Symposium: (Dis)comfort in religious and spiritual places and practices (UQ & WSU)
Religious and spiritual practices have been historically understood as providing moral comfort. In fact, for Durkheim, comfort is the express purpose of social participation in religious rites. Sara Ahmed (2014, p.148) describes comfort as a sense of ‘fit’ between the body and its surroundings, that is, “To be comfortable is to be so at ease with one’s environment that it is hard to distinguish where one’s body ends and the world begins”. Conversely, discomfort may come from feeling dis-ease with one’s environment. Certainly, as much as some religious / spiritual communities go to great lengths to create comfortable environments that support belonging, vulnerability and divine connections, the character of many other religious / spiritual rites and practices (such as pilgrimages, fasting and exorcisms) centre around increasing discomfort or even promoting (physical) suffering in the service of piety and / or spiritual enlightenment.
Moreover, just as religious / spiritual spaces are racialised and classed, so too are experiences of (dis)comfort withing these spaces. Socially marginalised people, such as those who are negatively racialised (Weng et al 2021, Chui et al 2020) or those who identify as LGBTQ+ (Jennings 2023; Dalton 2023; Baird et al 2024) can experience discomfort, even harm, in spaces of faith where other’s comfort is prioritised, catered to, or sanctified. Indeed, within religious and spiritual places multifaceted experiences of (dis)comfort are calibrated, embraced, resisted, negotiated, and reimagined.
In this online symposium, we welcome nuanced examinations of (dis)comfort in contemporary religious and spiritual communities.
We are interested in contributions that critically consider:
- How, why and for whom is comfort calibrated in spiritual / religious communities?
- How comfort is materialised, constructed and experienced in places of worship / spiritual engagement?
- How is (dis)comfort experienced physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually in religio-spiritual communities?
- What role do class, gender, race, sexuality, and ability play in experiencing (dis)comfort in religious and spiritual communities?
- How are relationships between religion and non-religion/secularism structured by feelings of (dis)comfort?
- How do researchers navigate personal experiences of comfort and discomfort when conducting research with religious /spiritual communities?
Timeline
April - Circulating call for contributors
13 May - Abstracts due
18 May - Presenters notified
1 Jun - Program finalised
24 Jun - Symposium (online)
Image credit: Glory Window designed by Architect Philip Johnson in Dallas, Texas. Original image from Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress collection. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel, CC BY 2.0