ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault observed that although [in the developed world?] there had been ‘a certain theoretical desanctification of space…we may not yet have reached the point of a practical desanctification of space’ (Foucault 1986:23). His comment implies that, while in modern societies fewer spaces are endowed with sacred qualities than they were, say, in medieval Catholic Europe or in ancient Israel, material objects and spaces may still be represented as if they had sacred qualities. Whether a capitalist icon like the Coca-Cola machine which was violently assaulted in the film Dr Strangelove or spaces of power like Red Square in Moscow, there are things and spaces which are revered (by some) and, in Durkheim’s terms, their special character ‘is manifest in the fact that [they are] surrounded by ritual prescriptions and prohibitions which enforce [a] radical separation from the profane’ (Giddens 1971:107). As Law and Whittaker (1988: 173) recognised, in the representation of elements of the material world as if they were sacred, transcendent, core values are being celebrated. Thus, permanence and stability must be emphasised and, in the case of social space, it is necessary to suppress heterogeneity and to silence the discrepant-as Law and Whittaker put it, ‘to prevent them from speaking in other ways’. Thus, there is a necessary distortion of geography and history. To mark off sacred spaces, to define boundaries which can be defended, they have to be imbued with special qualities.
