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- Convenors:
-
Anna Niedźwiedź
(Jagiellonian University)
Clara Saraiva (ICS, University of Lisbon)
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- Stream:
- Religion
- Location:
- KWZ 1.601
- Start time:
- 29 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Religion might be anthropologically interpreted as a form of dwelling. Making religion a 'home' is a creative, manifold and complex process. Changing, mixing, challenging, including and excluding, adopting and abandoning are related to various ways of dwelling within and across religious traditions.
Long Abstract:
In many critical circumstances of personal and communal lives, in moments of instabilities, crisis and changes, in foreign and unfamiliar spaces experienced by migrants, refugees and other itinerants, numerous people find safe heaven and home in what they call 'their religion.' Being 'at home' brings a feeling of familiarity, identity and community which religion can provide. 'Home' relates to the known narratives, symbols and obviousness of some bodily practices, presence of certain material objects. It also relates to shared worldviews.
This panel aims to scrutinize complexity hidden behind contemporary processes of dwelling within and across religious traditions. Not only people but also religions travel and change along their routes. Some religious traditions (or some aspects of them) can disappear along these routes while others emerge. Thus 'finding home in religion' is always a creative, manifold and interrelated process that involves various actors and instigates various agencies.
Possible topics include: complexity of dwelling in various religious and ethnic diaspora communities all over the globe; how 'world religions' are being creatively transformed and dwelt by people in different continents; what happens when these 'world religions' are lived by different groups of migrants in huge cultural hubs e.g. in 'global cities'; how some people 'find home' through abandoning their religious tradition and joining the other one (and how problematic it might be in terms of inclusion and exclusion); what about those who dwell in two different religious traditions as well as those who feel in-between their inherited religion and other latterly embraced worldviews?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
I explore the notion of ‘seeking home in religion’ in Catholic religiosity in moments of life crises. Certain religious attitudes originate from turning points in life. Experiencing misfortunes and threatened safety of mundane dwelling pushes faithful to actively look for one in religion.
Paper long abstract:
I explore the notion of 'seeking home in religion' in Catholicism in moments of life crises and misfortunes. Deriving from fieldwork in Kalwaria Pacławska (Poland) I would like to present faithful's strategies of creating home in religion when the mundane events cause that their "earthly" dwellings are not comforting anymore, when home is irreversibly transformed by external conditions.
I focus on two groups of pilgrims - Polish Roman Catholics coming to Kalwaria mostly with their personal worries and hopes and both Roman and Greek Catholics from Ukraine, of Polish and Ukrainian nationality, who also come with their individual requests, but above all to pray for peace in Eastern Ukraine. In the case of Polish pilgrims important is how the idea of dwelling in religion results from disintegration of individuals' homes caused by incurable sickness, accident, natural disasters. Somehow different are experiences of pilgrims coming from Ukraine. Apart of individual misfortunes believers' lives are affected by war in Eastern Ukraine. Their broader home - homeland - disintegrates making them to seek their dwelling in religion.
I do not state that faithful do not seek their home in religion on every day basis, that to do it they need to experience suffering. However, drawing from reflection on religious conversion and particular temporality related to it (Coleman 2011; Klaver, van de Kamp 2011), I argue that certain religious attitudes originate from turning points in life. Experiencing misfortunes and threatened safety of mundane dwelling pushes faithful to actively look for one in religion.
Anna Niedźwiedź (Jagiellonian University)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork I will discuss how concepts of dwelling and creating within one religious tradition (namely Roman Catholicism) were defined, challenged and negotiated during World Youth Day 2016 in Poland. How and to what extent “global” Catholicism found its way to “local” homes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses how the concepts of dwelling and creating within one religious tradition (namely Roman Catholicism) were defined, challenged and negotiated during World Youth Day 2016 in Poland. Combined with an official visit by Pope Francis to Poland, WYD brought more than one million pilgrims to the city of Kraków. Such a mass religious event - which lasted one week and gathered Catholic people from different countries and continents - triggered various debates and conflicts as well as questioned ideas about what "Catholicism" means.
Basing on ethnographic fieldwork - conducted before, during and after WYD - I will present various and varying attitudes of Kraków's inhabitants towards the event and specifically towards international pilgrims arriving in their city. I will discuss how and to what extent "global" Catholicism found its way into "local" homes and how intercultural encounters challenged Polish discourses about Catholicism. I will also explore the official image of the city of Kraków presented by the city council and WYD organizers, and how this image was reshaped in spontaneous practices by visitors who made the city their temporary "home".
Kaja Kajder (Jagiellonian University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation concerns abandoned spaces of the old Jewish prayer houses in Poland in the context of sacralization and secularization. I will focus on the case of Mordechai Tigner Synagogue in Krakow and reflect how this former prayer house is currently perceived and experienced within the city.
Paper long abstract:
There were 120 Jewish prayer houses in Krakow before World War II (according to the Jewish Religious Community in Krakow), the town was inhabited by a population of 65,000 Jews in 1939. Nowadays, only one of the synagogues is active, the other six are the tourist facilities, community centers, museums. Radical changes of the sacred character of houses of prayer were caused mainly by the tragic events of World War II. Most of them were destroyed during the war or changed their purpose after it.
The presentation will include an analysis of the case study of the former Mordechai Tigner Synagogue, which was partly devastated at the beginning of the war. Postwar it served as a textile warehouse and a rehearsal hall for Musical Theater. Now the building remains in a state of disrepair.
The speech is an attempt to reflect on how the former house of prayer's space is currently perceived and experienced. What happens with a place associated with religion after being abandoned the followers? Whether its sacred character is preserved in the memory of people associated with this place - neighbors, members of the Jewish Religious Community in Krakow, tourists? Or perhaps, in these circumstances, we can investigate a process of secularization? How is inclusion and exclusion of some spaces from local/national heritage correlated with inhabitants' collective memory and identity? For comparison, I will refer to the examples of other synagogues in Krakow which are actively co-creating memory of the Jewish history and culture of the city.
Gudrun Buhnemann (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Paper short abstract:
Patañjali has emerged as an important figure in modern Yoga. His representations are often installed in Yoga studios, where they function as objects of reverence. I will trace the development of Patañjali's iconography by examining representations in a variety of media created in India and the West.
Paper long abstract:
In recent decades the Indian sage Patañjali has emerged as an important figure in modern Yoga. Referred to as "the father of Yoga", his visual representations are often installed in Yoga studios, where they function as objects of reverence and sanctify space. At the same time they serve as links between the practice of postures commonly taught there and the teachings of the philosophical text of the Yogasūtras composed by Patañjali. In this talk I will trace the development of Patañjali's iconography from early representations as a half-human half-serpentine acolyte of the god Śiva in South India to more recent representations as an independent figure enshrined in temples. I will discuss representations created in a variety of media in India and the West and will examine works of art experimenting with new forms.
Clara Saraiva (ICS, University of Lisbon)
Paper short abstract:
Quite a number of Portuguese, former Catholics, now follow the Afro-Brazilian religions and their sense of being “the family of the saint”. This paper will explore how they adapt and make this foreign, African based religion, their heartfelt “home”.
Paper long abstract:
Afro-Brazilian religions came to Portugal 30 years ago and have been growing ever since. Although the number of Brazilian migrants in Portugal is high, most of the followers of these recently arrived religions are Portuguese. Many of them are former Catholics who entered the realm of "alternative religiosity", stepping away from their former catholic beliefs and ritual practices, and trying new forms of spirituality. One of the things that attracts them most in the Afro-Brazilian religions is the freedom to contact the supernatural without the mediation of a priest, being able to enter trance and become possessed by the Afro-Brazilian gods. In their new lives, the temples become their "spiritual home", and the terminology used helps in conveying this feeling of a "family": the religious leader is the "father or mother of the saint" and the other fellow members become "brothers and sisters of the saint". This idea of a very close conviviality becomes a reality in the weekly gatherings, and in the sharing of both the ritual space as a "working space", both for religious purposes and for community life. Although this idea of comunitas is common to all religions I will explore how some Portuguese adapt and make this foreign, African based religion, their heartfelt "home".
João Leal (Universidade Nova de Lisboa -Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA))
Paper short abstract:
The objective of this paper is to take a closer look at the modes of articulation between different religious genres, stressing how plurality and creativity are central in the co-option of a catholic festival by Afro-Brazilian cult houses of Tambor de Mina (Brazil).
Paper long abstract:
Modes of articulation between catholic spiritual entities and rituals and African derived spiritual entities and rituals (as well as other spiritual entities and rituals) are an important trait of the Afro-Brazilian religion of Tambor de Mina (São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil). The prominent role that Hoy Ghost festas play in the ritual script of Tambor de Mina cult houses is an important part of this cosmopolitan orientation of Tambor de Mina. The objective of this paper is to take a closer look at the modes of articulation between Holy Ghost festas and Tambor de Mina. Moving beyond static views of "syncretism" as a final outcome of processes of interface between different religious genres, the paper stresses how plurality, creativity and change are central in the co-option of Holy Ghost festas by different Tambor de Mina cult houses. It also tries to show how these plural processes are linked to a more general characteristic of Tambor de Mina: its capacity for articulating different ways of religious dwelling and different ways of situating Afro-Brazilian religious beliefs and practices in the religious and political public sphere.
Nina Graeff (Universidade Federal da Paraíba)
Paper short abstract:
Multi-sited ethnography of Candomblé revealed a "myriad of ways of dwelling". Members' identification with the orixás transcends a quest for lost bonds with the home country. Regardless of the practice's "place", "learning to be affected" by the orixás turns Candomblé into a transcultural "home".
Paper long abstract:
Orixás, West-African deities, "dwell in the wind": as forces of nature, they are everywhere. The practices of praising orixás mingled during the slave trade in Brazil, shaping religions such as Candomblé in Bahia, in the country's North-East. Spreading worldwide, the religion recently found a new home in Berlin. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the single Candomblé house of Germany and in Bahia revealed a "myriad of ways of dwelling": Brazilians and foreigners in and from different cultural contexts identify and build bonds with the deities, turning the religion into a transcultural (Welsch 1991) "home", in which common experiences interweave. Such identification, thus, transcends a presumed quest for bonds with the home country lost in migration. Members may practice Candomblé either "by pain", for having a troubled relationship with their own body, for loneliness, for feeling accepted; or "by love" for the orixás. But how does one "learn to be affected" (Latour 2004) by the orixá? If to dwell is, as this conference proposes, "to make sense of the world with the body, the head and the heart", Candomblé very exercises dwelling: by intensively engaging the whole body in its communal practice, one develops a more resonant (Rosa 2016) relation to the world and to oneself. Such wisdom is transmitted and carried on regardless of the practice's original and immediate "place", since "the orixá is the air one breathes".