Books by Magdalena Lubanska
Praktyki lecznicze w prawosławnych monasterach w Bułgarii. Perspektywa antropologii (post)sekularnej, 2019
The book is a survey and analysis of ritual practices undertaken “for health” by the Bulgarian fa... more The book is a survey and analysis of ritual practices undertaken “for health” by the Bulgarian faithful in Orthodox monasteries. . These activities include incubation, ablution in healing springs, interacting with sacred objects, the so-called Cyprian prayers, the sacrament of anointing with oils, consuming blessed food and making offerings (kurbans). The specific character of these practices has been portrayed both in the synchronic dimension and in the diachronic one, based on (post)secular anthropological theory.
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The book by Magdalena Lubanska examines the role of religious syncretism in the social and religi... more The book by Magdalena Lubanska examines the role of religious syncretism in the social and religious life of Muslim-Christian communities in the Western Rhodopes. The author is interested mainly in the origins and motivations of various beliefs and behaviors which at first sight may appear to be syncretic. She looks at syncretism in the context of anti-syncretic tendencies, particularly pronounced among the Muslim neophytes and young members of the Muslim religious elite, who are not interested in the local forms of post-ottoman Islam (“Adat Islam”), preferring instead a “pure” form of religion, a class of fundamentalist religious movements rooted in orthodox Islam and seeking to remain faithful to mainstream Islamic thought and tradition (“Salafi Islam”). Lubanska findings offer an insight into the fact that although certain actions may appear syncretic in nature, their underlying intentions are often not in fact motivated by syncretic tendencies. This is the first study to look at syncretism in Bulgaria from this perspective.
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Papers by Magdalena Lubanska
Slavia Meridionalis, 20, 2020
The article discusses the issue of the postsecular turn in contemporary anthropology, taking into... more The article discusses the issue of the postsecular turn in contemporary anthropology, taking into account the cultural processes involved in its emergence. The author attempts to identify research areas and issues worthy of exploring within this turn, and at the same
time she considers the boundary conditions for its usefulness in scientific research. Referring to the recent anthropological literature on this topic, the author distinguishes two leading epistemological attitudes involved in this turn: the one that acknowledges the supernatural dimension of revelation and the one that sees it as a social fact. Both are heterogenous
and each sees the relationship between anthropology and theology differently. Discussing some anthropological views in this regard, the author aims to revive the dialogue between researchers from various social and human sciences representing the postsecular turn.
On the one hand, this dialogue can initiate new paths of mutual inspiration and co-thinking; on the other hand, it may lead to more conscious distinctions between different varieties of postsecular reflection.
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Nie-miejsca pamięci 2. Nekrotopologie, red. R. Sendyka, M. Kobielska, J. Muchowski, A. Szczepan, Warszawa: IBL PAN,s. 249-284., 2020
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Nie-miejsca pamięci. 1. Nekrotopografie, red. R. Sendyka, M. Kobielska, J. Muchowski, A. Szczepan, Warszawa: IBL PAN, ss. 307-330., 2020
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This article applies a methodology developed within the framework of postsecular anthropology to ... more This article applies a methodology developed within the framework of postsecular anthropology to a case study based on field material collected in 2015–2017 in and around Przeworsk, a town in the region of Subcarpathia in south-eastern Poland. The collected material documents the current post-memory of atrocities committed in the Dębrzyna forest in 1945–46. The killings were perpetrated in a turbulent period that followed World War II, which can be described, following Zaremba, as a time of “Great Fear”, or Agamben’s term “state of exception”. At the time, some members of the local population formed gangs to commit assaults and robberies against forced labourers returning to their homeland from Germany (or from the West generally). According to my respondents, many such assaults resulted in deaths. Homeless,
socially unmoored and unprotected by law, the victims were reduced to the status of a purely biological “bare life”. My article will show how the victims of those events are commemorated, and how the post-memory of those events finds its expression today. My interpretive tools are based primarily on selected postsecular theories. In this context I apply the categories of ontological penumbra and counterpoint to identify those instances where religion finds itself compelled to rely on secular diction out of a sense of powerlessness and inability to use the religious idiom for articulating problematic ideas related to suffering.
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"Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies", 2021
This article focuses on the role of healing fabrics in contemporary practices of Bulgarian pilgri... more This article focuses on the role of healing fabrics in contemporary practices of Bulgarian pilgrims who visit churches or monasteries hoping to be filled with energies believed to be present there. In order to be able to draw on the effects of miraculous objects (icons, relics) longer, the faithful often temporarily leave clothes or towels next to them, thus enabling their transformation from ordinary objects into transmitters of sacred powers. They also ask priests to bless fabrics with holy water, to anoint them or to pray over them, thus enhancing their healing properties.
I analyze the use of healing fabrics as I try to capture ontological assumptions of their efficacy. An analysis of ethnographic data is preceded by a theoretical introduction in which I highlight the linkage between the orthopraxis of modern-day pilgrims and Byzantine religious sensorium as perpetuated in Eastern Orthodox theology, liturgical rites, iconography, and religious literature popular in Bulgaria
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Slavia Meridionalis
This article looks at veneration of healing springs (ayazma) in Orthodox Christian churches and m... more This article looks at veneration of healing springs (ayazma) in Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries in the region of Plovdiv and Asenovgrad (Bulgaria) to raise the problem of its connections to Byzantine, Greek and Ottoman religious cultures of Constantinople/Istanbul. My argument is based on the fieldwork and archival research I conducted in 2012–2014 to seek an answer to a research question that had kept me intrigued for over a decade: namely, what is the meaning, in practical terms, of the claim frequently made by Orthodox Christians that the various religious rituals they engaged in (with the exception of funerary ones) were practiced “for health” (za zdrave).
https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/sm/article/view/sm.1252/0
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This article offers an anthropological analysis of a conflict over the use of a set of 'healing c... more This article offers an anthropological analysis of a conflict over the use of a set of 'healing chains' and other focal objects kept in the Orthodox Christian monastery of Saints Kosmas and Damian in Kuklen, Bulgaria. In a nutshell, the conflict captures the leading religious imageries propagated by the custodians of the monastery on the one hand, and the spiritual leaders of a new religious movement, so-called Deunovians, on the other. The analysis helps situate some of the significant changes currently affecting the religious culture of Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria within a broader social and cultural context.
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Anthropology of East Europe Review, 2017
The article describes sensational forms connected with the cult of healing waters, as found in Or... more The article describes sensational forms connected with the cult of healing waters, as found in Orthodox Christian religious communities of southwestern Bulgaria. Referring to the concept of the porous self, I analyze how and why Orthodox Christian devotees in Bulgaria attribute a life-giving force (zhivonosna/zhivotvorna) to the healing springs (ayazma) found in the monastery, and how they use those for ablutions and drinking, thereby hoping to increase their personal vitality. The data is discussed from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. This is done to draw distinct cultural parallels between current practices at the healing springs at the monastery, the iconography of Bogoroditsa the Life-Giving Spring, and the cult established at the monastery of the Mother of God of the Spring (Zoodohos Pege) in Constantinople, attested since the medieval period. Rooted in an emic Orthodox Christian understanding of the concept of life-giving forces, this analysis is anthropologically significant in its demonstration that life-giving force is viewed as an underlying concept that manifests itself as divine power, grace or energy, all of which are key terms in the Orthodox Christian religious lexicon.
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Ethnologia Polona vol.38, 2017
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Journal of Global Catholicism vol.2, 2017
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Journal of Global Catholicism, 2018
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Journal of Global Catholicism, 2018
My paper will provide an account of the religious imageries (T. Csordas) and practices of Catholi... more My paper will provide an account of the religious imageries (T. Csordas) and practices of Catholic devotees from the Basilica of the Holy Spirit with whom I made pilgrimage on foot to the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation at Jodłówka in August 2017. My account positions those imaginaries and practices within a broader contextual spectrum in order to move beyond events or conversations which were directly connected with the pilgrimage. To gain a better understanding of the religious needs of the pilgrims I spent time with some of them afterwards. Among other things, I attended masses involving healing services and charismatic prayer meetings. This way I was able to observe the important of sensory-based practices related to a belief in the "porous self" (Ch. Taylor). The devotees express that belief by, on the one hand, viewing themselves as being vulnerable to evil powers, and, on the other hand, by believing that they can remedy this danger by opening up to the influence of the Holy Spirit and by using water or exorcised oil blessed during a healing service. My paper will demonstrate the various ways in which belief in the porous self becomes objectivised, and its importance within the religious imageries of that group of devotees.
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The article focuses on underrepresentation of Orthodox Christianity in anthropological research, ... more The article focuses on underrepresentation of Orthodox Christianity in anthropological research, as well as on shortcomings of anthropological theory. Currently, anthropology is lacking analytical and theoretical tools for researching Orthodoxy as a religious doctrine in relation to its various practices of social life. The anthropology of Christianity, a relatively new subfield of anthropology of religion, develops theories based chiefly on research conducted in the Catholic and (neo)Protestant societies. In so doing, it neglects the Orthodox perspective. Anthropology, the product of a “unique Western historicity” – in Asad’s words – has been insufficiently reflexive concerning its own origins in Western social thought and (Western) Christian theology, which still presents methodological and theoretical obstacle in researching Eastern Christianity. The latter has been a periphery of anthropological interests, both as a research site and as a point from which anthropological definitions are formulated. The article seeks to deconstruct certain anthropological assumptions and premises leading to the current state of affairs, and to systematise the state-of-the-art of anthropology of Christianity and the anthropology of Orthodox Christianity.
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Etnografia Polska, 2017
My article explores Muslim-Christian borderlands in the Balkans to discuss a geographic area wher... more My article explores Muslim-Christian borderlands in the Balkans to discuss a geographic area where a strategy of coexistence is imposed on local inhabitants based on good neighbourly relations (komşuluk) and a(nta)gonistic tolerance. Antagonistic tolerance is a term and a research model proposed by Robert Hayden. It refers to the phenomenon of ‘competitive sharing’ in shared holy sites, which can be treated as ‘indicators of political dominance, or challenges to it’ (Hayden, Walker 2013, p. 413). Although I find Hayden’s model very inspiring, in my opinion the term ‘antagonistic tolerance’ needlessly restricts the range of situations that may occur in shared holy sites. Therefore I replace this term with Hayden’s original and discarded coinage ‘agonistic tolerance’.
I discuss the local cultural practices of komşuluk and agonistic tolerance from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. In terms of the diachronic perspective, I draw attention to the Ottoman origins of such coexistence, the longue durée of the phenomenon, and its prevalence throughout the Balkans. I also identify those historical periods in which peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians broke down in response to changing power relations between the two groups. The synchronic perspective offers a way to show how the two groups coexisting within the same areas manage to negotiate cultural meanings while preserving distinct religious identities. I demonstrate how the post-memory that separates the two groups pushes them to maintain good neighbourly relations, but also alerts them to the impact of politics on their mutual relations. I discuss a(nta)gonistic tolerance with regard to the practice of holy sites shared between Muslims and Christians, whose pluralist nature may be under pressure given the current tendency in the Balkans to purge the local varieties of Islam and Christianity of their Ottoman elements.
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Books by Magdalena Lubanska
Papers by Magdalena Lubanska
time she considers the boundary conditions for its usefulness in scientific research. Referring to the recent anthropological literature on this topic, the author distinguishes two leading epistemological attitudes involved in this turn: the one that acknowledges the supernatural dimension of revelation and the one that sees it as a social fact. Both are heterogenous
and each sees the relationship between anthropology and theology differently. Discussing some anthropological views in this regard, the author aims to revive the dialogue between researchers from various social and human sciences representing the postsecular turn.
On the one hand, this dialogue can initiate new paths of mutual inspiration and co-thinking; on the other hand, it may lead to more conscious distinctions between different varieties of postsecular reflection.
socially unmoored and unprotected by law, the victims were reduced to the status of a purely biological “bare life”. My article will show how the victims of those events are commemorated, and how the post-memory of those events finds its expression today. My interpretive tools are based primarily on selected postsecular theories. In this context I apply the categories of ontological penumbra and counterpoint to identify those instances where religion finds itself compelled to rely on secular diction out of a sense of powerlessness and inability to use the religious idiom for articulating problematic ideas related to suffering.
I analyze the use of healing fabrics as I try to capture ontological assumptions of their efficacy. An analysis of ethnographic data is preceded by a theoretical introduction in which I highlight the linkage between the orthopraxis of modern-day pilgrims and Byzantine religious sensorium as perpetuated in Eastern Orthodox theology, liturgical rites, iconography, and religious literature popular in Bulgaria
https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/sm/article/view/sm.1252/0
I discuss the local cultural practices of komşuluk and agonistic tolerance from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. In terms of the diachronic perspective, I draw attention to the Ottoman origins of such coexistence, the longue durée of the phenomenon, and its prevalence throughout the Balkans. I also identify those historical periods in which peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians broke down in response to changing power relations between the two groups. The synchronic perspective offers a way to show how the two groups coexisting within the same areas manage to negotiate cultural meanings while preserving distinct religious identities. I demonstrate how the post-memory that separates the two groups pushes them to maintain good neighbourly relations, but also alerts them to the impact of politics on their mutual relations. I discuss a(nta)gonistic tolerance with regard to the practice of holy sites shared between Muslims and Christians, whose pluralist nature may be under pressure given the current tendency in the Balkans to purge the local varieties of Islam and Christianity of their Ottoman elements.
time she considers the boundary conditions for its usefulness in scientific research. Referring to the recent anthropological literature on this topic, the author distinguishes two leading epistemological attitudes involved in this turn: the one that acknowledges the supernatural dimension of revelation and the one that sees it as a social fact. Both are heterogenous
and each sees the relationship between anthropology and theology differently. Discussing some anthropological views in this regard, the author aims to revive the dialogue between researchers from various social and human sciences representing the postsecular turn.
On the one hand, this dialogue can initiate new paths of mutual inspiration and co-thinking; on the other hand, it may lead to more conscious distinctions between different varieties of postsecular reflection.
socially unmoored and unprotected by law, the victims were reduced to the status of a purely biological “bare life”. My article will show how the victims of those events are commemorated, and how the post-memory of those events finds its expression today. My interpretive tools are based primarily on selected postsecular theories. In this context I apply the categories of ontological penumbra and counterpoint to identify those instances where religion finds itself compelled to rely on secular diction out of a sense of powerlessness and inability to use the religious idiom for articulating problematic ideas related to suffering.
I analyze the use of healing fabrics as I try to capture ontological assumptions of their efficacy. An analysis of ethnographic data is preceded by a theoretical introduction in which I highlight the linkage between the orthopraxis of modern-day pilgrims and Byzantine religious sensorium as perpetuated in Eastern Orthodox theology, liturgical rites, iconography, and religious literature popular in Bulgaria
https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/sm/article/view/sm.1252/0
I discuss the local cultural practices of komşuluk and agonistic tolerance from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. In terms of the diachronic perspective, I draw attention to the Ottoman origins of such coexistence, the longue durée of the phenomenon, and its prevalence throughout the Balkans. I also identify those historical periods in which peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians broke down in response to changing power relations between the two groups. The synchronic perspective offers a way to show how the two groups coexisting within the same areas manage to negotiate cultural meanings while preserving distinct religious identities. I demonstrate how the post-memory that separates the two groups pushes them to maintain good neighbourly relations, but also alerts them to the impact of politics on their mutual relations. I discuss a(nta)gonistic tolerance with regard to the practice of holy sites shared between Muslims and Christians, whose pluralist nature may be under pressure given the current tendency in the Balkans to purge the local varieties of Islam and Christianity of their Ottoman elements.
This article focuses on religious healing practices in the monastery of St Menas in Sofia, Bulgaria which involve the touching of a famous miracle-working icon of a saint. I use the practice as a springboard for discussing the relevance of two anthropological concepts known as “sensualism” (Polish: sensualizm) and “non-differentiation” (Polish: nierozróżnialność) for describing multi-sensory religious imageries of pilgrims. The concept of sensualism was first proposed by Stanisław Czarnowski and relates to religious practice centred primarily on sensory experience. Non-differentiation as an anthropological concept has been adapted from Gadamer by the Polish anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir. The two concepts have
been applied to analyses of non-official practices in Catholic religiosity, a fact which poses certain methodological problems when the concepts are applied to Orthodox Christianity. This article relies on the Orthodox theological concept of the icon to propose a revision to our treatment of those two useful concepts.