Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic material from five research sites in the Adriatic sea, I focus on relational interaction between the religious practices of the local communities, mostly fisherman, and their living environment - seascapes.

Paper long abstract:

Humans are no longer viewed as exceptional subjects acting upon inert matter, rather human perception and intention emerge from embodied encounters with living and non-living materials that can act back (Lash 2018: 289). The main idea of this paper is to show the relational interaction between maritime pilgrimages and their physical environment. I argue that local, mostly fisherman’s communities, framed by natural features of their environment in which they lived, and directed towards maritime way of life, within relational process that lasted for centuries, adapted their religious beliefs and practices and created their geography of pilgrimage - seascapes. By practices of maritime pilgrimage they constantly re-create their relations with their seascapes, physically and symbolically appropriating the space of their everyday life, but also being directly influenced by the same space. Locations of the churches and sites of pilgrimage in focus were, at least partially, determined by the natural features of their environment, i. e. safe harbour, site protected from winds, located within fisherman communities living space, etc. By maritime pilgrimage practices they articulated their everyday life, actively taking the living space and creating seascape. The seascape represents both the physical and cognitive, however, it does not require geographical or temporal boundaries separate and distinct from non-maritime-related spaces, nor boundary between land and sea (McKinnon, Mushynsky and Cabrera 2014: 61). Seascape is more than just simple ecological relationship between people and their natural environment, it includes a number of symbolic practices (McNiven 2003), one of them being maritime pilgrimages.