Ethnic and Religious Spaces in the Diaspora Context: A Theoretical Approach

Abstract

Nowadays, in contemporary Diaspora studies, the concept of “space” is ef- fectively being revised and significantly expanded, moving from a geographically limited ter- ritoriality to a social structure. The article explores the proposition that ethnic and religious spaces in diaspora environments transcend their role as purely physical places of residence and ritual performance. Rather, they emerge as social constructs that afford a deterritorialised community the means to re-establish its spatial moorings. Ethnic space is conceptualised as a system of symbolic boundaries that upholds collective identity amid conditions of deterritori- alisation, whereas religious space functions as a mechanism of “sacred emplacement,” through which rituals concretize and sustain connections to both the ancestral homeland and religious tradition. In theoretical frameworks, these dimensions are frequently investigated separately, resulting in the spatial interplay between ethnic and religious factors in diasporic contexts. This pattern has produced a theoretical divide between the sociology of ethnicity (Barth 1969; Brubaker 2005) and the spatial anthropology of religion (Knott 2005). The article based on comparative and integrative theoretical analysis examines the components of ethnic and reli- gious spaces as theorized by scholars in sociology, social anthropology, religious studies, and other disciplines, in the context of deterritorialisation.