Praying through the senses: The Prayer Rug/Carpet and the Converging Territories of the Material and the Spiritual

Religious practices are based not only on textual and ideological grounds but also on sensual and affective everyday experiences. These practices are aestheticized through embodied experiences of sight, sound, touch, and memory. With the expansion of transnational commerce and increased circulation of commodities in modernity and postmodernity, certain objects have taken on new sacred meaning distinct from that which they had previously. They have become part of the flow of commodities that is transnationalizing religion and religious practices. In the commodification of sacred objects, or sacralization of commodities, the convergence of religion and capitalism has been crucial for the continuity of religious meanings and practices. In the everyday circulation of objects, the sacred and the profane converge, animating and producing religious subjects rather than subjects that have a religion. Consumption as a material practice changes religious meanings and practices, and value comes to be invested in certain religious objects, rituals, and ideas rather than others.