Catholic in Kraków? Fur, the ethic of attribution, and when non-religious things conform to religious aesthetics

Abstract

Based upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Polish city of Kraków, this article explores the grounds on which people judge certain aesthetics to be ‘Catholic’ – despite the actuality that the visual and material culture concerned falls outside of what is more classically considered to be religious material culture. In particular, the article discusses the materially and symbolically complex material of fur, and the conflicting ideas about its relationship with Catholicism, especially what it means for a thing to have a ‘Catholic look’ in a place where Catholic culture is predominant. The article explains the efforts of some informants to define Catholic aesthetics by referencing ‘natural beauty’. More broadly, this study about fur and Catholicism in Kraków highlights the local importance of deliberating over and contesting the meanings of aesthetics – a mode of action described here as an ‘ethic of attribution’.