Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:23:43.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Affective Atmosphere of Religiosity: Animated Places, Public Spaces, and the Politics of Attachment in Ukraine and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Catherine Wanner
Catherine Wanner*
Affiliation:
History and Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When religious institutions engage the secular emotively and publicly, they can foster an affective atmosphere of religiosity, which potentially has motivational power, even for non-believers, because it shapes the sensorium of those who circulate in public space. When individuals appeal to “places animated with prayer” for the transformative energy that resides there through ritualized practices, they reaffirm an affective atmosphere of religiosity. In Orthodox Eastern Europe and elsewhere, a confessional tradition is allied with state borders, further normativizing this affective atmosphere and giving it pronounced political implications. When an affective atmosphere of religiosity inspires practices that are intentionally designed to prompt experiences rendered meaningful in otherworldly terms, over time such performativity can create mimetic instincts that become second nature. This is an essential step to religion becoming an expedient political resource and to the emergence of religious nationalism or a confessional state.

Keywords

affectexperienceatmospherepublic spaceurbanreligionOrthodoxyUkraineEurope
Type
Politics of Atmosphere and Ambiance
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 68 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 2006. Becoming and Being Hopeful: Towards a Theory of Affect. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24: 733–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, B. 2009. Affective Atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society 2, 2: 77–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2006. Responses. In Scott, David and Hirschkind, Charles, eds., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal, Brown, Wendy, Butler, Judith, and Mahmood, Saba. 2009. Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury and Free Speech. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Anya. 2014. The Post-Soviet Art Wars: Iconoclasm, Secularism, and Ways of Seeing in Contemporary Russia. Public Culture 26, 3: 419–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Anya. 2015. Freeze, Die, Come to Life: The Many Paths to Immortality in Post-Soviet Russia. American Ethnologist 42, 4: 766–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Böhme, Gernot. 2017. The Aesthetics of Atmospheres. Thibaud, Jean-Paul, ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
John, Bowen. 2008. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brennan, Teresa. 2004. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Casanova, José. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casanova, José. 2009. The Secular and Secularisms. Social Research 76, 4: 1049–66.Google Scholar
Chua, Liana. 2011. Soul Encounters: Emotions, Corporeality, and the Matter of Belief in a Bornean Village. Social Analysis 55, 3: 1–17.Google Scholar
Darieva, Tsypylma. 2018. Between ‘Great’ and ‘Little’ Traditions? Situating Shia Saints in Contemporary Baku. In Darieva, Tsypylma, Mühlfried, Florian, and Tuite, Kevin, eds., Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces: Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Denysenko, Nicholas E. 2018. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine: A Century of Separation. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelhardt, Jeffers. 2014. Singing the Right Way: Orthodox Christianity and Secular Enchantment in Estonia. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelke, Matthew. 2007. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Engelke, Matthew. 2012. Angels in Swidon: Public Religion and Ambient Faith in England. American Ethnologist 39, 1: 150–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelke, Matthew. 2013. God's Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Mikhail N. 1999. Post-Atheism: From Apophatic Theology to “Minimal Religion.” In Epstein, Mikhail N., Genis, Alexander A., and Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka M., eds., Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. New York: Berghahn Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Etkind, Alexander. 2013. Warped Mourning. Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1985 [1937]. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Finberg, L. and Holovach, U., eds. 2016. Maidan: Svidchennia Kyiv, 2013–14. Kyiv: Dukh i Litera.Google Scholar
Freeze, Gregory L. 1998. Policing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion in Russia, 1750–1850. In Ransel, David L. and Burbank, Jane, eds., Rethinking Imperial Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Fylypovych, L. O. and Horkusha, O. V., eds. 2014. Maidan i Tserkva: Khronika podii ta ekspertna otsinka. Kyiv: Sammit-Kniha.Google Scholar
Gebauer, Gunter and Wulf, Christoph. 1995. Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society. Reneau, Don, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Golovneva, Elena and Shmidt, Irina. 2015. Obrashchenie k Vere, Utopiia i Sakral'noe Mesto (g. Okunevo v Zapadnoi Sibiri). Gosudarstvo, Religiia I Tserkov’ v Rossii i za Rubezhom 3, 33: 291–321.Google Scholar
Halfin, Igal. 2000. From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heo, Angie. 2018. Imagining Holy Personhood: Anthropological Thresholds of the Icon. In Luehrmann, Sonja, ed., Praying with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschkind, Charles 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hordeev, A. 2014. Tserkov’ na Maidane. Kyiv: Knihonosha.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2018a. On Semiotic Ideology. Signs and Society 6, 1: 64–87.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2018b. Divine Text, National Language, and Their Publics: Arguing an Indonesian Qur'an. Comparative Studies in Society and History 60, 4: 758–85.Google Scholar
Kellogg, Sarah Bakker. 2017. Ritual Sounds, Political Echoes: Vocal Agency and the Sensory Cultures of Secularism in the Dutch Syriac Diaspora. American Ethnologist 42, 3: 431–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knox, Zoe. 2008. Religious Freedom in Russia: The Putin Years. In Steinberg, Mark D. and Wanner, Catherine, eds., Religion, Community and Morality in Post-Soviet Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Köllner, Tobias. 2012. Practising without Belonging? Entrepreneurship, Religion and Morality in Contemporary Russia. Berlin: LIT Verlag.Google Scholar
Kormina, Jeanne. 2010. Avtobusniki: Russian Orthodox Pilgrims’ Longing for Authenticity. In Hann, Chris and Goltz, Hermann, eds., Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kormina, Jeanne. 2018. Inhabiting Orthodox Russia: Religious Nomadism and the Puzzle of Belonging. In Luehrmann, Sonja, ed., Praying with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kormina, Jeanne and Luehrmann, Sonja. 2017. The Social Nature of Prayer in a Church of the Unchurched: Russian Orthodox Christianity from Its Edges. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, 2: 394–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krawchuk, Andrii and Bremer, Thomas, eds. 2016. Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lesiv, Mariya. 2013. The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Lindquist, Galina. 2005. Conjuring Hope: Healing and Magic in Contemporary Russia. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Luehrmann, Sonja. 2011. Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. M. and Morgain, Rachel. 2012. Prayer as Inner Sense Cultivation: An Attentional Learning Theory of Spiritual Experiences. Ethos 40, 4: 359–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McBrien, Julie. 2017. From Belonging to Belief: Modern Secularisms and the Construction of Religion in Kyrgyzstan. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 1999. Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 2014. Mediation and the Genesis of Presence: Toward a Material Approach to Religion. Religion and Society 5: 205–54.Google Scholar
Naumescu, Vlad. 2007. Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity: Religious Processes and Social Change in Ukraine. Berlin: Lit Verlag.Google Scholar
Naumescu, Vlad. 2019. Pedagogies of Prayer: Teaching Orthodoxy in South India. Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, 2: 389–418.Google Scholar
Navaro, Yael. 2017. Diversifying Affect. Cultural Anthropology 32, 2: 209–14.Google Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Y. 2002. Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Oliphant, Elayne. 2015. Beyond Blasphemy or Devotion: Art, the Secular, and Catholicism in Paris. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21, 2: 352–73.Google Scholar
Özyürek, Esra. 2006. Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Panchenko, A. A. 2012. How to Make a Shrine with Your Own Hands: Local Holy Places and Vernacular Religion in Russia. In Bowman, Marion and Valk, Ülo, eds., Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life: Expressions of Belief. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pelkmans, Mathijs, ed. 2009. Conversion after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union. London: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Plokhy, Serhii and Sysyn, Frank E.. 2003. Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.Google Scholar
Rey, Terry. 1999. Our Lady of Class Struggle: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti. Trenton: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Rupprecht, Tobias. 2018. Orthodox Internationalism: State and Church in Modern Russia and Ethiopia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 60, 1: 212–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slezkine, Yuri. 2017. The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Smolkin, Victoria. 2018. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: The Spiritual Life of Soviet Atheism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stephens, Angharad Closs. 2015. The Affective Atmospheres of Nationalism. Cultural Geographies 23, 2: 181–98.Google Scholar
Stepnisky, Jeffrey. 2018. Staging Atmosphere on the Ukrainian Maidan. Space and Culture (May). At: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1206331218773671?journalCode=saca (accessed 30 Aug. 2019).Google Scholar
Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Stoller, Paul. 1994. Double Takes: Paul Stoller on Jay on Taussig. Visual Anthropology Review 10, 1: 155–62.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wanner, Catherine. 2007. Communities of the Converted: Religion and Global Evangelism in Ukraine. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wanner, Catherine, ed. 2012. State Secularism and Lived Religion in Russia and Ukraine. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wanner, Catherine. 2014. ‘Fraternal’ Nations and Challenges to Sovereignty in Ukraine: The Politics of Linguistic and Religious Ties. American Ethnologist 43, 3: 365–84.Google Scholar