PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS - Università degli Studi di Messina

PANEL 8
Tue 15 th , 15.00-17.00, Classroom 5
Tuula Sakaranaho - Helena Kupari, University of Helsinki, Finland
Conceptualizing Religiosity: Perspectives of Social Memory
During recent decades an interest in understanding collective or social memory has rapidly
grown in social and cultural studies. Memory as a social phenomenon is usually approached as
a reflexive process in action, which involves different dynamics of producing, conveying,
sustaining and reconstructing shared memory in different contexts. The focus on memory has
also proven very applicable to the study of religious groups, beliefs and practices. This process
emphasizes how people adhering to a religious tradition must presuppose a shared memory of
the past, which in turn is often used to legitimize the present social order. In the sociology of
religion, in particular, the concept of memory has been used as a key to the understanding of
religion in the modern world undergoing the process of secularisation. Moreover, memory
offers a fruitful approach in studying rituals and other performative and embodied experiences
of religion, just to mention a few possible objects of interest. This panel welcomes research on
religion and social or collective memory from a variety of perspectives. In particular, we invite
papers which discuss empirical cases in light of theoretical insights, or theoretical papers as
such.
15.00 Tuula Sakaranaho Religion and Collective Memory. Rhetorical Viewpoints
15.20 Helena Kupari Doing religion - Remembering religion. Social memory in the
lived religion of Orthodox Karelian women
15.40 Heikki Pesonen Religious Foundamentalism, Social Remembering and Social
Identity
16.00 Outi Fingerroos Death, Rituals and the Places of Memory
16.20 Milan Fujda Maintaining tradition differently: Media and the
transformation of religious community
16.40 Discussion
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