Territory, Place, and Identity in Slovak Church-state Conflict: 1948-1989

Abstract

This paper focuses on the development and utilization of a conceptual framework for studying religion from a spatial perspective, drawing on themes and methodologies from human geography. The goal of this research is to help reconnect the geography of religion as a subdiscipline with broader themes in the discipline. Through an examination of Catholicism in Slovakia between 1948 and 1989, it examines how the Church utilized and organized geographic space, how it crafted a Catholic sense of place, and how the Communist government in Slovakia competed with the Church for authority and control within these spatial 'realms.' Examining issues of territoriality, power relations, and identity formation at a number of spatial scales, ranging from the local to the international, the paper attempts to show their interrelation. This project draws on a collection of primary documents obtained from state and ecclesiastic archives in Eastern Slovakia.