The role of religion in Western societies has gained renewed attention in recent years. While choirs have been studied to varying extents in the social sciences, the geography of choirs has received little attention, particularly in human geography. Using questionnaire responses from secular choir members, this exploratory study examines the possible differences and/or similarities of secular choir’s sacral and/or secular activity in urban and rural spaces in Sweden. The study reveals two primary findings. First, it reveals that secular choir members engage in a mixture of secular and sacred activities, suggesting that these activities can be considered postsecular. Second, the data challenges the geographical perception of rural environments as more sacred/traditional, as they have a high proportion of secular activities. Likewise, the results questions the geographical perception of urban environments as secular/modern, as they demonstrate an even distribution of sacred activities.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Agnew, John. 2005. “Space:Place,” in Paul Cloke and Ron Johnston (eds.), Spaces of Geographical Thought: Deconstructing Human Geography’s Binaries, London: SAGE, 81–96.
Arnold, Jonathan. 2014. Sacred Music in Secular Society, London: Routledge.
Arnold, Jonathan. 2019. Music and Faith: Conversations in a Post-Secular Age, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
Beaudoin, Tom. (ed.). 2013. Secular Music and Sacred Theology, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
Beaumont, Justin, and Christopher Baker. 2011. “Introduction: The Rise of the Postsecular City,” in Justin Beaumont and Christopher Baker (eds.), Postsecular Cities: Space, Theories, and Practice, London: Continuum, 1–14.
Beaumont, Justin, and Klaus Eder. 2019. “Concepts, Processes and Antagonism of Postsecularity,” in Justin Beaumont and Klaus Eder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity, Abingdon: Routledge, 3–24.
Berger, Peter L. 2014. The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age, Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bhabha, Homi K. 2004. The Location of Culture, London: Routledge.
Boyd, Sophia Francesca. 2021. “Singing Bodies: Cultural Geographies of Song and Health in Glasgow,” PhD diss., University of Glasgow.
Bromander, Jonas. 2001. “Rum för röster: Sociologiska analyser av musiklivet inom Svenska kyrkan, som det uppfattas av kyrkobesökare, kyrkomusiker samt kyrkokorister” [Room for Voices: Sociological Analyses of Music Life in the Church of Sweden, as Perceived by Churchgoers, Church Musicians and Church Choristers], PhD diss., Uppsala University.
Brown, David, and Gavin Hopps. 2018. The Extravagance of Music. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brunn, Stanley D., and Martin Dodge. 2017. “What Is Where? The Role of Map Representations and Mapping Practices in Advancing Scholarship,” in Stanley D. Brunn and Martin Dodge (eds.), Mapping Across Academia, Dordrecht: Springer, 1–22.
Burchardt, Marian, and Irene Becci. 2013. “Introduction: Religion Takes Place; Producing Urban Locality,” in Marian Burchardt and Irene Becci (eds.), Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces, Leiden: Brill. 1–21.
Burchardt, Marian, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Matthias Middell. 2015. “Multiple Secularities Beyond the West: An Introduction.” in Multiple Secularities Beyond the West: Religion and Modernity in the Global Age, Boston: De Gruyter, 1–16.
Calhoun, Craig, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. (eds.). 2011. Rethinking Secularism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Christopher L. 2022. “Atheist Public School Choir Directors and Their Views on Religious Music Performance,” International Journal of Music Education 41:1, 84–96.
Cloke, Paul. 2006. “Conceptualizing Rurality,” in Paul Close, Terry Marsden, and Patrick Mooney (eds.), The Handbook of Rural Studies, London: SAGE, 18–28.
Cloke, Paul, and Justin Beaumont. 2013. “Geographies of Postsecular Rapprochement in the City,” Progress in Human Geography 37:1, 27–51.
Cockayne, Daniel. 2019. “Considering Matthew Shepard: Normative and Anti-Normative Queer Spatial Narratives and the Politics of Performance in Choral Music,” Cultural Geographies 26:4, 471–485.
Collins-Kreiner, Noga. 2010. “Researching Pilgrimage: Continuity and Transformations,” Annals of Tourism Research 37, 440–456.
Cudny, Waldemar, and Håkan Appelblad. 2019. “Monuments and Their Functions in Urban Public Space,” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift—Norwegian Journal of Geography 73:5, 273–289.
Dymitrow, Mirek, and René Brauer. 2018. “Meaningful Yet Useless? Factors Behind the Retention of Questionable Concepts in Human Geography,” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 100:3, 195–219.
Eliade, Mircea. 1973. “The Sacred in the Secular World,” Cultural Hermeneutics 1:1, 101–113.
Floyd, James Michael, and Avery T. Sharp. 2019. Choral Music: A Research and Information Guide. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.
Galway, Kiera Mary. 2017. “Sounding Spaces: Exploring Interactions Among Space, Place, Music and Identity in a Canadian Community Choir,” PhD diss., University of Toronto.
Gao, Quan, Junxi Qian, and Zhenjie Yuan. 2018. “Multi-Scaled Secularization or Postsecular Present? Christianity and Migrant Workers in Shenzhen, China,” Cultural Geographies 25:4, 553–570.
Geisler, Ursula. 2010. Choral Research: A Global Bibliography. Lund: Körcentrum Syd.
Geisler, Ursula, and Karin Johansson. 2015. “Contemporary Concepts and Practices of Choral Singing,” in Graham F. Welch, David M. Howard, and John Nix (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Singing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 775–790.
Göransson, Per. 2022. “Mapping the Geography of Choirs in Sweden,” Approaching Religion 12:1, 77–97.
Grünhagen, Céline. 2012. “Healing Chants and Singing Hospitals: Towards an Analysis of the Implementation of Spiritual Practices as Therapeutic Means,” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 24, 76–88.
Gustafsson, Berndt. 1970. “The Role of Religion in Modern Sweden,” International Political Science Association, VIII World Congress, Munich, Aug. 31–Sept. 5.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2008. “Notes on Post-Secular Society,” New Perspectives Quarterly 25:1, 17–29.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2010. An Awareness of What Is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age. Cambridge: Polity.
Håkansson, Ragnar. 2022. Vi sjunger aldrig på sista versen: den svenska kyrkokörens historia [We Never Sing On the Last Verse: The History of the Swedish Church Choir], Visby: Wessmans Musikförlag.
Håkansson, Ragnar, and Marita Sköldberg. 2020. Vi älskar att sjunga! [We love to sing!], Visby: Wessmans musikförlag.
Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Hedell, Kia. 2009. “Körsång som folkrörelse” [Choirs as social movement], in Jakob Christensson (ed.), Signums svenska kulturhistoria. 1900-talet [Signums Swedish Cultural History: 20th Century, Stockholm: Signum, 415–444.
Inglehart, Ronald. 1977. “Values, Objective Needs, and Subjective Satisfaction Among Western Publics,” Comparative Political Studies 9:4, 429–458.
Inglehart, Ronald, and Wayne E. Baker. 2000. “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review 65:1, 19–51.
Inglis, Tom. 1985. “Sacred and Secular in Catholic Ireland,” A Review of Michael Fogarty, Liam Ryan, and Joseph Lee (eds.), A Review Article of Irish Values and Attitudes: The Irish Report of the European Value Systems Study, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review74:293, 38–46.
Jones, Rhys, and Jesse Heley. 2016. “Post-Pastoral? Rethinking Religion and the Reconstruction of Rural Space,” Journal of Rural Studies 45:1, 15–23.
Kaltsas, Spyridon. 2019. “Habermas, Taylor, and Connolly on Secularism, Pluralism, and the Post-Secular Public Sphere,” Religions 10:8, 460.
Kasselstrand, Isabella. 2015. “Nonbelievers in the Church: A Study of Cultural Religion in Sweden,” Sociology of Religion 76:3, 275–294.
Kasselstrand, Isabella. 2022. “Secularization or Alternative Faith? Trends and Conceptions of Spirituality in Northern Europe,” Journal of Religion in Europe 15:1–4, 27–55.
Knott, Kim. 2009. “Geography, Space and the Sacred,” in John Hinnels (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 476–491.
Kong, Lily. 2001. “Mapping ‘New’ Geographies of Religion: Politics and Poetics in Modernity,” Progress in Human Geography 25:2, 211–233.
Lynch, Nicholas. 2016. “Domesticating the Church: The Reuse of Urban Churches as Loft Living in the Postsecular City,” Social & Cultural Geography 177, 849–870.
Marsden, Terry. 2006. “Pathways in the Sociology of Rural Knowledge,” in Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, and Patrick Mooney (eds.), The Handbook of Rural Studies, London: SAGE, 3–17.
Martin, David. 2005. On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory, Burlington, VT: Routledge.
Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: SAGE.
Molendijk, Arie L. 2010. “‘God Made the Country, and Man Made the Town’: Some Observations on the Place of Religion in the Western,” in Justin Beaumont and Christoph Jedan (eds.), Exploring the Postsecular: The Religious, the Political and the Urban, Leiden: Brill, 145–162.
Möller, Cecilia. 2009. “Transforming Geographies of Tourism and Gender: Exploring Women’s Livelihood Strategies and Practices within Tourism in Latvia,” PhD diss., Karlstad University.
Murdoch, Jonathan, and Philip Lowe. 2003. “The Preservationist Paradox: Modernism, Environmentalism and the Politics of Spatial Division,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28:3, 318–332.
Myndigheten för kulturanalys. 2019. “Kulturens geografi: Tillgång till kulturutbud i landets kommuner” [The Geography of Culture: The Access to Cultural Activities in Sweden’s Municipalities], Kulturfakta 2019:3, 1–87.
Myndigheten för kulturanalys. 2022. “Kulturvanor 2021” [Cultural Habits 2021], Kulturfakta 2022:3. https://kulturanalys.se/publikation/kulturvanor-2021/.
Nilsson, Mats, and Mekonnen Tesfahuney. 2016. “Performing the ‘Post-Secular’ in Santiago de Compostela,” Annals of Tourism Research 57:1: 18–30.
Nilsson, Mats, and Mekonnen Tesfahuney. 2019. “Pilgrimage Mobilities: A de Certeauian Perspective,” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 101:3, 219–230.
Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parks, Jude, Kathryn Cassidy, Ruth Currie, Karolina Doughty, George E. Clark, Nicole Gombay, Michelle Duffy, Kaya Barry, and Anne Wally Ryan. 2022. “Transforming Embodied Experiences of Academic Conferences through Creative Practice: Participating in an Instant Choir at the Nordic Geographers’ Meeting in 2019,” Cultural Geographies 29:2, 317–324.
Pettersson, Thorleif. 1988. Bakom Dubbla Lås: En Studie Av Små Och Långsamma Värderingsförändringar [Behind Double Locks: A Study about Small and Slow Valuechanges], Stockholm: Institutet för framtidsstudier.
Ronström, Owe. 2016. Körer och kulturhistoria: Etnologiska aspekter på ett svenskt massfenomen [Choirs and Cultural History: Ethnological Aspects of a Swedish Mass Phenomenon], Visby: Wessmans musikförlag.
Rose, Gillian. 1993. Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, Cambridge: Polity.
Rüpke, Jörg. 2020. Urban Religion. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Saltzman, Katarina. 2009. Mellanrummens Möjligheter: Studier Av Föränderliga Landskap [The Possibilities of Interspaces: Studies of Changing Landscapes], Gothenburg: Makadam.
Saunders, Peter. 1986. Social Theory and the Urban Question, 2nd edition, London: Routledge.
Schaeffer, Peter V., Mulugeta S. Kahsai, and Randall W. Jackson. 2013. “Beyond the Rural–Urban Dichotomy: Essay in Honor of Professor A.M. Isserman,” International Regional Science Review 36:1, 81–96.
Shackley, Myra. 2002. “Space, Sanctity and Service: The English Cathedral as Heterotopia,” International Journal of Tourism Research 4:5, 345–352.
Shirley, Rosemary. 2020. “Rurality, Place and the Imagination,” in Tim Edensor, Ares Lalandides, and Uma Kothari (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Place, London: Routledge, 275–284.
Sigurdson, Ola. 2010. “Beyond Secularism? Towards a Post-Secular Political Theology,” Modern Theology 26: 177–196.
SOM Institute. 2023. “The SOM-Surveys,” https://www.gu.se/en/som-institute/the-som-surveys.
Sparks, Richard. 2000. “The Swedish Choral Miracle: Swedish A Cappella Music Since 1945,” PhD diss., University of Michigan.
Stenbacka, Susanne, and Susanna Heldt Cassel. 2020. “Introduktion: Periferier Och Periferialisering” [Introduction: Peripheries and Peripheralization], in Susanne Stenbacka and Susanna Heldt Cassel (eds.), Periferi Som Process, Visby: SSAG, 7–24.
Sulzer, Johan Georg. 1771. Allgemeine Theorie Der Schönen Künste. Enzyklopädie Der Künste Und Ästhetik [General Theory of Fine Arts. Encyclopedia of Arts and Aesthetics], Leipzig, Weidmanns Erben und Reich.
Sveriges Kommuner och Regioner. 2023. “Kommungruppsindelning. Sveriges Kommuner Och Regioners Kommungruppsindelning 2023” [Classification of Municipalities: The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions’ 2023 Division of Municipalities], https://skr.se/skr/tjanster/rapporterochskrifter/publikationer/kommungruppsindelning2023.67834.html.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. The Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Theorell, Töres, Jan Kowalski, Ann Mari Lind Theorell, and Eva Bojner Horwitz. 2020. “Choir Singers Without Rehearsals and Concerts? A Questionnaire Study on Perceived Losses From Restricting Choral Singing During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Journal of Voice 31:1, 19–27.
Thurfjell, David. 2020. Granskogsfolk: Hur naturen blev svenskarnas religion [The Spruce Tree People: How Nature Became the Swedes’ Religion], Stockholm: Norstedts.
Tomasson, Richard F. 2002. “How Sweden Became So Secular,” Scandinavian Studies 74:1, 61–88.
Tse, Justin K.H. 2014. “Grounded Theologies: ‘Religion’ and the ‘Secular’ in Human Geography,” Progress in Human Geography 38:2, 201–220.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1979. “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective,” in Stephen Gale and Gunnar Olsson (eds.), Philosophy in Geography, Dordrecht: Springer, 387–427.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 2009. Religion: From Place to Placelessness, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Varzi, Achille C. 2019. “What Is a City?” Topoi 40:2, 399–408.
Woods, Michael. 2011. Rural, Abingdon: Routledge.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 59 | 59 | 23 |
Full Text Views | 7 | 7 | 4 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 35 | 35 | 27 |
The role of religion in Western societies has gained renewed attention in recent years. While choirs have been studied to varying extents in the social sciences, the geography of choirs has received little attention, particularly in human geography. Using questionnaire responses from secular choir members, this exploratory study examines the possible differences and/or similarities of secular choir’s sacral and/or secular activity in urban and rural spaces in Sweden. The study reveals two primary findings. First, it reveals that secular choir members engage in a mixture of secular and sacred activities, suggesting that these activities can be considered postsecular. Second, the data challenges the geographical perception of rural environments as more sacred/traditional, as they have a high proportion of secular activities. Likewise, the results questions the geographical perception of urban environments as secular/modern, as they demonstrate an even distribution of sacred activities.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 59 | 59 | 23 |
Full Text Views | 7 | 7 | 4 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 35 | 35 | 27 |