Religion and Individualism

Who wanted to become a ‘Roman’ in north-west Italy? Anyone? How did the individual person experience Roman imperialism? How did his or her life change after the Roman conquest, and did it change at all? We need to put ourselves in this position. What would motivate us to change our lifestyle, our habit, our dress, our language and identity so dramatically? We can assume that the top elite in north-west Italy might make use of Roman power structures and Roman symbols of power to consolidate their power. But unlike provinces like Gaul and Britain, this is a process that was taking many generations in Italy in Italy and usually only culminates in the 1st century B.C. and A.D.; Roman symbols of power need to be understood first and still in the bilingual dedication from Vercelli we can see that it was not the dedicant’s aim to express his ‘Romanness’. Instead we can see a long process in which local elites seemingly managed to consolidate their power within the existing sociocultural framework as we can see from the Padane drachma and its iconography, from Lepontic epigraphy and Iron Age material culture (e.g. the vaso a trottola).
But what about other strata of society, like the ‘native’ farmer, trader, and craftsman? Are they really aspiring to take on Roman material culture and lifestyle, culture, humanitas? Many of those sub-elite people were merely trying to survive, trying to make a living in a rapidly changing world. Some were trading on local markets, specialising in goods that yielded the largest profit; others moved to the newly emerging cities, they become parts of guilds (collegia), while others again might join the Roman army. Many would have needed a basic knowledge of Latin to come by in everyday situations. Those people might never have aspired to show themselves as a ‘Roman’, but there must have been group pressures how to act in a particular context (possibly also leading to code switching among many people).Many other sub-elite people were enculturating and getting habituated in the new environment, for example by growing up in a Roman-style cities.
It is therefore necessary to de-construct the traditional theme of ‘Romanisation’ if we want to aspire for a deeper understanding of the changes in Iron Age and Roman north-west Italy. There is not one all-encompassing process, but instead lots of individual developments: there are economic developments (e.g., increasing trade relations; specialisation of production of goods and in agriculture; the monetisation of the economy), there are societal developments (like social and spatial mobility; the grants of ius Latii and Roman citizenship), there are political developments (like the creation of new elites in charge of Roman-style municipalities), there are cultural and religious developments, some of which are a consequence of the former developments, while others are independent. We also need to take into account that Rome herself was changing regarding inter alia the integration of its allies into Roman citizenship, the nature of Roman culture as an increasingly cosmopolitan culture, the promotion of certain imperial and colonial discourses on Rome and the princeps.

Humanity is on the threshold of recognizing the fundamental error in its view of life and death. Both death as well as active life is necessary to the vital formation of a larger, more essential whole. In this paper, I apply the sociology of knowledge and change as it pertains to death and focus on ways in which we can step outside its traditional frameworks and limitations. I also discuss topics related to death such as birth, aging, sickness, and war, and examine cultural differences in attitudes toward death. I offer varying perspectives including the Buddhist view and from these draw implications and conclusions. I apply the lenses of contemporary social scientists such as Edgar Morin, Kenneth Gergen, Edward Stewart, Milton Bennett, Mary Catherine Bateson, E. Doyle McCarthy, Philip Slater, and Piotr Sztompka. To these I add other relevant passages from the writings and speeches of key thinkers on the topic of death, in particular, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator, Daisaku Ikeda. To construct a more humanistic and sustainable view of life, it is first of all crucial to establish a culture which perceives death in its larger living context as but one cycle in the expansive eternity of life.

Much has been said about secularization – the future of religion in modern societies –, but there have been few profound researches on its internal layers and on the most solid and systematic alternatives that followed. In our view, this has had two consequences: constraints of interpretative understanding and of analyticaltheoretical deepening that must and can be overcome. To achieve this goal, we have chosen a research design that encompasses the strategy of thick description as well as the comparative method and we divided the paper in two basic parts. First, we analyse the main substrates of secularization, namely functional differentiation, rationalization, societalization, existential security and diversity, egalitarianism and individualism. Secondly, we introduce one of the most important and most challenging alternative to secularization theories, according to the state of the art –individualization -, examining it in the light of secularization’s central assumptions. At the end of the paper, for a more systematic exam, we compare the main axioms of both theories

Armanno, nicknamed Pungilupo, from Ferrara, Italy, was considered a religiously active person during his life. After his death in 1269, he became venerated as a saint in the cathedral of Ferrara. However, the inquisitors knew that they had received his confession and abjuration in the matter of heresy in 1254 and they had serious suspicions that his heretical contacts had continued even after his abjuration. They gathered a significant body of evidence against him. The canons of Ferrara cathedral reacted and struggled to defend Armanno’s reputation as a holy man. There are several sources on Armanno – among others, detailed notarial testimonies from both parties: on Armanno’s “heretical” statements and practices, on his miracles, on his going to confession and communion. The sources can be read in more than one way. In this paper I attempt to reconstruct Armanno’s individual religiosity (his representations, emotions, and practices) and I confront the results with the concept of religion understood in the Durkheimian way, i.e. as a system of representations and practices where affiliation is understood as membership. I conclude that Armanno’s religiosity was non-doctrinal, practical, indefinite, and anchored in particular situations. Indeed, some of his practices clash with others or with some of his beliefs, and they do not respect the borderlines between religious communities (Cathar vs. Catholic). Armanno’s religiosity was not at all systematic and contrasts deeply with the usual concepts of religion and membership.

Keywords: Armanno Pungilupo; Ferrara; inquisition; inquisitional records; individual religiosity; representations; emotions; practices; concept of religion; concept of membership.
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Zbíral, David, “Osobní religiozita, náboženství a členství: Případ Armanna ‘Pungilupa’ z Ferrary” [Individual Religiosity, Religion, and Membership: The Case of Armanno “Pungilupo” from Ferrara], Religio: Revue pro religionistiku 19/2, 2011, 147-178.

"Cette étude de la conversion et de l’éducation mormones tente de déceler la finalité proposée aux individus qui s’y soumettent, de découvrir leur téléologie. Dans une perspective durkheimienne d’examen méthodique des mécanismes fondamentaux du lien social, la question de la communauté a été introduite pour interroger la raison d’être sociale des choses. Il s’agissait de considérer l’impact des représentations sur le domaine des pratiques, du vécu, et de l’insertion dans le monde – avec un regard spécial sur la mormon way of life, héritière des projets de communauté idéale des débuts de l’histoire mormone. D’où la conclusion que devenir “mormon” aujourd’hui, c’est se convertir et être éduqué selon les principes d’une communauté dite de “membres”, en empruntant le chemin d’une transformation : sociale et anthropopoiétique, pour devenir un humain tel que la culture mormone l’entend ; religieuse et théopoiétique, pour devenir un Dieu comme les représentations mormones le prévoient. Cette observation de la construction individuelle et communautaire SDJ a donné lieu à une analyse de la religion en modernité, révélant un paradoxe : à l’époque de l’individualisme et du « bricolage individuel des croyances », les Mormons, par la communauté, poussent l’individu à une situation paroxystique de l’individualisme en prétendant en faire un Dieu. Pourtant, l’outil communautaire ne perd rien de son aspect institutionnel-traditionnel et contraste au contraire avec l’attitude, fréquemment enregistrée aujourd’hui, du désintérêt pour une religiosité institutionnelle-traditionnelle exigeant engagement et activité régulière. Au delà d’une sociologie de la religion et d’une socio-anthropologie de l’éducation, cette recherche vise une socio-anthropologie des rapports de l’individu au groupe et du communautarisme dans la contemporanéité occidentale.

Mormons – Saints des Derniers Jours – Église de Jésus Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours
Anthropopoiésis – Classes d’âges – Communautarisme – Communauté – Conversion – Cosmogonie – Curriculum – Déification / théopoiésis – Éducation – Initiation – Individualisme – Jeunesse – Mission – Modernité – Mormon Way of life – Observation in situ – Prosélytisme – Récits de vie – Rites – Secret – Pédagogie – Témoignage – Sionisme mormon – Utopie.
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