The sacred and the city: religious symbolic looks

Abstract

For a certain period, the geographic studies concerning the existing relations between the sacred and the urban were neglected, relegating the religious phenomenon in the urban to a secondary plan, focusing only on the holistic view that every city arises through a market logic, which grows, reproduces, adds values and capital, favoring the process of capital accumulation, the development and expansion of capitalism. Thus, the main objective of this work is to present to the reader another view related to the approach about the urban, that is, the analysis of the sacred as a link in the formation of cities. In this way, we will walk in search of a historical and geographic rescue of the formation and genesis of the first cities, as well as the factors that contributed for certain localities to become known as hieropolis or sanctuary cities, due to the experience of its inhabitants and visitors being directly related to a certain religious experience, predominant before the other economic functions. However, in this article, we will also discuss that certain territorial strategies also seek to oppress the Other who does not share the same religious ideas imposed by a given group.