Research Information System
37th AESOP 2025 Anual Congress, İstanbul, Turkey, 7 - 11 July 2025, pp.68-69, (Summary Text)
This study explores analytically and critically perspective religion-based
intentional communities in contemporary contexts as geographies of voluntary
segregation and commitment. These religious communal settings intentionally
formed by individuals seeking to freely and collectively practice their
religion. They purposefully create self-segregated closed entities where
religious practices and identities can be preserved. Such communities often formed
based on the specialized rules of a particular religion, sect, congregation, or
religious movement frequently adopting a stance that challenges mainstream
societal norms (i.e., secularization, modernization). They offer a distinctive
model of rule-based entities where the religious principles governing communal
living practices have often defined by sacred prescript.
Through empirical evidence from diverse religious traditions, this
research aims to first understand the dynamics of the normative and
organizational structures shaped by the prescribed and pre-consensused
religious principles, and then analyze their reflections in spatial
configurations and land-use characteristics. The research investigates how
fundamentalist religious motivations shape the socio-spatial characteristics of
these communities through an analysis of empirical data derived from religion-based
intentional communities (i.e., Bruderhof communities, religious kibbutzs, sufi
settlements) across diverse geographical contexts and teachings. Specifically,
it examines the interplay between the normative and organizational frameworks
of religious-based intentional communities and the dynamics of spatial
organization. Furthermore, the study comparatively analyzes how diverse
religious teachings influence spatial production and explores the similarities
and differences among these communities. By adopting an interdiciplinary and
multiscalar perspective, this study suggests that normative and spatial
characteristics are two central forces shaping the dynamics of religious
communal living. It aims to expand the limited body of knowledge on
contemporary religion-based intentional communities and to integrate this
subject into the urban planning agenda.