Geraldine Mossiere
Université de Montréal, Institut d'études religieuses, Faculty Member
- I am anthropologist and I am associate profesor at the Institut d'études religieuses of the University of Montrealedit
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
This article is based on life stories collected between 2014 and 2018 among a population of baby boomers of French Canadian descent, whose personal path echoes the social and political history of the province. Following their... more
This article is based on life stories collected between 2014 and 2018 among a population of baby boomers of French Canadian descent, whose personal path echoes the social and political history of the province. Following their socialization in a Catholic context, this generation has known a rapid phase of secularization, modernization and diversification that, since the end of the 1960s, have impacted the local social and political landscape of the province. The entanglement between individual and collective experiences shapes a particular rhetoric on the « laïc » (secularist) project in Quebec that hinges on memories of Catholicism, concern for gender equity and pluralist ethics. Drawing on Maclure and Taylor’s model of open and closed secularism, the author discuss the means and ends of the moral principles underlying baby boomers’ narratives.
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Although contemporary conversions to Islam have been widely documented, few studies have explored what embracing Islam means in terms of lived religion. Following Michel Foucault and Talal Asad’s genealogies of the concept of conversion,... more
Although contemporary conversions to Islam have been widely documented, few studies have explored what embracing Islam means in terms of lived religion. Following Michel Foucault and Talal Asad’s genealogies of the concept of conversion, I address conversion to Islam as a process that models, shapes, and builds the ethical subject. The narratives I have collected among converts to Islam in France and Quebec indicate that their choice of Islam is part of a project of improving the self and restoring social identity and status. I therefore propose to consider conversions as hermeneutics of the self and to revisit the heuristic value of the concept beyond the influence of the Christian paradigm. Such a framework allows us to understand how conversions may shape subjectivities and induce alternative moralities in contexts of high vulnerability.
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Aux États-Unis où ils sont abondamment étudiés, les musulmans noirs américains interprètent l’islam comme un motif d’ordre et de dignité, générant un sentiment de fierté, d’appartenance et de discipline. Dans les espaces périphériques à... more
Aux États-Unis où ils sont abondamment étudiés, les musulmans noirs américains interprètent l’islam comme un motif d’ordre et de dignité, générant un sentiment de fierté, d’appartenance et de discipline. Dans les espaces périphériques à la société dominante, l’islam apparaît donc comme un vecteur d’ascension sociale pour des acteurs dévalorisés dans leur environnement socioéconomique. La religion est ici pensée comme un garde-fou qui, tout en protégeant des comportements délinquants ou dévian..
Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Physics, Islam, France, and 6 moreSociologie, Canada, Conversion, Sciences sociales, Rel, and Hram
Similar conservative discourses on marriage, sexuality, and gender emerge from two waves of fieldwork that were conducted in Quebec (Canada) among young female converts to Islam and young Pentecostal women. The narratives support the... more
Similar conservative discourses on marriage, sexuality, and gender emerge from two waves of fieldwork that were conducted in Quebec (Canada) among young female converts to Islam and young Pentecostal women. The narratives support the broader literature on women who have embraced orthodox-style religions and find in the theology of submission the normative means and space to develop their own individual agency. This chapter explores the current conservative renewal from the perspective of young female Muslims and Pentecostals. I first explore their discourses regarding marriage, divorce, sexuality, chastity, and family, which shape representations of both men and women. I then examine the complexity, nuances, and contradictions of these narratives (dialectics of modernity and tradition, rupture and continuity) in which pious women construct an alternative femininity and their own understanding of feminism as an ideology of empowerment that draws on moral normativity.
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Research Interests: Religion, Humanities, Art, Migration, Anthropologie, and 4 moreEthnologie, émotion, Corps, and Rituel
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En examinant une forme de conversion en apparence marginale, les processus d’entree dans l’islam, cette contribution vise a repenser la valeur heuristique du concept de conversion au-dela de l’influence du paradigme chretien. Apres avoir... more
En examinant une forme de conversion en apparence marginale, les processus d’entree dans l’islam, cette contribution vise a repenser la valeur heuristique du concept de conversion au-dela de l’influence du paradigme chretien. Apres avoir identifie quelques caracteristiques des changements de religion actuels, nous referons a la genealogie du concept de conversion formulee par Michel Foucault pour proposer un modele d’hermeneutique du soi permettant de rendre compte des mobilites religieuses contemporaines motivees par des projets de transformation du soi. Les notions d’experience, de performance et de ritualisation qui sont au cœur de ces operations exercees sur le soi contribuent a la creation d’un sujet croyant, ethique et moral.
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En nous appuyant sur une méthode mixte qui combine des sources primaires à des données empiriques collectées de façon extensive auprès d’intervenants en soins spirituels depuis 2012 au Québec, nous présentons les conditions d’émergence de... more
En nous appuyant sur une méthode mixte qui combine des sources primaires à des données empiriques collectées de façon extensive auprès d’intervenants en soins spirituels depuis 2012 au Québec, nous présentons les conditions d’émergence de cette profession dans les milieux de santé. Il apparait que cette nouvelle figure du soin offre un laboratoire fécond pour mieux saisir la mécanique de cette réalité fluctuante que constitue la spiritualité contemporaine. Nous soutenons que la vision normalisatrice du soin véhiculée actuellement dans les milieux de soins et par ricochet, dans les soins spirituels, situe le concept de spiritualité au croisement d’une conception du caring entendu sous la forme d’un humanisme qui se déploie et se réalise dans la rencontre et l’accompagnement de l’Autre d’une part, et de la réactualisation d’une représentation naturelle et universelle de la religion célébrée autour de la notion de la spiritualité d’autre part.
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Drawing on Foucault’s concept of ‘political spirituality’, I show how some new young converts to Islam interpret being Muslim within a framework that positions them as agents at the forefront of new social and political forces of change.... more
Drawing on Foucault’s concept of ‘political spirituality’, I
show how some new young converts to Islam interpret
being Muslim within a framework that positions them as
agents at the forefront of new social and political forces of
change. My ethnographic research took place among
young people who have embraced Islam or feel attracted
to this religion in the Canadian province of Quebec, where
Muslims constitute a small percentage of the population.
Based on my findings, I examine cases of new Muslims who
have appropriated Islamic beliefs and practices as a form of
‘counter-conduct’ that, recalling Foucault’s concept of
‘political spirituality’, conveys alternative ideological, social,
and ecological orders, specifically in terms of social justice
and equity. I show that their commitment derives from a
specific understanding of social activism that relies on the
inner work of the individual. Following the postulate of the
British Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, I argue
that youth offers a vantage point from which to grasp
general social transformations. My interlocutors’ paths
within or toward Islam are part of an original process of
constructing a specific youth sub-culture within Western
secular societies through which they introduce new
patterns of community or sociality.
show how some new young converts to Islam interpret
being Muslim within a framework that positions them as
agents at the forefront of new social and political forces of
change. My ethnographic research took place among
young people who have embraced Islam or feel attracted
to this religion in the Canadian province of Quebec, where
Muslims constitute a small percentage of the population.
Based on my findings, I examine cases of new Muslims who
have appropriated Islamic beliefs and practices as a form of
‘counter-conduct’ that, recalling Foucault’s concept of
‘political spirituality’, conveys alternative ideological, social,
and ecological orders, specifically in terms of social justice
and equity. I show that their commitment derives from a
specific understanding of social activism that relies on the
inner work of the individual. Following the postulate of the
British Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, I argue
that youth offers a vantage point from which to grasp
general social transformations. My interlocutors’ paths
within or toward Islam are part of an original process of
constructing a specific youth sub-culture within Western
secular societies through which they introduce new
patterns of community or sociality.
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Spirituality has recently taken on new importance on the religious landscape as well as in popular and secular discourse and in the field of social sciences. As a new religious expression, spirituality often intersects with contemporary... more
Spirituality has recently taken on new importance on the religious landscape as well as in popular and secular discourse and in the field of social sciences. As a new religious expression, spirituality often intersects with contemporary concerns. What are the political implications of contemporary spirituality movements that are more than often framed under the guise of individualized and distanced religiosity? To what extend do these religious behaviors involve public and political demands? How can these overall
Research Interests: Spirituality and Politics
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As the epiphenomenon of a current malaise de civilisation, spiritual retreats epitomise the manifold quests for personal well-being as well as an existential longing for harmony that are based in the sacralisation of everyday life. This... more
As the epiphenomenon of a current malaise de civilisation, spiritual retreats epitomise the manifold quests for personal well-being as well as an existential longing for harmony that are based in the sacralisation of everyday life. This chapter shows that these spiritual quests for a fantasised elsewhere echo and catalyse individuals’ journeys within the frame of an hermeneutic of the self that draws on issues of authenticity and authority. This process is transposed into a space and time matrix where the geographical circulation parallels a circular view of time. If spiritual retreats have sacralised the orientalist encounter with alterity, in postcolonial and globalised settings, they resituate the tension between the seeker and the local in a space of creativity that is promoted by the shared experience of co-presence in the world.
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Drawing on an ethnography among Quebecois and French female new Muslims, I consider how converts epitomize and embody the “encounter” between Muslim and western societies. By choosing Islam, converts position themselves on the margins,... more
Drawing on an ethnography among Quebecois and French female new Muslims, I consider how converts epitomize and embody the “encounter” between Muslim and western societies. By choosing Islam, converts position themselves on the margins, giving them a unique perspective on the “West.” My participants’ reflexive narratives hinge on continuity/disruption dialectics that dissolve the commonly held dichotomy between Sameness and Otherness. In analyzing these narratives, I view subjectivity as a rhetorical construction and elaborate upon converts’ daily intimate encounters and dialogues with Otherness in social spaces. In light of Simmel’s figure of the Stranger based on distance and proximity, I show that converts’ experiences echo the “pacific coexistence” that Muslim and European populations have experienced historically. I argue that narratives are crucial to understanding how Islam—as a political and symbolic language of Otherness—can help frame and profile emergent western subjects and identities.
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Drawing on fieldwork conducted among converts to Islam (France and Quebec), this article focuses on women who are in unions with partners of Muslim background. As these women commit to make a union based on shared religious identity, they... more
Drawing on fieldwork conducted among converts to Islam (France and Quebec), this article focuses on women who are in unions with partners of Muslim background. As these women commit to make a union based on shared religious identity, they face the double challenge of learning to be a Muslim and of transmitting identity to the children. Addressing these issues opens a space of ongoing negotiations within the couple (sometimes involving the in-laws) over the definition of the ‘authentic’ Islam, and the articulation between religion and ethnicity. These conjugal debates create new areas of mixedness through women’s own identification processes as Muslim and French or Quebecois. This negotiation is framed by the social and cultural capital each partner is granted in their specific context of living, including experiences of having minority status, as well as by the specific representations each partner draws on the ethnicity and space of origin of the other.
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Research Interests: Sociology and Philosophy
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Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Anthropology, Humanities, Narrative, and 12 morePerformance, Ethnology, Islam, France, Quebec, Woman, Conversion, Anthropologie, Ethnologie, Récit, Québec, and Femme
Page 1. Emotional Dimensions of Conversion: An African Evangelical Congregation in MontrealGeraldine Mossiere Universite of Montreal ... process activated by emotional experiences which involve 114 / Geraldine Mossiere Anthropologica 49... more
Page 1. Emotional Dimensions of Conversion: An African Evangelical Congregation in MontrealGeraldine Mossiere Universite of Montreal ... process activated by emotional experiences which involve 114 / Geraldine Mossiere Anthropologica 49 (2007) Page 3. ...
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This article discusses the contemporary figures of the ritual bricoleur (amateur ritual crafter) and the ritualist artist. Distanced from religious institutions, these practitioners are creative and innovative in the ritualization of... more
This article discusses the contemporary figures of the ritual bricoleur (amateur ritual crafter) and the ritualist artist. Distanced from religious institutions, these practitioners are creative and innovative in the ritualization of daily life and the life cycle. Based on two bodies of data from ethnographic research conducted in Quebec, the authors analyze the initiatives of these self-taught ritualists in an ascending order of virtuosity, drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s categorization of creative modalities in the field of culture (ideotypes of the bricoleur and the artist). Ethnographic exploration of these emerging ritual practices highlights the dynamics of a post-institutional type of religious regime associated with the rise of holistic spiritualities and personal growth. These new and seemingly disparate ritual practices aim at the transformation of the subjects’ interiority while reorganizing their relationship to the other, to the sacred and to the world according to a holistic...
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Au moment de notre première rencontre au Québec, Mélissa vient à peine de rompre son union avec un musulman d’origine maghrébine. Elle souligne avec fermeté qu’elle n’abandonnera pas l’islam à la suite de cette séparation. Reproduisant un... more
Au moment de notre première rencontre au Québec, Mélissa vient à peine de rompre son union avec un musulman d’origine maghrébine. Elle souligne avec fermeté qu’elle n’abandonnera pas l’islam à la suite de cette séparation. Reproduisant un discours semblable à celui de plusieurs autres répondantes, elle rappelle les points communs existant entre islam et christianisme, soulignant par là la continuité entre ses nouvelles croyances et son héritage identitaire. Lors de notre seconde rencontre que..
Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Islam, France, Sociologie, and 5 moreCanada, Conversion, Sciences sociales, Rel, and Hram
Cet article envisage la conversion religieuse a l’islam en France aujourd’hui au prisme des recompositions identitaires qui marquent l’entree dans une nouvelle communaute. A partir d’entretiens et d’observations menes depuis plus de 10... more
Cet article envisage la conversion religieuse a l’islam en France aujourd’hui au prisme des recompositions identitaires qui marquent l’entree dans une nouvelle communaute. A partir d’entretiens et d’observations menes depuis plus de 10 ans, nous montrons comment s’opere l’accueil des convertis dans leur groupe d’adoption. Nous portons egalement un regard attentif aux recompositions qui touchent l’ancien monde des convertis et notamment a la nature des relations qu’ils entretiennent avec leurs proches apres l’annonce de la conversion.
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Les baby-boomers ont-ils jeté le religieux avec l’eau bénite ? Sont-ils vraiment athées ? Comment donnent-ils un sens aux grands événements du cycle de la vie ? Que cache l’invisibilité ou même le tabou du religieux au Québec après le... more
Les baby-boomers ont-ils jeté le religieux avec l’eau bénite ? Sont-ils vraiment athées ? Comment donnent-ils un sens aux grands événements du cycle de la vie ? Que cache l’invisibilité ou même le tabou du religieux au Québec après le déclin du catholicisme ? Bref : que reste-t-il de l’héritage du catholicisme auprès de la génération issue du baby-boom ? À partir de récits de vie recueillis auprès d’une centaine de Québécois nés catholiques dans les années 1950, les auteurs explorent la recherche de sens des expériences individuelles et collectives. En dépit de l’invisibilité du religieux sur la place publique, la plupart des personnes rencontrées affichent des croyances et des pratiques qui leur sont propres. Si ces dernières empruntent à divers registres religieux inspirés de la diversité culturelle, la mémoire et l’éducation catholiques restent présentes dans les récits comme dans les pratiques, parfois teintée du vocable de la spiritualité.
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Les baby-boomers ont-ils jeté le religieux avec l’eau bénite ? Sont-ils vraiment athées ? Comment donnent-ils un sens aux grands événements du cycle de la vie ? Que cache l’invisibilité ou même le tabou du religieux au Québec après le... more
Les baby-boomers ont-ils jeté le religieux avec l’eau bénite ? Sont-ils vraiment athées ? Comment donnent-ils un sens aux grands événements du cycle de la vie ? Que cache l’invisibilité ou même le tabou du religieux au Québec après le déclin du catholicisme ? Bref : que reste-t-il de l’héritage
du catholicisme auprès de la génération issue du baby-boom ? À partir de récits de vie recueillis auprès d’une centaine de Québécois nés catholiques dans les années 1950, les auteurs explorent la recherche de sens des expériences individuelles et collectives. En dépit de l’invisibilité du religieux sur la place publique, la plupart des personnes rencontrées affichent des croyances et des pratiques qui leur sont propres. Si ces dernières empruntent à divers registres religieux inspirés de la diversité culturelle, la mémoire et l’éducation catholiques restent présentes dans les récits comme dans les pratiques, parfois teintée du vocable de la spiritualité.
du catholicisme auprès de la génération issue du baby-boom ? À partir de récits de vie recueillis auprès d’une centaine de Québécois nés catholiques dans les années 1950, les auteurs explorent la recherche de sens des expériences individuelles et collectives. En dépit de l’invisibilité du religieux sur la place publique, la plupart des personnes rencontrées affichent des croyances et des pratiques qui leur sont propres. Si ces dernières empruntent à divers registres religieux inspirés de la diversité culturelle, la mémoire et l’éducation catholiques restent présentes dans les récits comme dans les pratiques, parfois teintée du vocable de la spiritualité.