Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-389-398
A. Kuznetsov
This text is a vivit-uary—and not an obit-uary—of Bruno Latour: a tribute to his life, not a commemoration of his death. The question is: how do we inherit Latour? The author seeks to avoid the deadly modernization of his rich heritage, to avoid dividing a single network of his projects and statements along the boundaries of modern disciplines: sociology, philosophy, semiotics, anthropology. Instead, it is proposed to articulate and assemble Latour-the-anthropologist, linking together his projects of the anthropology of sciences and technologies, symmetrical anthropology, and the anthropology of the Moderns (an inquiry into the modes of existence). This approach allows us to find the Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinths of his heritage, to learn to follow the trajectory of the transformation of his messages through a variety of topics, disciplines, projects, genres, and formats.
{"title":"VIVIT-UARY. HOW TO INHERIT BRUNO LATOUR?","authors":"A. Kuznetsov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-389-398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-389-398","url":null,"abstract":"This text is a vivit-uary—and not an obit-uary—of Bruno Latour: a tribute to his life, not a commemoration of his death. The question is: how do we inherit Latour? The author seeks to avoid the deadly modernization of his rich heritage, to avoid dividing a single network of his projects and statements along the boundaries of modern disciplines: sociology, philosophy, semiotics, anthropology. Instead, it is proposed to articulate and assemble Latour-the-anthropologist, linking together his projects of the anthropology of sciences and technologies, symmetrical anthropology, and the anthropology of the Moderns (an inquiry into the modes of existence). This approach allows us to find the Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinths of his heritage, to learn to follow the trajectory of the transformation of his messages through a variety of topics, disciplines, projects, genres, and formats.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42378485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-153-164
Sergei Shtyrkov
The methods of “material religion” elaborated in social anthropology and the materialistic (Marxist) approach to the study of religious life are methodologically different ways of turning our accustomed understanding upside down: the spiritual activity of Homo religiosus, acting as generating source, produces something material—sacred images, houses of prayer, and objects of worship. The method of material religion involves determining how the culturally specific sensory experience of the individual generates that which is interpreted by this individual, their fellow believers, and external observers—who usually receive accounts of such states in narratives—as actual religious experience. But behind what is read as a replica of the spiritual, disembodied world there is always the work of man, which, however, can be difficult to recognize in this quality. The Marxist materialist perspective, inevitably sharpened critically against religion as a typical ideology, seeks to find a basis for spiritual life in the economic conditions of human existence and society, which in this tradition of understanding human nature, are inevitably linked to labour. These two research traditions, which have the potential to enrich each other, remain in different segments of the academic field. One possible common ground for a collaborative project for these two perspectives is the study of infrastructural aspects of religious life. Another collaborative project could be the very work of social anthropologists who, using their bodies and intellect as their most accessible and potentially inalienable research tool, produce experiences comparable to those of believers and translate them into the terms of social science.
{"title":"“MATERIAL RELIGION” AS A METHOD IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF THE RESEARCHER’S ACCESS TO “REAL” RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE (CONCLUSION)","authors":"Sergei Shtyrkov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-153-164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-153-164","url":null,"abstract":"The methods of “material religion” elaborated in social anthropology and the materialistic (Marxist) approach to the study of religious life are methodologically different ways of turning our accustomed understanding upside down: the spiritual activity of Homo religiosus, acting as generating source, produces something material—sacred images, houses of prayer, and objects of worship. The method of material religion involves determining how the culturally specific sensory experience of the individual generates that which is interpreted by this individual, their fellow believers, and external observers—who usually receive accounts of such states in narratives—as actual religious experience. But behind what is read as a replica of the spiritual, disembodied world there is always the work of man, which, however, can be difficult to recognize in this quality. The Marxist materialist perspective, inevitably sharpened critically against religion as a typical ideology, seeks to find a basis for spiritual life in the economic conditions of human existence and society, which in this tradition of understanding human nature, are inevitably linked to labour. These two research traditions, which have the potential to enrich each other, remain in different segments of the academic field. One possible common ground for a collaborative project for these two perspectives is the study of infrastructural aspects of religious life. Another collaborative project could be the very work of social anthropologists who, using their bodies and intellect as their most accessible and potentially inalienable research tool, produce experiences comparable to those of believers and translate them into the terms of social science.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45196554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-257-296
Alena S. Davydova, Sergei Shtyrkov
So-called spiritual tourism, the most important part of which is travelling to “places of power”, is a dynamically developing trend in the tourism industry. However, the market for services in this field is far from being transparently and pragmatically structured in every place. Sometimes it is consistently transformed through the creation and promotion of an easily recognisable consumer product offered by specialised entrepreneurs. Somewhere, however, this market develops using the resources of structures already present in the field that were not specifically designed for it. The purpose of this study is to analyse certain aspects of the process, which can be defined as the arrival of a new consumer where they have not been expected, where the tourism industry is defined by a long-established infrastructure. The guides who provide travel to familiar geographical locations are an important part of this infrastructure. They are faced with new tourists to whose unusual practices they have to adapt. Among other strange things, guides have to deal with the fact that their clients have a habit of attributing meanings to local objects that are unknown to the guides themselves. In other words, these “guests” bring with them something that is usually produced by the “hosts”, local people who are supposed to be privy to local knowledge. But the particular history of settlement in this region creates in the guides a sense of a lack of authentic information about the past of these places. Under these circumstances, in an attempt to create the necessary historical narratives, they enter into difficult negotiations with their clients about what kind of past the most popular spiritual tourism destination in the Murmansk region, Seidozero, should base its reputation on.
{"title":"“THIS, THEY SAY, IS YOUR LOCAL PLACE OF POWER”: SPIRITUAL TOURISM ON SEYDOZERО THROUGH THE EYES OF GUIDES ON THE KOLA PENINSULA","authors":"Alena S. Davydova, Sergei Shtyrkov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-257-296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-257-296","url":null,"abstract":"So-called spiritual tourism, the most important part of which is travelling to “places of power”, is a dynamically developing trend in the tourism industry. However, the market for services in this field is far from being transparently and pragmatically structured in every place. Sometimes it is consistently transformed through the creation and promotion of an easily recognisable consumer product offered by specialised entrepreneurs. Somewhere, however, this market develops using the resources of structures already present in the field that were not specifically designed for it. The purpose of this study is to analyse certain aspects of the process, which can be defined as the arrival of a new consumer where they have not been expected, where the tourism industry is defined by a long-established infrastructure. The guides who provide travel to familiar geographical locations are an important part of this infrastructure. They are faced with new tourists to whose unusual practices they have to adapt. Among other strange things, guides have to deal with the fact that their clients have a habit of attributing meanings to local objects that are unknown to the guides themselves. In other words, these “guests” bring with them something that is usually produced by the “hosts”, local people who are supposed to be privy to local knowledge. But the particular history of settlement in this region creates in the guides a sense of a lack of authentic information about the past of these places. Under these circumstances, in an attempt to create the necessary historical narratives, they enter into difficult negotiations with their clients about what kind of past the most popular spiritual tourism destination in the Murmansk region, Seidozero, should base its reputation on.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43238426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-195-220
Sergei Shtyrkov
The article describes khadzars—special ritual houses built in the courtyards of residential areas of Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia—Alania) that have become elements of informal social infrastructure. As a venue for ritual feasts, khadzars are built by families living in a multi-storey house or complex of houses and are the responsibility of the “khadzar activists”—groups of adult men who organise and oversee collective rituals during funerals, memorials, Ossetian and national calendar festivities, and sometimes weddings. These same men often use the khadzar to pass their leisure time in it. Built with the tacit consent of local authorities and actively used by them to, for example, hold meetings with residents during election campaigns, khadzars nevertheless remain illegal structures with an unclear legal status. The lack of clarity on this issue becomes a problem when utility companies start demanding that residents enter into separate contracts to connect the khadzars to the city’s infrastructure—heating and electricity—which poses a challenge to the neighbourhood community. This raises the question for the house or yard community as to who really owns these buildings and who should therefore take care of their fate.
{"title":"THE IRON KHADZAR AS AN ELEMENT OF THE SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN A MODERN NORTH OSSETIAN CITY","authors":"Sergei Shtyrkov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-195-220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-195-220","url":null,"abstract":"The article describes khadzars—special ritual houses built in the courtyards of residential areas of Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia—Alania) that have become elements of informal social infrastructure. As a venue for ritual feasts, khadzars are built by families living in a multi-storey house or complex of houses and are the responsibility of the “khadzar activists”—groups of adult men who organise and oversee collective rituals during funerals, memorials, Ossetian and national calendar festivities, and sometimes weddings. These same men often use the khadzar to pass their leisure time in it. Built with the tacit consent of local authorities and actively used by them to, for example, hold meetings with residents during election campaigns, khadzars nevertheless remain illegal structures with an unclear legal status. The lack of clarity on this issue becomes a problem when utility companies start demanding that residents enter into separate contracts to connect the khadzars to the city’s infrastructure—heating and electricity—which poses a challenge to the neighbourhood community. This raises the question for the house or yard community as to who really owns these buildings and who should therefore take care of their fate.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42256633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-31-152
Evgeniia Abroskina, Yulia Antonyan, D. Baranov, V. Bobrovnikov, V. Fomina, Mansur Gasimzianov, E. Guchinova, Marina Hakkarainen, Natalia Kryukova, Art Leete, Mariе Masagutova, Igor Mikeshin, A. Panchenko, Danila Rygovskiy, Yu S Senina, Laur Vallikivi
“Material religion” as a research program is a relatively new development in the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities. Though this approach has its own forerunners and predecessors, one can argue that it took shape in the wake of an epistemological critique of social and cultural anthropology which treated religion as embedded in the cognitive and psychological experiences of a human being. Accordingly, the material manifestation of religion used to be treated as secondary, optional, and even superfluous. Criticism of this understanding of the nature of religion and of the methods of its studying focuses on the cultural and historical specificity of this approach originating from the use of Protestantism as a model for any religion. The material turn, in contrast, argues that spiritual experience is or at least can be studied as a derivation of bodily practices and experiences caused by the communication of a human with things, substances, images, sounds, fragrances, and flavours. Taken as integral parts of religious infrastructure, they constitute both the mundane and devotional life of an individual believer and of a religious community. This trend in social research remains unnoticed in Russian social science and humanities. The forum aims to assess the state of art in the field of material religion and discuss perspectives of its development. Participants in the discussion highlight the role of the materiality of things and substances, bodies, and mechanisms in their own research and what heuristic perspectives this material turn opens for them. A separate line of discussion concerns the prospects of grafting material religion to the classic models of social research, such as Marxist sociology.
{"title":"FORUM: THE MATERIAL TURN AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION","authors":"Evgeniia Abroskina, Yulia Antonyan, D. Baranov, V. Bobrovnikov, V. Fomina, Mansur Gasimzianov, E. Guchinova, Marina Hakkarainen, Natalia Kryukova, Art Leete, Mariе Masagutova, Igor Mikeshin, A. Panchenko, Danila Rygovskiy, Yu S Senina, Laur Vallikivi","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-31-152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-31-152","url":null,"abstract":"“Material religion” as a research program is a relatively new development in the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities. Though this approach has its own forerunners and predecessors, one can argue that it took shape in the wake of an epistemological critique of social and cultural anthropology which treated religion as embedded in the cognitive and psychological experiences of a human being. Accordingly, the material manifestation of religion used to be treated as secondary, optional, and even superfluous. Criticism of this understanding of the nature of religion and of the methods of its studying focuses on the cultural and historical specificity of this approach originating from the use of Protestantism as a model for any religion. The material turn, in contrast, argues that spiritual experience is or at least can be studied as a derivation of bodily practices and experiences caused by the communication of a human with things, substances, images, sounds, fragrances, and flavours. Taken as integral parts of religious infrastructure, they constitute both the mundane and devotional life of an individual believer and of a religious community. This trend in social research remains unnoticed in Russian social science and humanities. The forum aims to assess the state of art in the field of material religion and discuss perspectives of its development. Participants in the discussion highlight the role of the materiality of things and substances, bodies, and mechanisms in their own research and what heuristic perspectives this material turn opens for them. A separate line of discussion concerns the prospects of grafting material religion to the classic models of social research, such as Marxist sociology.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69655593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-331-341
Daria Tereshina
Amira Mittermaier’s book examines the practices of Islamic charity in contemporary Egypt. To answer the question of how and why pious Muslims engage in charity in their mundane lives, the author visits not only mosques, shrines, charitable and volunteer organizations, but also Tahrir Square in Cairo, an important locus for understanding Islamic piety. The place became widely known in 2011 due to the massive anti-government protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring in Egypt. The study of political activism allows the author to get a better grasp on the ordinary ethics of Islamic charity that considers the issues of social justice to be no less important compared to the political activism. But unlike liberal emancipatory projects, the understanding of social justice within the framework of Islamic piety relies on a fundamentally different ethics, political ontology, and temporal orientations. Drawing upon different cases, Mittermaier demonstrates the diverse ethical repertoire of Islamic giving, ranging from the examples of radical asceticism and self-denial, based on the Sufi ideal of the gift, to the more utilitarian approaches to charity, where gift exchange is considered to be a means to collect divine rewards for performed virtues. By comparing the Islamic gift ethics with the secular projects of social restructuring and reducing poverty, the author urges the reader to rethink Islamic charity as having a specific political meaning and potential vis-a-vis progressive ideas and politics.
{"title":"A Review of AMIRA MITTERMAIER, GIVING TO GOD: ISLAMIC CHARITY IN REVOLUTIONARY TIMES. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019, XIV+233 pp.","authors":"Daria Tereshina","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-331-341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-331-341","url":null,"abstract":"Amira Mittermaier’s book examines the practices of Islamic charity in contemporary Egypt. To answer the question of how and why pious Muslims engage in charity in their mundane lives, the author visits not only mosques, shrines, charitable and volunteer organizations, but also Tahrir Square in Cairo, an important locus for understanding Islamic piety. The place became widely known in 2011 due to the massive anti-government protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring in Egypt. The study of political activism allows the author to get a better grasp on the ordinary ethics of Islamic charity that considers the issues of social justice to be no less important compared to the political activism. But unlike liberal emancipatory projects, the understanding of social justice within the framework of Islamic piety relies on a fundamentally different ethics, political ontology, and temporal orientations. Drawing upon different cases, Mittermaier demonstrates the diverse ethical repertoire of Islamic giving, ranging from the examples of radical asceticism and self-denial, based on the Sufi ideal of the gift, to the more utilitarian approaches to charity, where gift exchange is considered to be a means to collect divine rewards for performed virtues. By comparing the Islamic gift ethics with the secular projects of social restructuring and reducing poverty, the author urges the reader to rethink Islamic charity as having a specific political meaning and potential vis-a-vis progressive ideas and politics.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48720588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-355-371
Mariе Masagutova
Tanya Luhrmann’s new book is a great example of an academic text turning into a bestseller. The book, based on many years of fieldwork, addresses the issue of faith. The author argues that faith is not given and predefined, and instead should be seen as a long and complicated process of “real-making”—the individual’s effort to build up social relationships with the invisible Others. Throughout the chapters, the author consequently develops her argumentation, advancing from the thesis about the difference between the reality of material objects and spiritual beings to the proposition that interaction with supernatural actors changes people and their lives. The author reflects on the importance of a detailed narrative of the imaginary or invisible world (whether spiritual or fictional) in order to experience it as real, demonstrates the role of innate and kindled qualities for the perception of the religious experience, and explores the specificity of the prayer state and the signs which people perceive as a response from a supernatural actor. The review discusses the specificity of the author’s approach to the analysis and the research question itself, highlighting some possible subjects as a material which could productively complement Luhrmann’s analysis.
{"title":"A Review of T. M. LUHRMANN, HOW GOD BECOMES REAL: KINDLING THE PRESENCE OF INVISIBLE OTHERS. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020, XV+235 pp.","authors":"Mariе Masagutova","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-355-371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-355-371","url":null,"abstract":"Tanya Luhrmann’s new book is a great example of an academic text turning into a bestseller. The book, based on many years of fieldwork, addresses the issue of faith. The author argues that faith is not given and predefined, and instead should be seen as a long and complicated process of “real-making”—the individual’s effort to build up social relationships with the invisible Others. Throughout the chapters, the author consequently develops her argumentation, advancing from the thesis about the difference between the reality of material objects and spiritual beings to the proposition that interaction with supernatural actors changes people and their lives. The author reflects on the importance of a detailed narrative of the imaginary or invisible world (whether spiritual or fictional) in order to experience it as real, demonstrates the role of innate and kindled qualities for the perception of the religious experience, and explores the specificity of the prayer state and the signs which people perceive as a response from a supernatural actor. The review discusses the specificity of the author’s approach to the analysis and the research question itself, highlighting some possible subjects as a material which could productively complement Luhrmann’s analysis.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46580841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-167-194
Jeanne Kormina
A religious infrastructure, from the point of view of a religious person, consists of two parts—tangible and intangible. Whereas a tangible part of a religious infrastructure includes material things and buildings which make religious life possible, an intangible part is created by invisible agents who govern people and material things. The invisible world is no less real for a believer than a visible part of the infrastructure, therefore in her religious life a believer seeks for such moments when she can experience the integrity of this ecosystem. A typical example of such projects are processions of the cross, highly popular religious events in contemporary Russia. The article analyses the tsar’s processions of the cross in Yekaterinburg which commemorate the massacre of Nicholas II and his family, which were later canonized as Orthodox saints. To analyse these religious projects, the author introduces the concept of pious labour. She argues that pious labour is a collective effort of believers which aims at binding together tangible and intagible parts of the religious infrastructure. In contrast to pilgrims and religious tourists who come to sacred places to consume grace, participants in the processions of the cross produce grace by doing the pious labour of keeping their religious ecosystem coherent and well-integrated.
{"title":"THE TSAR’S ROAD: INVISIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE AND PIOUS LABOUR IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY","authors":"Jeanne Kormina","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-167-194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-167-194","url":null,"abstract":"A religious infrastructure, from the point of view of a religious person, consists of two parts—tangible and intangible. Whereas a tangible part of a religious infrastructure includes material things and buildings which make religious life possible, an intangible part is created by invisible agents who govern people and material things. The invisible world is no less real for a believer than a visible part of the infrastructure, therefore in her religious life a believer seeks for such moments when she can experience the integrity of this ecosystem. A typical example of such projects are processions of the cross, highly popular religious events in contemporary Russia. The article analyses the tsar’s processions of the cross in Yekaterinburg which commemorate the massacre of Nicholas II and his family, which were later canonized as Orthodox saints. To analyse these religious projects, the author introduces the concept of pious labour. She argues that pious labour is a collective effort of believers which aims at binding together tangible and intagible parts of the religious infrastructure. In contrast to pilgrims and religious tourists who come to sacred places to consume grace, participants in the processions of the cross produce grace by doing the pious labour of keeping their religious ecosystem coherent and well-integrated.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44343238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-9-27
Jeanne Kormina, E. Khonineva, Sergei Shtyrkov
The infrastructural turn in the social sciences comes from a tendency to change the anthropocentric epistemology in social research. This new approach corresponds to the classic program of social anthropology as it makes the known unknown and provides one more perspective which helps reveal the invisible politics, inequalities, and social tensions. Yet, when it comes to the social research in the field of religion, the interest to how infrastructures work has not resulted in new academic discourses and research practices so far. This article outlines some directions and topics in the anthropology of religion which stem from the infrastructural turn. First, it highlights the work of the social imagination of believers when they deal with thick or thin (poor) infrastructural systems. Secondly, it discusses the moments of infrastructural breakdown which provoke believers to generate semiotic ideologies in order to represent their experience of communication with non-human agents, both mundane and divine. The infrastructural approach to understanding religious life does not pretend to become a new research methodology or social theory. Rather, it suggests that thinking infrastructurally on typical topics for anthropology of religion, such as pilgrimage, charity, memory or historical imagination, helps us to better understand the logic which shapes the everyday life of a religious person and community. Furthermore, it helps us remember that religious and secular domains of life are usually not separated in ethnographic reality.
{"title":"MARTHA’S LADLE: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS INFRASTRUCTURE","authors":"Jeanne Kormina, E. Khonineva, Sergei Shtyrkov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-9-27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-9-27","url":null,"abstract":"The infrastructural turn in the social sciences comes from a tendency to change the anthropocentric epistemology in social research. This new approach corresponds to the classic program of social anthropology as it makes the known unknown and provides one more perspective which helps reveal the invisible politics, inequalities, and social tensions. Yet, when it comes to the social research in the field of religion, the interest to how infrastructures work has not resulted in new academic discourses and research practices so far. This article outlines some directions and topics in the anthropology of religion which stem from the infrastructural turn. First, it highlights the work of the social imagination of believers when they deal with thick or thin (poor) infrastructural systems. Secondly, it discusses the moments of infrastructural breakdown which provoke believers to generate semiotic ideologies in order to represent their experience of communication with non-human agents, both mundane and divine. The infrastructural approach to understanding religious life does not pretend to become a new research methodology or social theory. Rather, it suggests that thinking infrastructurally on typical topics for anthropology of religion, such as pilgrimage, charity, memory or historical imagination, helps us to better understand the logic which shapes the everyday life of a religious person and community. Furthermore, it helps us remember that religious and secular domains of life are usually not separated in ethnographic reality.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42876557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-221-256
E. Kapustina
Mount Shalbuzdag, located in southern Dagestan, on the border with Azerbaijan, is not only one of the highest peaks of the republic, but is also an important pilgrimage destination for this region. The pilgrimage route includes an ascent to nearly the top of the mountain and a visit to a number of holy places on the way to it. The inaccessibility of the place of pilgrimage has led to a greater dependence of the pilgrims on the infrastructure which, to a greater extent, is maintained by the Miskindzha community located at the foot of the mountain. The article discusses the functioning of infrastructure that serves the pilgrims and its role in the economic and political life of the local community. The hegemony of the Miskindzha pilgrimage infrastructure is challenged both by neighbouring villages as well as by big businessmen and government officials. Also, in addition to the location of the pilgrimage on the slope of the mountain, there is another infrastructure system associated with mountain climbing—a climbing base nearby which also has an impact on competitive infrastructure projects in the vicinity of Shalbuzdag. The article is based on field materials collected during the principal investigator’s field work in the Dokuzparinsky district of Dagestan in 2017–2021.
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