Material and Embodied Religion
Humans do religion with their bodies and senses, making and using all sorts of material forms, such as buildings, images, food, and books. This materialist stance goes further than unmasking religion as illusory and calls attention to the actual physical and corporeal forms which are necessary to make religion, connecting believers and evoking a sense of the real presence of gods and spirits.
While religions point to an invisible realm, they are tangibly manifest in past and present societies through a profuse material culture and body practices. This is an important starting point for understanding the rise of conflicts between adherents of different religions about, for instance, contested sacred sites or representations as well as between religious and secular standpoints in current societies across the globe.
We address questions such as: How do religious convictions get under the skin of believers, forming their habitus? In what ways do religious ideas shape sexuality and gender, affirming or challenging conservative norms? Which role do images and objects play in rendering the divine tangible for those using them? Why do they become targets for destruction? How does secularity affect how religions materialise and operate in society? In what ways do the publicly present material expressions of religion, for example clothing or food taboos, become a bone of contention in multi-religious societies? How can a material perspective help to unravel conflicts between and about religions?
Researchers
- Ethics, Freedom of Religion, Political Philosophy, Religion in the Public Sphere, Religious Studies, Critical Theory, Democracy, Social Justice, Environmental Humanities
- Religion and Gender
- Religious Pluralism, Cultural Heritage, Religion and Conflict, Youth, Anthropology of Religion, Africa
- Material Religion, Cultural Heritage, Religion in the Public Sphere, Religion and Media, Postcolonial Criticism, Christian Missions in West Africa, Pentecostalism, Lived Religion, The Senses, Aesthetics, Globalisation, Popular Culture, Visual Culture
dr. Katja Rakow
Email: k.rakow@uu.nl- Material Religion, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in the United States and Singapore, Buddhist Modernism, Tibetan Buddhism (in the West)
- Material Religion, Religion and Gender, Religion and Media, Religion and Conflict, Muslims in Europe, Islam, Pluralism, Social History
- Catholicism, Leadership, Masculinity, Dutch History of Religion, New Testament, Ecumenical Theology, Old Catholicism, Religion and Gender, Early Church, Rituals, Dutch History of Religion, Ecumenical Theology
- Secularism, Political Philosophy, Anthropology of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Religious Pluralism, Visual Culture, Material Religion, Freedom of Religion, Public Religion and Politics, Religious Tolerance
Postdocs
- Anthropology, Museum Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Africa
- Cultural Heritage, Anthropology of Religion, Material Religion, Lived Religion, Religion and Media, Religion in the Public Sphere, Christian Missions in West Africa, Pentecostalism, African indigenous religions, Africa, African diaspora in Europe, Popular Culture, Globalisation, Anthropology, Ethnographic Fieldwork, Postcolonial Criticism, Race and Racism, Decoloniality, Critical Race Studies, Identity and Cultural Diversity
PhDs
- Anthropology of Religion
- Ethnomusicology, Anthropology of Religion, Material Religion, Music and Material Culture, Anthropology
- Audiovisual Arts, Catholicism, Lived Religion, Material Religion, Education, Didactics, Visual and Material Culture
