Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1177/00377686231166512
Anu K Antony, R. Robinson
Going beyond current sociological and anthropological understandings, the article harnesses Latour’s idea of actant to grasp prayer as a comparatively independent entity, analytically cleavable from the nun’s act of praying. Based on an ethnographic study of two indigenous congregations of Catholic nuns in Kerala, India, the article argues that conceptualising prayer as actant takes it out of pure interior spirituality and re-imagines it as a form of the sociality of a nun, which includes her relationships with herself, with God, and with those inside and outside the convent, particularly those who solicit her prayers. Perceiving prayer as an actant brings the non-human, divine but real and active presence of God into sociological conversation, enabling us to examine its crucial place in the discipline and formation of the nun as a subject within her everyday life in the congregation. Moreover, analysing its diverse modes locates prayer within the networks and relationships of the congregational community, thereby engaging Foucault’s subjectivation with Latour’s actant.
{"title":"Prayer as an actant: Freedom and sociality in the subject formation of a Catholic nun in Kerala, South India","authors":"Anu K Antony, R. Robinson","doi":"10.1177/00377686231166512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231166512","url":null,"abstract":"Going beyond current sociological and anthropological understandings, the article harnesses Latour’s idea of actant to grasp prayer as a comparatively independent entity, analytically cleavable from the nun’s act of praying. Based on an ethnographic study of two indigenous congregations of Catholic nuns in Kerala, India, the article argues that conceptualising prayer as actant takes it out of pure interior spirituality and re-imagines it as a form of the sociality of a nun, which includes her relationships with herself, with God, and with those inside and outside the convent, particularly those who solicit her prayers. Perceiving prayer as an actant brings the non-human, divine but real and active presence of God into sociological conversation, enabling us to examine its crucial place in the discipline and formation of the nun as a subject within her everyday life in the congregation. Moreover, analysing its diverse modes locates prayer within the networks and relationships of the congregational community, thereby engaging Foucault’s subjectivation with Latour’s actant.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43311830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00377686231158556
Patrycja Trzeszczyńska, Konrad Pędziwiatr, D. Wiktor-Mach
This article seeks to address the intersection of migration and religion/religious affiliation of migrants in Central Europe. Increase in immigration from Ukraine to Poland observed since around 2015 has been challenging and remodeling religious relations in the relatively homogeneous country. Drawing on the qualitative research conducted in 2020 in Krakow, one of the key Polish destinations for the migrants, this article explores the strategies and choices of immigrants in relation to the religious market, and consequences of their decisions. Our research, embedded in the theoretical perspective of the economics of religion, shows the fluidity of religiosity in migration processes as well as inconsistencies in religious affiliations in the context of migration. We propose a concept of non-religious incentive for participation/church affiliation and argue that identified inconsistencies stem largely from the non-religious motivations related to the attractiveness of the goods and services offered by some religious communities.
{"title":"Between needs, goods and services: Ukrainian immigrants on the Polish religious market","authors":"Patrycja Trzeszczyńska, Konrad Pędziwiatr, D. Wiktor-Mach","doi":"10.1177/00377686231158556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231158556","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to address the intersection of migration and religion/religious affiliation of migrants in Central Europe. Increase in immigration from Ukraine to Poland observed since around 2015 has been challenging and remodeling religious relations in the relatively homogeneous country. Drawing on the qualitative research conducted in 2020 in Krakow, one of the key Polish destinations for the migrants, this article explores the strategies and choices of immigrants in relation to the religious market, and consequences of their decisions. Our research, embedded in the theoretical perspective of the economics of religion, shows the fluidity of religiosity in migration processes as well as inconsistencies in religious affiliations in the context of migration. We propose a concept of non-religious incentive for participation/church affiliation and argue that identified inconsistencies stem largely from the non-religious motivations related to the attractiveness of the goods and services offered by some religious communities.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42983154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00377686231158613
Javier Jiménez-Royo
This text reflects on the constitution of the Gypsy Pentecostal person, thus inserting itself in the debates on the continuity or rupture that motivate conversions to Christianity. The moral obligations generated by kinship relations among the Gypsies and the links with the Holy Spirit make it difficult to find gaps for the deployment of individuality by evangelical Gypsies. However, the materialization of God’s desire is embedded in the dynamics of leadership, which in the context of the religious organization causes the charisma to avoid its routinization.
{"title":"In/dividuality and charisma among Pentecostal Gypsies","authors":"Javier Jiménez-Royo","doi":"10.1177/00377686231158613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231158613","url":null,"abstract":"This text reflects on the constitution of the Gypsy Pentecostal person, thus inserting itself in the debates on the continuity or rupture that motivate conversions to Christianity. The moral obligations generated by kinship relations among the Gypsies and the links with the Holy Spirit make it difficult to find gaps for the deployment of individuality by evangelical Gypsies. However, the materialization of God’s desire is embedded in the dynamics of leadership, which in the context of the religious organization causes the charisma to avoid its routinization.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41854043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00377686231157295
Gustavo Morello SJ
From a sociological perspective, sacredness is a social construction. In this article, I stand at the intersection of the tradition of domestic shrines and the contemporary use of photography, from a perspective of lived religion. The aim is to clarify what are the sacred realities that structure daily life for Latin American participants. I argue that the practice of displaying pictures at home is a form of ‘sacralization practice’. The research is based on data from a sample of 25 respondents from three cities (Córdoba, Argentina; Lima, Perú; Montevideo, Uruguay), four religious affiliations (Catholics, Protestants, Umbanda, Non-Affiliated), and two socioeconomic statuses (lower and upper/middle). Employing a layered analysis of pictures displayed at home (PDH), I studied the materiality, the context of the display, and the motifs portrayed. The results show that participants, both religious and non-affiliated, sacralize foundational relationships and moments, even the events scholars disregard.
{"title":"The construction of the sacred through photographs displayed in Latin American homes","authors":"Gustavo Morello SJ","doi":"10.1177/00377686231157295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231157295","url":null,"abstract":"From a sociological perspective, sacredness is a social construction. In this article, I stand at the intersection of the tradition of domestic shrines and the contemporary use of photography, from a perspective of lived religion. The aim is to clarify what are the sacred realities that structure daily life for Latin American participants. I argue that the practice of displaying pictures at home is a form of ‘sacralization practice’. The research is based on data from a sample of 25 respondents from three cities (Córdoba, Argentina; Lima, Perú; Montevideo, Uruguay), four religious affiliations (Catholics, Protestants, Umbanda, Non-Affiliated), and two socioeconomic statuses (lower and upper/middle). Employing a layered analysis of pictures displayed at home (PDH), I studied the materiality, the context of the display, and the motifs portrayed. The results show that participants, both religious and non-affiliated, sacralize foundational relationships and moments, even the events scholars disregard.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47520806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00377686231154118
Gowoon Jung
Prior studies on work–faith integration have only explained professionals’ negotiation of religious and professional identities within one occupational setting, overlooking how the negotiation diverges in the soaring force of neoliberal regime that intersects with gendered workplace culture. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Korean evangelical women professionals, the article demonstrates how women, proportionately more religious than men, arrive in the alignment of two identities at the workplace. The research finds two patterns of alignments: (1) individual moralising, which is achieved through displaying the narratives of calling and participating in expressive activities, and (2) selective compartmentalising, which is obtained through the practices of setting flexible boundaries and turning evangelical language off. Bringing a neoliberal and gendered perspective to the categorisation of workplaces, this study argues that women are likely to display higher degrees of faith and more evangelical language within less neoliberal-oriented, feminised workplaces than in neoliberal-oriented, masculine ones.
{"title":"Work–faith integration in the neoliberal age: Women professionals’ alignment of evangelical identity with professional identity in South Korea","authors":"Gowoon Jung","doi":"10.1177/00377686231154118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231154118","url":null,"abstract":"Prior studies on work–faith integration have only explained professionals’ negotiation of religious and professional identities within one occupational setting, overlooking how the negotiation diverges in the soaring force of neoliberal regime that intersects with gendered workplace culture. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Korean evangelical women professionals, the article demonstrates how women, proportionately more religious than men, arrive in the alignment of two identities at the workplace. The research finds two patterns of alignments: (1) individual moralising, which is achieved through displaying the narratives of calling and participating in expressive activities, and (2) selective compartmentalising, which is obtained through the practices of setting flexible boundaries and turning evangelical language off. Bringing a neoliberal and gendered perspective to the categorisation of workplaces, this study argues that women are likely to display higher degrees of faith and more evangelical language within less neoliberal-oriented, feminised workplaces than in neoliberal-oriented, masculine ones.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45129368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00377686231154382
Véronique Lecaros, Samuel Asenjo
This article presents the study of a popular Pentecostal center, Monte de Oración (MO), located in the suburban outskirts of Lima, Peru. The MO, founded by an illiterate woman originally from Cuzco, self-proclaimed pastor, began its trajectory (1970s, 1980s) as a community site of Catholic popular piety, anchored in the Andean traditions of mountain worship until it became a family religious enterprise. The MO is connected with some forty independent churches in Lima which organize retreats there and is, as well, in the process of being integrated into the networks of North American missionary denominations. The MO maintains a connection with transnational Pentecostal currents that make sense, locally, through similarity and affinity (Foucault, Han). At MO, are adopted and adapted, with creativity, issues and rites, among others, spiritual warfare, Israelophilia / Zionism, gender complementarity, refusal of vaccines against COVID.
{"title":"Transnationalisme pentecôtiste et précarité enchantée : le cas du Monte de Oración dans la périphérie suburbaine de Lima, Pérou","authors":"Véronique Lecaros, Samuel Asenjo","doi":"10.1177/00377686231154382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231154382","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents the study of a popular Pentecostal center, Monte de Oración (MO), located in the suburban outskirts of Lima, Peru. The MO, founded by an illiterate woman originally from Cuzco, self-proclaimed pastor, began its trajectory (1970s, 1980s) as a community site of Catholic popular piety, anchored in the Andean traditions of mountain worship until it became a family religious enterprise. The MO is connected with some forty independent churches in Lima which organize retreats there and is, as well, in the process of being integrated into the networks of North American missionary denominations. The MO maintains a connection with transnational Pentecostal currents that make sense, locally, through similarity and affinity (Foucault, Han). At MO, are adopted and adapted, with creativity, issues and rites, among others, spiritual warfare, Israelophilia / Zionism, gender complementarity, refusal of vaccines against COVID.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43788031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-21DOI: 10.1177/00377686231154110
Efstathios Kessareas
This article examines the structure, content, and function of widely circulating prophetic narratives in contemporary Greece and Cyprus. Prophetologists play a key role in recycling and disseminating prophecies through traditional and modern means of communication in an attempt to explain conditions of crisis and to promote conservative moral values and nationalistic aspirations as salvific remedies in the public sphere. Their highly politicized prophetic discourse blurs the differentiation between religion and politics that characterizes secular modernity. But at the same time, the use of modern media and secular strategies for sacred purposes have unintended secularizing effects on the religious field. Finally, the article explores the reasons why prophecy belief finds fertile soil for proliferation in these countries.
{"title":"‘Signs of the times’: Prophecy belief in contemporary Greek Orthodox contexts","authors":"Efstathios Kessareas","doi":"10.1177/00377686231154110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231154110","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the structure, content, and function of widely circulating prophetic narratives in contemporary Greece and Cyprus. Prophetologists play a key role in recycling and disseminating prophecies through traditional and modern means of communication in an attempt to explain conditions of crisis and to promote conservative moral values and nationalistic aspirations as salvific remedies in the public sphere. Their highly politicized prophetic discourse blurs the differentiation between religion and politics that characterizes secular modernity. But at the same time, the use of modern media and secular strategies for sacred purposes have unintended secularizing effects on the religious field. Finally, the article explores the reasons why prophecy belief finds fertile soil for proliferation in these countries.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43629280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-25DOI: 10.1177/00377686221148408
Avi Astor, Rosa Martínez-Cuadros, Víctor Albert-Blanco
In diasporic contexts, religious representatives play a key role as cultural ambassadors for their respective communities and religions. This article examines religious representation as a form of civic engagement among Shia Muslims who have assumed representational responsibilities in Barcelona. Our study focuses on their interactions with municipal authorities and the wider public amid the planning, organization, and enactment of public lamentation processions. We show how public rituals provide representatives of Barcelona’s main Shia community with a platform for ‘performative citizenship’ practices like claiming rights and demonstrating their deservingness of inclusion in the neighborhood, city, and nation. Yet, different representatives have engaged in distinct styles of representation and performative citizenship. In explaining these differences, we draw attention to how their respective migration trajectories, historical experiences, and sociostructural location have contributed to certain pressures, forms of positional awareness, and practical dispositions that account for their inclinations toward different approaches to civic engagement.
{"title":"Religious representation and performative citizenship: The civic dimensions of Shia lamentation rituals in Barcelona","authors":"Avi Astor, Rosa Martínez-Cuadros, Víctor Albert-Blanco","doi":"10.1177/00377686221148408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686221148408","url":null,"abstract":"In diasporic contexts, religious representatives play a key role as cultural ambassadors for their respective communities and religions. This article examines religious representation as a form of civic engagement among Shia Muslims who have assumed representational responsibilities in Barcelona. Our study focuses on their interactions with municipal authorities and the wider public amid the planning, organization, and enactment of public lamentation processions. We show how public rituals provide representatives of Barcelona’s main Shia community with a platform for ‘performative citizenship’ practices like claiming rights and demonstrating their deservingness of inclusion in the neighborhood, city, and nation. Yet, different representatives have engaged in distinct styles of representation and performative citizenship. In explaining these differences, we draw attention to how their respective migration trajectories, historical experiences, and sociostructural location have contributed to certain pressures, forms of positional awareness, and practical dispositions that account for their inclinations toward different approaches to civic engagement.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43510217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-28DOI: 10.1177/00377686221144400
A. Salonen
The contemporary food system relies on a paradigm of human exceptionalism. But living well together with all forms of life would require that we imagine humans’ place in the world as embedded, not as separate. This study explores food waste as a case for how to reimagine humans’ place in the world. Drawing from individual and group interviews conducted in Canada and Finland, I trace the roles that ordinary people assign for themselves when talking about food waste. Humans see themselves as both creators of food waste and as saviours of food that is in danger of going to waste. These images uphold the division between humans and the nonhuman world. As a way of troubling these anthropocentric notions and re-embedding the human in the analysis in a way that transcends hierarchical subject positions, I identify a third role: that of the garburator. This role takes humans seriously as material, embodied, and eventually decomposing beings.
{"title":"Creator, saviour, garburator: (Re)imagining the human role in the world through a case of food waste","authors":"A. Salonen","doi":"10.1177/00377686221144400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686221144400","url":null,"abstract":"The contemporary food system relies on a paradigm of human exceptionalism. But living well together with all forms of life would require that we imagine humans’ place in the world as embedded, not as separate. This study explores food waste as a case for how to reimagine humans’ place in the world. Drawing from individual and group interviews conducted in Canada and Finland, I trace the roles that ordinary people assign for themselves when talking about food waste. Humans see themselves as both creators of food waste and as saviours of food that is in danger of going to waste. These images uphold the division between humans and the nonhuman world. As a way of troubling these anthropocentric notions and re-embedding the human in the analysis in a way that transcends hierarchical subject positions, I identify a third role: that of the garburator. This role takes humans seriously as material, embodied, and eventually decomposing beings.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49641962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/00377686221147797
Serena Bindi, Verónica Giménez Béliveau
Exorcism is a long-standing practice in the history of religions and has increased in contemporary societies. The introduction to the dossier ‘Exorcisms, extractions of unwanted identities, and other spiritual struggles around the body’ proposes a revision of the production of contemporary social sciences – in particular, anthropology and sociology – on exorcism. First, we propose a reflection on the category of exorcism, and then we discuss some of the issues that underlie research on the contemporary practice: ritual performance, the status of exorcism in modernity, the relationship with therapeutic and healing practices, the discussion of exorcism as a gendered ritual, and the political dimension of the practice.
{"title":"Exorcisms, extraction of unwanted entities, and other spiritual struggles around the body: A comparative perspective Exorcismes, extractions d’entités indésirées et autres combats spirituels autour du corps: une perspective comparative","authors":"Serena Bindi, Verónica Giménez Béliveau","doi":"10.1177/00377686221147797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686221147797","url":null,"abstract":"Exorcism is a long-standing practice in the history of religions and has increased in contemporary societies. The introduction to the dossier ‘Exorcisms, extractions of unwanted identities, and other spiritual struggles around the body’ proposes a revision of the production of contemporary social sciences – in particular, anthropology and sociology – on exorcism. First, we propose a reflection on the category of exorcism, and then we discuss some of the issues that underlie research on the contemporary practice: ritual performance, the status of exorcism in modernity, the relationship with therapeutic and healing practices, the discussion of exorcism as a gendered ritual, and the political dimension of the practice.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48848647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}