Paper short abstract:

Religion is partly responsible for environmental crises, as it offers values, guidelines, and soundscapes. In a combination of Ecomusicology and Human-Animal Studies I demonstrate the investigation of social and religious structures in the cross-species soundscape of theyyam, a rural Hindu ritual.

Paper long abstract:

Can climate change and its various effects on humans, non-human animals, and the environment be heard? Can soundscapes and careful listening be used to plan measures that indicate changes, to optimize everyday life?

My contribution includes a case study on theyyam, one of the richest ritual, mythical, and performative traditions of South Indian popular worship, associated with rural Hinduism, especially with its folk and tribal religious aspects. In theyyam rituals—North Kerala’s sonic signature—media of local deities, ghosts, heroes, and non-human animals enable a visual and acoustic, easily accessible revelation of the respective deity through transformation. Decisive aspects of Hinduism, such as reincarnation, karma theory, ahiṃsā (noninjury), and the associated claim to cross-species empathy, play fundamental roles, which underlines the necessity to investigate a deity’s accompanying non-human animals and representations in theriomorphic forms.

The case study is guided by the idea that religion is partly responsible for environmental crises, which means that one should carefully reinterpret and recontextualize religious traditions—with their rituals and scriptures—in the 21st century. World religions each offer a unique pool of moral values, rules, and thus soundscapes that guide people in their relationship with non-human animals and the environment. I use a combination of ethnomusicological methods with questions of Ecomusicology—a multidisciplinary field for the study of musics, culture, and nature—and Human-Animal Studies to show that the attention of soundscapes should not overly focus on acoustics, but that social and religious structures are also worth to be considered.

Paper short abstract:

The relationship with nature is central for practitioners of Contemporary Paganism. This paper will discuss how practitioners of this religious and spiritual movement engage with nature and combine environmental awareness and activism in their lived religious and spiritual experience.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary Paganism is an “umbrella term” used to designate several religious and spiritual polytheistic traditions, which has as its main beliefs nature as sacred, polytheism and pantheism, and gender equality. The celebration of the natural world and the emphasis put on the sense of belonging to a world community is central for their religious and spiritual lives.

Since these groups are influenced by environmentalism, their discourses and practices align with the discourses of activists that call the attention to the impact of capitalism and neo-liberal policies on the environment, and how this transformed the connection and relationship between humans and nature. Thus, contemporary pagan groups and individuals combine both the practice of magic and ritual and the participation in environmental actions - like demonstrations and initiatives - as a form of connecting with nature and negotiate their presence in the public space and the world. Through this, they challenge the perceived distinctions between private/individual/religious and public/collective/political participation, creating and negotiating new meanings to these dimensions.

This presentation, based on preliminary findings from my PhD research in Anthropology on Contemporary Paganism and Witchcraft in Portugal and the United Kingdom, will use specific Ethnographic cases to expose the ways in which these groups engage with nature and combine environmental awareness and activism in their lived religious and spiritual experience. Through the combination of several beliefs and practices, they contribute and offer creative approaches and new meanings to the contemporary debates on the environmental crisis.

Paper short abstract:

Globalization of Western secularism leads to a paradox: instead of being eliminated from the public sphere, religion manifests itself in a variety of forms in different parts of the world, and “Flying Community” is an example of breaking structural patterns to emerge new place-based practices.

Paper long abstract:

Jose Casanova suggests that globalization of Western secularism leads to a paradox: instead of being eliminated from the public sphere, religion manifests itself in a variety of forms in different parts of the world, and Ukraine is one of recent examples of what he calls de-privatization of religion. The ongoing armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine followed the anti-governmental protests of 2013-2014 in Ukraine, and fueled religious tension in the country and the Orthodoxy worldwide.

“Flying Community” is a group that unites Orthodox and Catholic Christians from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Italy of different ages and ethnic origin, with its epicenter in Ukraine. It has been formed in the circumstances of the evolving political conflict, in 2012-2015, and the group breaks several patterns typical for structure, denominational variety, and stable geographical affiliation of religious organization in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Many of my interviewees referred to particular places in order to provide details about their experience in the group, and to talk about significant (sometimes, life-turning) events. Those places provide connection to the community’s calendar cycle events and contribute to the sense of belonging to the group. In my paper, I will review how landscapes of a small village in Ukraine, a touristic town in Italy, and the city of Jerusalem are connected to the interdenominational “Flying Community.” This paper will also contribute to the understanding of religion in post-Soviet space, and societies in turmoil.

Paper short abstract:

One of the most intriguing initiatives in Estonia has been putting sacred places under state protection, which in 2008 was formulated as a State development plan. The presentation gives an overview of how sacred space is created or adopted, incl. changes during the COVID-19.

Paper long abstract:

For most religions, nature has been an important medium and, all religions use nature or its sacredness as a metaphor. However, changes have occurred in the twenty-first century, and especially natural sacred places, have become significant signs in major Christian trends, in pagan traditions emphasising continuity, and in vernacular new religious practices. In terms of world view, alongside ethnic and new religions, the sacralisation of natural places (and nature as a whole) is among the messages of many humanistic movements, and ending with ambassadors of the radical and critical idea regarding the equality of humans and nature. Although different religions use nature in very different ways, one of the most intriguing initiatives in Estonia has been putting sacred places under state protection, which in 2008 was formulated as a State development plan. However, the fulfilling of the most well-grounded and noble objective has been hindered by differences in worldviews as, under the leadership of the National Heritage Board, attempts have been made to merge, on the one hand, the official level, academic humanities, and nature protection, and on the other the Estonian native religion, Earth faith, the dominating trend in Estonia, and many smaller movements. Due to these differences in worldviews, the initially simple and clear-cut activity has become a source of many problems. The presentation gives an overview of how sacred space is created or adopted, along with any monuments located there, and the closer look to the holy springs, stones and trees (incl. changes during the COVID-19).

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on Hindu pilgrims in India who treat nonhuman persons as equals and co-partners in the pilgrimage experience. Its studies how nature talks back to them during pilgrimage; and how pilgrims capture, interpret, and respond to the voice of nature.

Paper long abstract:

In current anthropological debates on the Anthropocene, we face the challenge of how to adjust and possibly avoid the anthropocentrism in our methodology. As the dominant focus in pilgrimage research tends to be on pilgrims and human sociality – for example by analyzing religious mobility through the lens of communitas, discourse, gender, movement, or commerce - contemporary debates on the nature/culture divide urge us to transcend that divide in our pilgrimage research as well by focusing on ‘more-than-human sociality’ (Tsing 2014). This paper aims to explore how pilgrimage research may be useful in adapting and fine-tuning our methodological approaches in such a way that they enable us to change our perspective and our interpretation of ‘the emic point of view’. In fact, pilgrimage often focuses on the human-non-human relationship and reckons with the power and sociality of non-empirical agents. This raises the question: How do we create space for non-human and non-empirical agents in our methodology in order to understand and give voice to other-than-human persons such as trees, stones, mountains and rivers, in the pilgrimage encounter (and beyond)? The proposed paper particularly focuses on Hindu pilgrims in India who treat nonhuman persons as equals and co-partners in the pilgrimage experience. The paper studies how nature talks back to them during pilgrimage; and how pilgrims capture, interpret, and respond to the voice of nature.