Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the analytical and comparative value of the notion of “domestic religion” for religious mediation mediation techniques and technologies at home. Following a processual turn, I propose to focus on processes of “domestication”.

Paper long abstract:

A wide array of religious objects and practices have been attested in homes throughout history and all over the world. Novel approaches to these objects and practices have sought to avoid essentializing them in a universal or primaeval “domestic religion,” instead looking at the affordances and materiality of specific objects, their role in the discursive construction of “the home,” and the entanglement of public and private sphere(s).

Amongst the findings of this recent wave of scholarship are the subtle change of English domestic interior decoration after the Reformation (Hamling 2010), the crucial importance of religion in contemporary home-making practices of migrants (Boccagni 2020), the diversity of types of homes and houses, the intrinsic connection with religious individualization (Fuchs et. al 2019), and the impossibility of separating religion at home from its institutionalized counterparts (Tweed 2006).

In this paper, I will reflect on the analytical and comparative value of “domestic religion” to understand the wide variety of religious mediation techniques and technologies at home throughout history. Two features stand out: (1) the conceptual relationship with controversial notions of “magic” and “popular religion,” and (2) the role of rejected binaries like work/home, male/female, and public/private. Rather than immediately rejecting “domestic religion” as a category, I aim to follow the development of the concept from its initial context in Victorian ideas about religiosity to current studies focused on material and everyday mediation techniques. Following the so-called “relational paradigm” (Krüger 2021; cf. Josephson-Storm 2021), this paper proposes the notion of “domestication” as processual alternative focused on the selection and transformation of religious objects brought home.