Study of Religions - Book chapters

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Bishop Evloghie and his prayer beads
(Lit Verlag, 2020-10-01) Șincan, Anca; Kapalό, James A.; Vagramenko, Tatiana; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
Buddhism
(ABC-CLIO, 2015) Padoan, Tatsuma; Laycock, Joseph P.
Clerical agency and the politics of scriptural translation: the 'canonisation' of the Gagauz language in southern Bessarabia
(Legenda, 2010) Kapalό, James A.; Pyrah, Robert; Turda, Marius
Dei treni e dei riti. Politiche ferroviarie e memoria estetico-rituale nella Tokyo contemporanea
(Aracne, 2012) Padoan, Tatsuma; Mangano, D.; Mattozzi, A.
Domestic religion in Soviet and Post-Soviet Moldova
(Nomos, 2018-12) Kapalό, James A.; Schnabel, Annette; Reddig, Melanie; Winkel, Heidemarie
The term domestication has been used by a number of scholars of religion in Eastern Europe to describe the relocation of aspects of public worship and community religion to the domestic sphere during communism (Dragadze 1993; Kononenko 2006; Rogers 2008, 2009). As such it has been deployed as a socio-spatial category to encapsulate “the idea of shifting the arena from public to private, from outside the home to its interior” as well as to signify “the harnessing and taming of that which had seemed outside the control of ordinary people”, having been previously restricted to religious specialists (Dragadze 1993: 150). There has, however, been little critical engagement with the term and what it might usefully be employed to signify. In this chapter, following a brief description of traditional religious practices associated with the home, like for example the veneration of icons, and the main aspects of domestic religious practice in Eastern Orthodoxy, I introduce some of the ways that Soviet policy generated a re-distribution of religious materials and agencies in the Soviet Union. Ethnographic studies that engage with the problem of domestic religion have focused on Georgia and Azerbaijan (Dragadze 1993), Ukraine (Kononenko 2006) and Russia (Rogers 2008, 2009) amongst others. During the communist period, religious practices and materials such as sacred objects, books and even furniture shifted location, with the home taking on greater significance and meaning extending earlier domestic forms of religious practice like icon veneration and healing practices. In many cases, this process enhanced the religious role of women in the religious sphere. As such, scholarship on domestic religion informs our understanding of everyday family life and the position of women in Soviet and post-Soviet societies.
Echoes of Cucova
(Lit Verlag, 2020-10-01) Cindrea, Iuliana; Kapalό, James A.; Vagramenko, Tatiana; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
Etnografia e semiotica: su divinità, asceti, pietre, e altri soggetti recalcitranti
(Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2018) Padoan, Tatsuma; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Exhibitions as tools to think with: On impact and process
(Lit Verlag, 2020-10-10) Nicolescu, Gabriela; Kapalό, James A.; Vagramenko, Tatiana; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
Feasting and fasting: The evidential character of material religion in secret police archives
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Kapalό, James A.; Kapaló, James A.; Povedák, Kinga; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
This chapter explores the value of textual data on material religion in secret police files for contemporary research on religious transmission and ritual life during communism. Based on examples from an operation targeting Inochentist-Stilists in 1950s and 60s Romania, I highlight the significance of the numerous insider-informer surveillance reports that focus on the foodways of the community. Although not qualitatively the same as ethnographic sources, I view the reports composed by these informers, as “surrogates” of the performances that led to their creation allowing the researcher today to access material, spatial and somatic aspects of religion that are often overlooked in readings of secret police files. Through the presentation of a series of brief examples, I illustrate how alternative readings emerge when data on religion is taken seriously and not discounted simply as an reflection of the ideological vision of the regime. The data we find presented in the files invites us to question its evidential status, both at the time, as evidence of criminal or anti-state activity, and for the scholar of religion as evidence of religious practice, meaning and agency. I argue, that when viewed through a material lens and situated within a broader appreciation religious lifeworld and cultural context, the texts and images in the archives reveal aspects of the material aspects of the transmission of religion in the underground that remain relatively under-explored and little analysed.
If sex were a factor… The Securitate Archives and issues of morality in documents related to religious life
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Șincan, Anca; Kapaló, James A.; Povedák, Kinga; European Research Council; Horizon 2020
The issue of morality is a vector in the analysis of the archival documents related to religion in communism. When the veil of privacy is lifted and the secret is no more, a rich picture unfolds for the researcher. Blackened names, the minimal protection offered to the actors that surface in surveillance files will do little in affording the subject of such files the privacy his/her actions were thought to have been acted in. For clergy and church members alike the moral stick they are measured against is higher than for the rest. It was self-imposed in many cases. Documents of the CNSAS archives on religion abound with stories about sexuality in many forms. Judges of the morality of the life of “God’s men” the Securitate officers will highlight the failures of the clergy based on guidelines that pertain to the church rather than the Securitate. This article is an overview of the way in which morality permeated the Securitate documents on religious life in communist Romania. How it was used and the reasons behind it. It answers questions related to the disappearance of the morality standard in other archives that dealt specifically with religion in communism.
Introduction: Archives and Communities
(Lit Verlag, 2020-10-01) Kapalό, James A.; Vagramenko, Tatiana; European Research Council; Horizon 2020
Introduction: Reframing the religious underground
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Kapalό, James A.; Povedák, Kinga; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
In this extended introduction, the editors of this volume explore the contours of the emerging field of research on the religious underground and secret police archives. The introduction addresses a number of key concepts that frame this edited collection, including an exploration of the formation of the religious underground and its meaning in the Cold War, the significance of the secret police and their role in anti-religious operations. Following this, the introduction addresses the politics, ethics and uses of secret police archives in post-communism as well as introducing emerging methodological approaches to the archives. Drawing on insights from the case studies included in the volume, the editors suggest important areas of future research in the field.
On the semiotics of space in the study of religions: Theoretical perspectives and methodological challenges
(De Gruyter, 2021-09-06) Padoan, Tatsuma; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
This article explores the possibility to investigate space in religious discourses from a semiotic point of view, by examining the theoretical potentials of this approach, and the methodological issues involved in addressing social and historical change. After a discussion of different theoretical scenarios, and of previous attempts to apply semiotics to the study of space, I will focus on the ethnosemiotic study of a Shugen community of ascetic practice in Japan, the Tsukasakō lay group affiliated to the Tenpōrinji temple on Mt Kongō, connected to the current revival of the pilgrimage to the twenty-eight sūtra mounds in Katsuragi (Katsuragi no nijūhasshuku kyōzuka). Through the semiotic analysis of this ethnographic case concerning a revivalist group of ascetics, I will try to challenge the still too common view of semiotics as a theory of timeless symbols and representation. On the contrary, following the works of Paris School semioticians like A. J. Greimas, P. Fabbri, M. Hammad, J. Fontanille and E. Landowski, and the material semiotic trend developed from their ideas by B. Latour, semiotics will here emerge as a theory of actions, passions, body and materiality, based on the conception of space as object of value and interacting subject, where social change is integrated into a sacred landscape through a practice of ritual enunciation performed by human and nonhuman actors.
Per una semiotica della possessione oracolare: sensi e discorso sul monte Kiso Ontake
(Mimesis, 2017-12) Padoan, Tatsuma; Raveri, M.; Tarca, L. V.
Photographs of the religious underground: Tracing images between archives and communities
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Povedák, Kinga; Kapaló, James A.; Povedák, Kinga; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
In this chapter, which is based on an in-depth analysis of a single secret police file, I approach the question of how to deal with police photography in the study of religious culture? Are photographs that were intended to capture reality from a certain ideological perspective capable of opening up new layers of the past? I examine whether it is possible to gain new insights about religious culture during the years of dictatorship with the help of the images and artefacts enclosed within the secret police archives. Are the photographs we find there more reliable than texts? Through a case study of a clandestine religious community, I explain the context and production of photographic images situated in a single secret police file and discuss how these images are presented and situated in the file. More importantly, I liberate or ‘repatriate’ photographs from the archive and, through the process of photo-elicitation with community members, allow alternative narratives to emerge.
Redeeming memory: Neo-Protestant churches and the secret police archives in Romania
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Cindrea, Iuliana; Kapaló, James A.; Povedák, Kinga; European Research Council; Horizon 2020
This article examines the manner in which members of the neo-Protestant churches dealt with the past of their own communities, the importance they ascribed to the archives of the former secret police and how they utilized state security files in order to write histories of their communities during the communist regime. While some have used the archives as a means to highlight the sufferings and persecutions that the neo-Protestant communities endured in an effort to fill the pages of history left blank, others have seen it as the sole repository of the truth about the past and took the responsibility upon themselves of exposing the names of all those community members who collaborated with the Securitate. Unlike the Orthodox Church, which has been accused of trying to keep under lock and key documents that could bring to light controversial issues, the neo-Protestant communities rushed into the archives in a quest for a true history of their own past. The article analyses some of the most important and controversial books that were written by members of various neo-Protestant churches, in which the subject of collaboration was more or less thoroughly addressed. Taken out of context, some of these works seemed like vengeful attempts to purify the neo-Protestant communities of their weakest individuals. For some members it was difficult to comprehend that such an endeavour could come from within the communities themselves, while for others these attempts were nothing more than an attack against the neo-Protestant churches. The nature of the secret police archives, its uses and abuses, as well as measures of transitional justice are other subjects that are dealt with in the present article.
Secret police informer files as sources for the study of vernacular religion under communism
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Hesz, Ágnes; Kapaló, James A.; Povedák, Kinga; Horizon 2020; European Research Council
This chapter focuses on a particular type of archival material, the secret police files produced by Communist totalitarian regimes in Romania and Hungary as possible sources for the study of vernacular religion. As an analytical concept, vernacular religion refers to “religion as it is lived” (Primiano 1995). It understands religiosity as an interactive process, an ongoing intersubjective negotiation and interpretation of religious ideas and practices. Vernacular religion is thus an ongoing creative process during which individual believers and the local religious groups they are part of mould their ways of religiosity – often in the face of, and in interaction with church or state authorities. To capture its complexity, researchers mostly access vernacular religion through ethnographic fieldwork. Relying on the methodological findings of Christina Vatulescu (2010), Catherine Verdery (2014) and Sonja Luehrmann (2015), however, this chapter argues that when applying critical reading, this multivocal and generically versatile material could be used as an ample source for the study of vernacular religion. It shows that not only do these documents inform us about how people under communist dictatorships practiced and experienced religion, but in countries like Hungary, they constitute a rare window on this particular dimension of religion.
Sémiotique et anthropologie
(Kimé, 2018) Padoan, Tatsuma; Sedda, Franciscu; Biglari, Amir; Roelens, Nathalie
Dans cette contribution (1), nous nous proposons d’identifier certaines interfaces significatives entre sémiotique et anthropologie, en tenant compte des plus récents développements de la sémiotique et de ce qui agite le débat contemporain en anthropologie. Nous allons donc évoquer plusieurs « tournants » qui marquent l’anthropologie contemporaine. On observera également que certains de ces « tournants » coïncident avec ceux de la sémiotique, ou bien réactivent des domaines bien établis, ou encore en sollicitent d’autres in nuce. Cela arrive car au cours du siècle dernier les deux disciplines se sont croisées et influencées de plusieurs façons, et pourtant elles l’ont fait d’une façon moins claire et définie que l’on pourrait l’imaginer.
Shifting images of a harmful sect: Operations against Inochentism in Soviet Ukraine, 1920-23
(Routledge, 2021-08-13) Lisnic, Dumitru; Kapaló, James A.; Povedák, K; European Research Council; Horizon 2020
This chapter concerns anti-sectarian policies designed by local Soviet authorities in the early 1920’s. The case under analysis exemplifies how a set of contrasting archival images of a religious group were constructed at different hierarchical levels of the Soviet administration. The archival image produced at the micro-level went on to form the centre of propaganda narratives and repressive policies against this religious group throughout the Soviet period right down to the end of the regime. This study aims to contribute to the already existing scholarship on early Soviet repressive mechanisms, which although impressively detailed, does not explore the role of functionaries and police officials at the micro-level in shaping the regime’s perception and understanding of specific cohorts of population, especially of religious sectarians, targeted by repressive policies. The chapter is centred on the case of Inochentism, a religious movement that emerged amongst Romanian-speaking peasants at the beginning of the 20th century in the northern part of today’s Odessa Oblast of Ukraine.
The Stolen Stamp
(Lit Verlag, 2020-10-01) Hesz, Ágnes; Kapalό, James A.; Vagramenko, Tatiana; Horizon 2020; European Research Council

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