People do Religious Things

Some of us are interested in religious studies because we are interested in people. People do religious things; they symbolize and ritualize their lives and desire to be in a community. What piqued my interest in shopping malls initially was there concrete expressions of all three of these religious impulses.

Quadrilateral architecture, calendric rituals, replications of natural settings, and attempts to be people, places, and objects of pilgrimage, all illustrate homo religiosus. The shopping mall as a ceremonial center, the shopping mall as ‘more than’ a marketplace, is one way…