As with almost everything that happens in social life, forms of conservation—and the tensions that oppose it—also take place in spaces: cities, homes, public places, sacred sites, and spaces of memory. Spaces are sometimes material traces of symbolic systems and values, whose preservation in the present and projection into the future become subjects of reflection. In other cases, spaces themselves challenge the idea of tradition, forcing societies to confront change. Finally, at the level of both individual and collective experiences, some spaces seem capable of testing the stability of identity, pushing it into a transformative dimension. In all these cases, both conservation and the forces opposing it emerge within space as a relational assemblage, a processual arrangement of people and things. This paper examines the spatial foundation of the issue of social conservation, drawing on research findings related to various types of religious and spiritual sites and the shifting forms they take in secular and multi-religious societies.