No Place to Stand

Religion scholar Mircea Eliade held that the “question of character of place on which one stands is the fundamental question.” Smith engages the idea of place in developing a definition of religion as well as holding that the scholar’s selection of theory determines a study’s results. In a classic Smith position he outlined two kinds of maps common to religions, locative (place embracing) and utopian (place avoiding). The chapter shows that these are mirrors of one another and that neither is actually achievable. The chapter focuses then on Smith’s third unnamed mapping strategy that is akin to joke and play, arguing that play is fundamental to Smith’s theories of place, myth, and ritual. Religions are understood in terms of application and adjustment, the iterative, negotiative, interactive dynamics of play. Furthermore, the chapter argues that, following Smith, this same dynamic is at the core of a proper academic study of religion.