Description
Book Synopsis Though long-associated with violence, the Caucasus is a region rich with religious conviviality. Based on fresh ethnographies in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation, Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces discusses vanishing and emerging sacred places in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious post-Soviet Caucasus. In exploring the effects of de-secularization, growing institutional control over hybrid sacred sites, and attempts to review social boundaries between the religious and the secular, these essays give way to an emergent Caucasus viewed from the ground up: dynamic, continually remaking itself, within shifting and indefinite frontiers.
Trade Review “The book makes an important t and welcome contribution to our knowledge of the richness of religious activities in the Caucasus and their entanglements with church and state.” • JRAI
“There are a number of interesting subjects discussed in the contributions to this broadly based volume that usefully point to some fields of research around sacred places which could well do with further examination.” • JASO
“Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces is a remarkable book that advances our understanding of the hybridity of the sacred and its interactions with the state in contexts where these relations are still extremely fluid.” • Europe-Asia Studies
“…the most striking feature of this volume is the role played by nonhuman actors, the shrines themselves... [It is] a dynamic ethnographic picture of a crucial moment of desecularization in a neglected area of the world.” • Reading Religion
“…a necessary book for researchers of religion in the Caucasus and beyond that for researching folk religiosity more generally. It is suitable for students as an introduction and is warmly recommended for all who are interested in the Caucasus.” • Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West
“This volume shares in a rich resurgence of writing on religious activity across the former Soviet Union and particularly in areas of the Caucasus, offering sharp insight into arguably one of the most popular religious traditions, shrine pilgrimage, about which we know surprisingly little. The editors have gathered the highly qualified scholars for the task, including a number of specialists from the Caucasus proper.” • Bruce Grant, New York University
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried and Kevin Tuite
Chapter 1. Between ‘Great’ and ‘Little' Traditions? Situating Shia Saints in Contemporary Baku
Tsypylma Darieva
Chapter 2. Women as Bread-Bakers and Ritual-Makers: Gender, Visibility and Sacred Space in Upper Svaneti
Nino Tserediani, Kevin Tuite and Paata Bukhrashvili
Chapter 3. The Chain of Seven Pilgrimages in Kotaik, Armenia: Between Folk and Official Christianity
Levon Abrahamian, Zaruhi Hambardzumyan, Gayane Shagoyan, and Gohar Stepanyan
Chapter 4. Sacred Sites in the Western Caucasus and the Black Sea Region: Typology, Hybridization, Functioning
Igor V. Kuznetsov
Chapter 5. The Power of the Shrine and Creative Performances in Ingiloy Sacred Rituals
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne
Chapter 6. Accompanying the Souls of the Dead: The Transformation of Sacral Time and Encounters
Hege Toje
Chapter 7. Not Sharing the Sacra
Florian Mühlfried
Chapter 8. Informal Shrines and Social Transformations: The Murids as New Religious Mediators among Yezidis in Armenia
Hamlet Melkumyan
Chapter 9. Sharing the Not-Sacred: Rabati and Displays of Multiculturalism
Silvia Serrano
Index
