Material Religion and Popular Culture

Abstract

In Material Religion and Popular Culture, King examines the interrelationship of material religion and collective identity. Using interviews with Catholics in Northern Ireland as well as historical narrative, King provides an interesting perspective on the role of material religion in the contemporary world, suggesting that we need to continue to pay attention to the ways in which material objects hold meaning for people, even as, particularly in the post-Vatican II context for Catholics, we might think the importance of such objects has diminished. King argues that collective identity solidifies through engagement with material objects, even as they serve to mark identity boundaries between groups. The most helpful contribution the book makes concerns the use of material religion in the formation and perpetuation of social boundaries between groups. In the context of tensions between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, King suggests that the identity of these groups, although her focus is on Catholics primarily, is both constituted by and constitutes their use of material objects. While the discussion could have been further developed by a more systematically comparative approach, the overall point that material practices and objects are implicated in the construction of identity and, more importantly for King, in boundaries established against other groups, is an important one.