about where cultural geography is and where it is headed by considering three areas of interest: dis/locating provocations; re/defining culture; and changing geographies.