Have you visited our monasteries? Serbian monastic heritage as religious infrastructure

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Serbia, monasteries are shared points of reference, permeating everyday life in banal ways. This contribution considers the extensive network of Serbian monasteries as a form of ‘religious infrastructure’. Monasteries sit in a recursive, mutually formative relationship with ideas about the Serbian collective self. Just as monasteries shape claims about the historical rootedness of the Serbian people, so discourse about Serbdom positions monasteries in particular ways. Proof of monasteries’ encompassing power lies in the fact that monasteries – and ideas about them – allow diverse actors to make different (sometimes contradictory) claims about history, territory, heritage, and sincere faith. In ways that are at once inconspicuous and flagrant, monasteries provide an infrastructure that frames, contains, and compounds ethnic and confessional belonging.