Sacred Sites in Contested Regions

Sites of the Project

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The new mosque of Abu Ghosh, Chechens at the entrance to Abu Ghosh, Waiting for Chechen President's arrival, Chechen flags, People entering the mosque, The dome of the mosque, People kneeling in the mosque, People praying in the mosque, Ahmed Hajji Kadyrov street, Mihrab horses and mayor
Easter (Fasika) at the Ethiopian Church next to the church of the holy sepulchre, Priest (Qes) welcoming marrying couple, Marriage Ceremony
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Rachel Tomb - general view, Rachel Tomb - girls at the entrance, Rachel Tomb - inside look, Rachel Tomb - main road, Rachel Tomb - painting, , Rachel Tomb - the dome, Rachel Tomb - three pics
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Sites of the Project

Landscapes bear signs and symbols that represent social norms, group shared identity, memory, and cultural codes. Moreover, they reflect the manner in which all these ideas are contested and debated between various forces. Following this theoretical understanding of our study we are currently engaged in a multi-sited analysis focusing mostly on newly emerging, recently-revived-enchanted places and often enough contested on the margins of Israeli society. These sites are constitutive and essential to our primary goal to unearth the nuances and transformation of the greater landscape (Israel-Palestine) for the purpose of illuminating the role of artifacts, icons, and the sites themselves as spatial metaphors. In so doing, we draw heavily on Ivakhiv‘s argument that enchanted places ought to be viewed as a means for ―distributing significance across geographic spaces‖ (2006). In our various sites (and the list is getting longer as the project develops) we wish to answer the following questions: Who gets to author sacred landscapes? What are the symbols and cultural codes that are inscribed within Muslim, Christian, and Jewish sites? And how do these places serve as markets for the exchange of ideas, objects, and symbols? Therefore, each of the current sites is suggestive and a contributing factor in trying to understand the ‘bigger’ picture of the emerging and ever transforming sacred geographies of the region