Learning outcomes:
The aim of the course is to encourage a critical and in-depth look at the anthropological study of religion, ritual and symbolic systems in the contemporary context of recent socio-economic, political, healthcare, and environmental crises. Through the course, students will have the opportunity to approach, analyze and delve into key issues of religiosity, ritual action and symbolic systems, not only theoretically but also ethnographically, methodologically, and empirically.
General Competences :
- Search for, analysis and synthesis of data and information, with the use of the necessary technology.
- Working independently.
- Team work.
- Production of new research ideas.
- Respect for difference and multiculturalism.
- Criticism and self-criticism.
- Production of free, creative and inductive thinking.
- Respect for transreligiosity and for religious and sociocultural diversity.
The course focuses on the more profound anthropological study of religion, ritual and symbolic systems. Using ethnographic examples from different religious “traditions”, both established and non-dogmatic, from the “global north” and the “global south”, we will critically and comparatively discuss the role of religion, ritual and symbolic systems in the contemporary, transnational context, including their complex position in times of socio-economic, political and healthcare crisis. We will be concerned with questions such as: How is religious practice performed in the private and public spheres and under what conditions is it reshaped and transformed at an individual, collective, socio-cultural, political level? What are the consequences of globalized culture and secularization on religious belief and identity, ritual action, symbolic interaction? What leads to the popularity of “non-religion”, agnosticism, religious privatization and the so-called “contemporary spirituality”? In what ways does the extensive use of technology affect contemporary religiosity? How can we study religion in relation to critical questions about the environmental crisis and the Anthropocene? What can the concept of transreligiosity and spiritual elasticity offer in the understanding and analysis of contemporary ritual performances, symbolic representations, and religious changes?
Course Structure:
- Introduction to Classic Anthropological Theories
- Interpretive, Symbolic and Contemporary Approaches
- Ritual, Performativity, Symbolism
- Ethnographic, Empirical and Methodological Issues in the Anthropology of Religion
- Religion, Body and Health
- New Forms of Spirituality and Alternative Practices
- Transreligiosity, Pluralism and Spiritual Elasticity
- Secularization and Non-Religion
- Contemporary Religiosity, Crisis, Politics
- Religion, Gender and Sexuality
- Religion and the Environment: Religious Ecologies and Eco-Spirituality
- Religion, Places, New Technologies: Re/Constructing the Sacred Space
- Religion, Ritual, Symbolic Systems under a reflexive prism
- Asad, T. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Bell, C. 2022. Τελετουργία: Προοπτικές και Διαστάσεις. Αθήνα: Ηριδανός.
- Berger, P. 2007. ‘Pluralism, Protestantization, and the Voluntary Principle.’ In Banchoff (ed.), Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, pp. 19-29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Blanes, R. L., and G. Oustinova-Stjepanovic (eds.). 2017. Being Godless: Ethnographies of Atheism and Non-Religion. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
- Bruce, S. 2002. God is Dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- Bull, M. and J. P. Mitchell (eds.). 2015. Ritual, Performance and the Senses. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
- Campbell, H. 2012. Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds. London and New York: Routledge.
- Csordas , T. 1993. ‘Somatic modes of attention.’ Cultural Anthropology8 (2): 135-56.
- Csordas, T. 1994. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Davie, G. 1994. Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing Without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Douglas, M. 2007. Καθαρότητα και Κίνδυνος: Mια Ανάλυση των Εννοιών της Μιαρότητας και του Ταμπού. Αθήνα: Πολύτροπον.
- Fedele, A. and K. Knibbe. 2020. Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves? The Gendered Triangle of Religion, Secularity and Spirituality. London and New York: Routledge.
- Geertz, C. 2003. Η Ερμηνεία των Πολιτισμών. Αθήνα: Αλεξάνδρεια.
- Harvey, G. 2011. Contemporary Paganism: Religions of the Earth from Druids and Witches to Heathens and Ecofeminists. New York: New York University Press.
- Heelas, P. and L. Woodhead. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Højsgaard, M. T. and M. Warburg (eds.). 2005. Religion and Cyberspace. London and New York: Routledge.
- Masuzawa, T. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- McGuire, M. 2008. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Metreveli, T. 2024. (ed.). Orthodox Christianity and the COVID-19 Pandemic. London and New York: Routledge.
- Morris, B. 2020. Εισαγωγή στην Ανθρωπολογία των Θρησκειών. Αθήνα: Ηριδανός.
- Palmisano, S. and N. Pannofino (eds.). 2017. Invention of Tradition and Syncretism in Contemporary Religions: Sacred Creativity. London: Palgrave McMillan.
- Panagiotopoulos, A. and E. Roussou. 2022. ‘We Have Always Been Transreligious: An Introduction to Transreligiosity.’ Social Compass 69 (4): 614-630.
- Panagiotopoulos, A., E. Roussou and S. Rivadossi. ‘Spiritual Elasticity and Crisis: From Non-Religiosity to Transreligiosity-An Introduction.’ Religions 15 (3): 373.
- Pierini, Ε., A. Groisman and Diana Espírito Santo (eds.). Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.
- Piraino, F., M. Pasi and E. Asprem (eds.). 2023. Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories: Comparing and Connecting Old and New Trends. London and New York: Routledge.
- Riboli, D., P. Stewart, A. Strathern and D. Torri (eds.). 2021. Dealing with Disasters: Perspectives from Eco-Cosmologies. London and New York: Palgrave Mcmillan.
- Sutcliffe, S. 2003. Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices. London: Routledge.
- Taylor, B. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
- Turner, E. 1993. ‘The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study?’ Anthropology of Consciousness 4 (1): 9-12.
- Turner, V. 2015. Από την Τελετουργία στο Θέατρο: Η Ανθρώπινη Βαρύτητα του Παιχνιδιού. Αθήνα: Ηριδανός.
- Young, D. E., and J.-G. Goulet (eds.) 1994. Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. Ontario: Broadview Press.
Συναφή επιστημονικά περιοδικά:
- Journal of Contemporary Religion
- Religion and Society: Advances in Research
- Social Compass
- Culture and Religion
- Journal of Religion in Europe
- Religions
- Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief
- Numen: International Review for the History of Religions
- Religion and Gender
- Anthropology of Consciousness
- Temenos
