Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Christoph Novak
(Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Miriam Haselbacher (Austrian Academy of Science)
Astrid Mattes
Katharina Limacher
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Theta room
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 6 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
This panel provides room to debate the connection between digital media and the ways in which religious belonging is negotiated and constructed today. It invites researchers to present empirical research or conceptual works contributing to a better understanding of those phenomena.
Long Abstract:
Constructions of belonging to a social group have great implications on individual, psychological (Guiberneau 2013) as well as on social and political (Yuval-Davis 2011) levels. This is no less true for religious belonging. Contemporary scholarship on religious belonging has mostly focused on three characteristic tendencies: believing without belonging (Davie 1993), belonging without believing (Marchisio & Pisati 1999), and multiple religious identities (Oostveen 2018). However, these notions seem increasingly imprecise when it comes to understanding constructions and negotiations of religious belonging in digital environments.
Social media, for example, provides any user with comparably easy-to-use ways to popularise one's own perspectives on religion, regardless of whether or not one actually has religious expert knowledge. This can be interpreted as a form of democratisation of the interpretation of religious doctrine and poses a challenge to conventional religious hierarchies. At the same time, it has the potential to threaten liberal democratic consensuses, since religious radicals make use of the same digital possibilities to recruit followers for their anti-democratic and anti-pluralist political agenda. In sum, users can access an array of different religious content through social media. Digital space also diminishes the importance of physical proximity for religious congregations, and allows people to maintain translocal religious ties through digital means. Those examples illustrate, how digital technology has changed the modes and contexts within which individuals construct and negotiate their religious belonging today.
This panel invites researchers and scholars from different disciplines to present their empirical research as well as their conceptual considerations relating to the way digital technology shapes religious belonging today.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Mediatisation is transforming the existing forms of religion, altering also what it means to believe and belong. The aim of the presentation is to show how deeply religious Roman Catholic women are negotiating their religious belonging and doing Catholicism in digital environments.
Paper long abstract:
Mediatisation is transforming the existing forms of religion, altering also what it means to believe and belong. The aim of my presentation is to show how deeply religious Roman Catholic women are negotiating their religious belonging and doing Catholicism in digital environments. In my analysis I draw on qualitative data obtained within the project on Polish women’s religiosity which included 48 individual in-depth interviews with educated Roman Catholic women, members of religious groups, living in large cities in Poland and ethnography conducted in a hybrid (online-offline) religious community for women. The data we gathered shows that the digital context is transforming both how we understand 'belonging' and what 'religious' means today. Digital environments produce niches that allow for questioning or reinterpreting the message of religious institutions, but can also sustain identification with official religion in the face of emerging deficits in the offline sphere (e.g. in the local church or secular environment). Online communities, often functioning as loose social networks, offer women new forms of religious belonging based on the absence of barriers to entry and exit, shallow or fluctuating engagement and the possibility to narratively construct their identities. The translocal nature of digital environments, the use of different types of resources and at least partial liberation from direct clerical supervision make hybrid religious forms and content possible and permissible. Although, as our research shows, these phenomena do not necessarily imply a questioning of doctrine or an undermining of institutional authority, they problematise how we understand the boundaries of the ‘religious’.
Paper short abstract:
Religious belonging is increasingly transforming. Besides forms of multiple religious belonging, hybrid belonging and rhizomatic belonging, we now also see how technological innovations and digitalisation of the immanent frame are increasingly impacting new negotiations of religious belonging.
Paper long abstract:
Digital innovations are increasingly impacting our lives. Whereas "offline" religious practices and material religious culture had already been culminating in hybrid forms of religious belonging, such as rhizomatic religious belonging (Oostveen 2020), technological innovations and the digitalisation of the immanent frame in which we engage in religious cultures complicates this picture even more. In this paper I will argue in favour of the conceptual frame of rhizomatic belonging to understand the negotiation religious diversity in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab 2017). What I believe is emerging is a post-human religion, which, instead of being fragmented, individualised, or generally "lost", is a transformation towards new form of belonging, in which care, community, and play are elements. These post-human assemblages of rhizomatic religious belonging emerge at the intersection of digital culture and "offline" material life. TikTok and Instagram become powerful tools "Generation Z" to explore new networks of religious connections. Digital dimensions of religion, such as the live-streaming of the death wake of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, and the development of artificial intelligence as vicarious religious actors are expressions of new forms of religious constellations that are strongly impacting the affective and phenomenological experiences of religious belonging. I will conclude that "belonging" in de digital age is fundamental in understanding the challenges of our times and our communities, because it elicits sentiments of "feeling at home" in a dynamic world that feels in crisis.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on online muscular Christians and their meme accounts, aiming to answer how they use bodybuilding techniques and aesthetics to shape the religious belonging of muscular Christians in an online environment.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years, especially since the pandemic, a particular religious group has emerged on social media such as Instagram. Members of these communities describe themselves as muscular Christians who practice bodybuilding while practicing the Christian faith, support conservative religious values, and oppose feminism. Besides their own personal accounts, they are also active on some social media accounts dedicated to related memes, many of which feature bodybuilding content. These meme accounts grow so rapidly that they can gain tens of thousands of followers within one or two years. This paper focuses on these online muscular Christians and their meme accounts, aiming to answer how they use bodybuilding techniques and aesthetics to shape the religious belonging of muscular Christians in an online environment. Through the analysis of the online content, this paper argues that by juxtaposing or merging bodybuilding techniques and aesthetics with biblical elements, the bodybuilding memes produced and published on these accounts attempt to lead audiences to believe that weightlifting or muscle training is inherently Christian, thereby enabling the potential of bodybuilding techniques in shaping identity to play out in reinforcing religious belonging in an online setting. By drawing upon Birgit Meyer’s concept of “sensational form,” this paper argues that these memes have created a (virtual) common sensational space that can promote the formation of sensational forms in two ways at the same time, thereby strengthening religious belonging: one is through the emotional resonance caused by instant online interactions such as comments and likes, and the other is through the common corporeal memories and experiential sensations of bodybuilding aroused by the representation of bodybuilding techniques and motivation. Through the analysis of this specific case, this paper also seeks to contribute to the theorization of the potential of online memes in shaping religious belonging through corporeal and material dimensions.
Paper short abstract:
Our increasingly digital and mobile world affects the religious lives of young believers who utilise the possibilities of mobility and digitalisation. We find that translocal feeds of faith are an important starting point for studying lived religion among young believers.
Paper long abstract:
Our increasingly digital and mobile world allows us to stay connected to people, places, and communities all over the world. This affects the religious lives of young believers who utilise the possibilities of mobility and digitalisation. So far, research on (digital) religion and migration has failed to assess translocal ties as decisive factors of youth religiosity. This omission is particularly problematic, since the Covid-19 pandemic has increased the importance of digital communication and accelerated religious transformation processes. To understand the mutual effects of digitalisation and mobility on contemporary religion better, we enquire how digitally maintained translocal ties shape the religious lives of young believers. In a qualitative study involving young people of different religious traditions living in Vienna, we conducted interviews that included a mapping activity and a “social media tour”. Our findings illustrate how young believers establish translocal connections as reference points for their rather individualised personal faith, and maintain ties through social media. This produces “translocal feeds of faith” that represent, refresh, and advance the experiences that were made offline, complemented by purely digital ties emerging from personal interests. We find that translocal feeds of faith are an important starting point for studying lived religion among young believers.