Antropologicheskij forum, 2022, no. 55

MARTHA’S LADLE: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS INFRASTRUCTURE

Jeanne Kormina

Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités, École Pratique des Hautes Études
14 Cours des Humanités, Aubervilliers, France
kormina()eu.spb.ru

Ekaterina Khonineva

European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
9 Tuchkov Lane, St Petersburg, Russia
ekhonineva()eu.spb.ru

Sergei Shtyrkov

European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
shtyr()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: The infrastructural turn in the social sciences comes from a tendency to change the anthropocentric epistemology in social research. This new approach corresponds to the classic program of social anthropology as it makes the known unknown and provides one more perspective which helps reveal the invisible politics, inequalities, and social tensions. Yet, when it comes to the social research in the field of religion, the interest to how infrastructures work has not resulted in new academic discourses and research practices so far. This article outlines some directions and topics in the anthropology of religion which stem from the infrastructural turn. First, it highlights the work of the social imagination of believers when they deal with thick or thin (poor) infrastructural systems. Secondly, it discusses the moments of infrastructural breakdown which provoke believers to generate semiotic ideologies in order to represent their experience of communication with non-human agents, both mundane and divine. The infrastructural approach to understanding religious life does not pretend to become a new research methodology or social theory. Rather, it suggests that thinking infrastructurally on typical topics for anthropology of religion, such as pilgrimage, charity, memory or historical imagination, helps us to better understand the logic which shapes the everyday life of a religious person and community. Furthermore, it helps us remember that religious and secular domains of life are usually not separated in ethnographic reality.

Keywords: methodology of social sciences, anthropology of religion, infrastructure, material religion, pilgrimage, Orthodox Christianity.

To cite: Kormina J., Khonineva E., Shtyrkov S., ‘Povareshka Marfy: antropologiya religioznoy infrastruktury’ [Martha’s Ladle: An Anthropology of Religious Infrastructure], Antropologicheskij forum, 2022, no. 55, pp. 9–27.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-55-9-27

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/055/kormina_khonineva_shtyrkov.pdf