New dynamics of religious death culture in Bulgaria in the post-socialist transition period

Abstract

ABSTRACT Is there a ‘resurrection’ of death in the post-socialist countries brought about by a rediscovery of religious norms and values in the context of the global processes of (de)secularisation? Based on a sample of 20 in-depth biographical interviews with men and women 75 years old and over from Bulgaria, this paper examines the complex dynamics of the privatisation and liberation of religiosity from the grasp of the communist regime. This religiosity developed along with the surge in the interest in Christian rituals, including Christian funeral and mourning, with their reinvention and integration into systems of personal values. However, it lacked the understanding of the Orthodox religious ideas of (preparation for) the afterlife. What emerged was an original death culture, driven largely by pursuits for a reconfirmation of family, national and anti-communist identity. It reproduced an unstable knowledge about the formal aspects of rituals and, paradoxically, was permeated by internalised ideological patterns of mourning, enforced by cultural experts of the communist regime.