Construction Of Religious Identity Research Articles

Maritime Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Tarac and Gender Roles Reflected in It

The maritime pilgrimage of Our Lady of Tarac in the Kornati islands, Dalmatia, Croatia, is held on the first Sunday in July. The culture of these island communities is based on a patriarchal system that implies gender inequality. This cultural order has an impact on the construction of gender and religious identities in children and adults when they participate in pilgrimages. The basic methodological approach of the paper is autoethnography. The author concludes that the model of cryptomatriarchy along with the dominant patriarchy well explains well the role of women/mothers and grandmothers in the context of the pilgrimage. The pilgrimage also serves as a framework for transferring gender roles to children.

Religious Identity Construction in Transnational Family Talks: An Autoethnographic Study

Studies in Family Language Policy (FLP) have focused more on language patterns and practices in transnational families with little attention to the challenges of multilingualism. Through exploring diverse experiences in dealing with multilingualism, more can be understood about parent language ideology, the enactment of FLP, and factors related to identity construction. Therefore, the study highlights how the family experiences affect the way individual family members perceive social relations and social structures and how they construct and present their own identities. The study is based on an analysis of longitudinal data from children's family transnational experiences and how the dynamic of FLP affected not only family talk style but also identity construction. The main focus of the study entails an analysis of personal auto-ethnographic accounts. The study explored the emergence of religious identity in the family talks via (1) using referring expressions to talk about religious places related to two different contexts, and (2) frequently using religious phrases in different settings, which, in turn, reveal the interplay between macro and micro factors affecting the parental language ideology, language planning, and identity construction in the FLP. This study contributed to the field of language policy by presenting the different trajectories in identity construction and family language in a transnational families from a less explored religious and ethnic group.

Pinah Laman: The Construction of Religious and Ethnic Identity Within the Mentuka Dayak of West Kalimantan

For the Mentuka Dayak tribe, Pinah Laman is a change in ethnic and religious identity. Pinah Laman in the Mentuka Dayak community is perceived as a cultural space for community members who convert to a particular religion. Generally, religious conversion occurs in this society from Catholicism to Islam. The new identity is given by the term ‘Sinan.’ But on the other hand, the Sinan identity has its own meaning. Sinan is a new identity given to those who have converted to another religion. Because of this Pinah Laman custom, they do not get their tribal rights, such as: performing the Mentuka Dayak traditional ceremonies. This article aims to explore the construction of a new identity from the construction process of religious identity, which involves custom. In addition, this article also explains the form of religious identity construction that occurs among the Mentuka Dayak tribe and the new converts who experience it. Religious conversion is inseparable from the driving factors for the emergence of a new identity and the implications of constructing a new identity due to the conversion process. This article was compiled from the results of research using the ethnographic method. The results of this research show that Pinah Laman is a conversion process of a Christian or Catholic Dayak to Islam. This impacts the social sanctions one receives from one’s social group. For the Mentuka Dayak people, when someone decides to change his religion, he must be willing to give up his Dayak ethnicity. One of the social effects felt by a new convert in the Dayak tribe is that he will be given a nickname or term ‘Sinan.’ Based on the results of this research, the term Sinan has a negative connotation. This is because those who change their religion are ultimately not given the freedom to practice Dayak customs as usual.

Identity Construction through Code-switching: An Analysis of Novel How It Happened by Shazaf Fatima Haider

This paper investigates the various societal values and designs for which code-switching, hybridization, and echo words are employed by the characters of Shazaf Fatima Haider’s novel How it Happened. A methodological framework for this investigation has been adapted from Coulmas (2005), Myers-Scotton (1993; 1996; 2006), Albakray and Hancock (2008), and Thornborrow (2004). The results reveal that code-switching is a purposive and preconceived literary device employed by the bilingual author to show the construction and depiction of various cultural, social, and religious identities and acculturation. The study concludes that code-switching in the selected text portrays the communal customs of contingent social order along with demonstrating the author’s ingenious and artistic caliber.

The Fasting of Others

As cultural historians have shown, various discourses about food and eating are correlated with processes of religious identity construction within European pre-modern societies. This article focuses on such a relationship between bodily and structural contexts during the transformative phase of the late sixteenth century in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. A selection of exemplary polemical sources of Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians illuminates the significance of fasting for the semantical constructions of religious collectives in times of societal upheaval. Regarding the increasingly uncertain circumstances due to the union of the Church, this paper argues that religious elites revolved around norms of fasting, which represented a semantic means of defining and defending their respective collective selves, their political claims, and legitimation in relation to a collective Other. Considering bodily practices such as fasting to be a methodological lens, the paper attempts to develop a novel perspective on the study and understanding of religious ordering in early modern European contexts.

Religious Syncretism in India’s Northeast: A Case of the Heraka

This paper examines religious syncretism in India’s Northeast with reference to reformed Heraka. It is perceived, contact of different cultural practices enforces natives to reinterpret and redefined beliefs and practices in conformation to appropriated culture. Historically, birth of Heraka was rooted in resistance against the British occupation, Christian proselytisation and intrusion of other neighbouring communities. To retain indigenous religious practices, reformation took its turn with introduction of new set of rules. In the flow, Heraka appropriated temple, idol and pilgrimage culture into its fold, and scrutinised Christian proselytisation under its radar. In its essence, Heraka is the by-product of Paupai-tenase, Christianity and Hinduism. This paper assesses through constructivist paradigm on how Heraka is perceived to be or not to be of indigenous religion. It is argued that there is a dilution in claim reformed religion, though, has reformed old practices, but with amalgamation in the construction of syncretic religious identity.

The dangerous construction of national, religious and moral identities in the Ukrainian War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine violates fundamental norms of international law and is at the same time an attack on the order of values of liberal democratic societies. The long prepared, ideologically based aggression was massive underestimated. In the foreground of the war are not rationally comprehensible interests, but identity-related conflicts of recognition with their very own grammar of uncompromisingness and power dynamics. For Russia, Ukraine and Europe, the scholarly reappraisal of the highly divergent identity constructions is of central importance. The theological critique of a nationalist-identitarian-political use of the Christian faith is an important peace service that the churches have to perform.

Internet and Religious Identity Construction: Jurus Sehat Rasulullah (JSR) Da’i (Preacher) Zaidul Akbar

The presence of the internet has influenced the way people interact with their social environment, including in the context of religion. Internet seems to eliminate boundaries, space and time in social interactions. This led to a fundamental change in how a person’s identity was formed. This study discusses how online interactions can shape one’s religious identity. “Jurus Sehat Rasulullah” as a da'wah theme which encourages Muslims to maintain their health and perform Islamic medicine is analyzed textually. This qualitative research in collecting data using online observation by observing JSR and its users. The search was focused on the Instagram account @ZaidulAkbar. The results showed that there was a religious identity construction process through the exchange of symbols among internet users who followed the official account of “Jurus Sehat Rasulullah.”

REONTOLOGIZATION OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE LIQUID AND GLOBAL WORLD

In this article, I intend to highlight the fact that the realities that are being recorded at the morphological level of contemporary societies (the phenomenon of migration, wars, the dynamics of mobility and communication, the economic pace, the health crisis generated by Covid-19) are bringing to the fore the redefinition of religious identity. What is undeniably clear is that Western societies have become an ethnic and religious mosaic, a diversity that requires specific regulations in terms of norms in order to avoid conflict. However, this ethno-religious diversity also calls for an interpretation of the relationship between identities. The aim of my analysis is to argue as to whether or not religious identity is an inflexible, immobile reality, static in its representativeness towards and in relation to other identities representing different religious cultures. In this respect, I will insist on the role that migration plays in the construction of religious identity. Is religious identity decomposing in the context of the liquid flow of global society? Are the boundaries of such an identity, as structures of individual, social, cultural validation, desubstantiated in the daily experience of religious diversity and in the dynamics of current societal transformations?

Voices of English: language and the construction of religious identity amongst Ismaili Muslims in Pakistan and Tajikistan

Abstract This paper brings together notions of heteroglossia and religious identity to explore how English becomes indexical of Ismaili distinction in local communities in Pakistan and Tajikistan. Adopting a heteroglossic approach to language provides a perspective which is epistemologically compatible with notions of religion as social, human and interactional, as intricately connected to power, and as both reflecting and being shaped by perspective and positioning. In the paper, I use a “discourse analysis beyond the speech event” approach to engage with data collected during ethnographic fieldwork (qualitative interviews, focus group discussions, fieldnotes) amongst Ismailis in Hunza, northern Pakistan and Khorog, eastern Tajikistan. In analyzing these examples, I attempt to illustrate how ideologies of English become sites for the negotiation of religious distinction.

‘Good Muslim, bad Muslim’ in Togo: religious minority identity construction amid a sociopolitical crisis (2017–2018)

AbstractIn Togo, the opposition movement behind the anti-government protests that broke out in 2017–2018 appears to reflect a greater role for Islam in politics. Tikpi Atchadam, leader of the Parti National Panafricain, was the preeminent figure in the movement, having built a solid grassroots base among his fellow Muslims. This article examines the unique role that Muslim leaders played in these protests, as well as the Faure Gnassingbé regime's strategic response. The ruling party made spurious claims against Muslim opponents, associating them with a dangerous wave of political Islam. I argue that by portraying Atchadam as the leader of a radical ethnic and religious movement with Islamist goals, Faure Gnassingbé and his supporters sought to weaken this emerging challenger and deter members of the public from backing calls for political change. The strategy also helped garner support from Western countries while simultaneously driving a wedge between Muslim community leaders.

РЕЛИГИЯ И ПРОБЛЕМА НОВЫХ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЕЙ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ МИРЕ

This article studies the role of religion in the formation of new identities. Religion is presented as an alternative to secular nationalism and the revival of new religious identities as a reaction to the crisis of the secular type of nation-building. The first part of the article shows the historical background of the crisis of the theory of secularization and the “religious renaissance”, which was an attempt to return religion to public discourse. Religious identity is considered as a strict construct that is formed by certain actors using various mechanisms. The types of construction of religious identity are considered from three sides using the terms of M. Castells as the problem of “legitimizing identity”, “resistance identity” and identity as a “project”. Analyzing the role of religion in the formation of new identities the author comes to the following conclusions: 1) religion acts as a factor of legitimacy in new religious communities, where religion offers a sacred justification for power; 2) religion acts as a factor of protection of one's own identity under the wave of globalization, which acts as a hostile dominant identity; 3) the religious community acts as a separate “imagined” construct, which in the global dimension erases linguistic and ethnic boundaries, but acts as a dividing factor in local conflicts...

Food and Religious Identities in the Venetian Inquisition, ca. 1560–ca. 1640

Through Venetian Inquisition trials relating to Protestantism, witchcraft, and Judaism, this article illuminates the centrality of food and eating practices to religious identity construction. The Holy Office used food to assert its model of post-Tridentine piety and the boundaries between Catholics and the non-Catholic populations in the city. These trial records concurrently act as access points to the experiences and beliefs—to the lived religion—of ordinary people living and working in Venice from 1560 to 1640. The article therefore offers new insight into the workings and impacts of the Counter-Reformation.

The construction of national and religious identities amongst Australian Isma’ili Muslims

ABSTRACT Australian civic society has become increasingly multicultural and diverse. Nevertheless, in the current political climate, Australian Muslims may feel as though they live under a microscope of scrutiny with their sense of affiliation and allegiance questioned. The narrative regarding Muslims in Australia has largely focused on Sunnis and ethnic Arabs. This qualitative study examines the Australian Shi’a Isma’ili Muslim community – a minority within a minority – and how attachment to supraordinate identity markers of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Australian’ influence their identity construction. It utilised semi-structured interviews with 16 first- and second-generation Isma’ili Muslims to examine the intersection of national, religious, and cultural identities via the lens of Identity Process Theory (IPT). Religious identity was important to respondents, who spoke of how their ‘double minority’ status distinguished them vis-à-vis the broader Muslim community in Australia and Australian society overall. Nevertheless, respondents noted a strong sense of instrumental attachment to Australia which enabled them to develop a distinct niche of Isma’ili Muslim identity unique to the Australian landscape.

Historical Continuities in South Asian Film Narratives:Contemporary Representations of Religious,Ethno-linguistic and Sexual Minorities

The article attempts to examine the construction and representation of minority identities in the visual cultures of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, thereby endeavouring to establish a cinematic historiography of South Asia. Since the cinematic medium can accomplish what written history cannot, this article makes an effort to understand the underlying causes of linearity and simultaneity which are fortes of the moving image, with regard to visual construction and representation of religious, ethno-linguistic and sexual identities. The major objectives of this article are to establish a comparative framework for the study of South Asian cinema with focus on films from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, outline a possible theoretical structure for the future study of South Asian cinema, contextualize the intervening spaces between cinema and politics—particularly the realms of cinematic representation of religious or communal identities in South Asian cinema, categorise existing trends and observe transformations in the methodology of cinematic representation of identities.

Mediated Identity of Catholic Internet Forum Users in Poland

The paper analyses the emic conceptualisations of “religious identity” among the users of two online Catholic forums in Poland, dyskusje.katolik.pl and forum.wiara.pl, with the use of computer-mediated discourse analysis (cmda). This study aims to contribute to the debates on online religious identity construction, in particular within heteronomous and/or contentious communities (Abdel-Fadil, 2017; Davidson & Farquhar, 2014; Kimmons et al., 2017). The paper argues that religious identity on the forums has an individual and collective dimension, and that the fillings of the term “religious identity” often involve non-verbatim, covert references to religion and faith, which makes them similar to a division into “us” vs. “them.” It will be argued that the mediatised religious identities of forum users, while flexible and transformable, are also grounded in non-media contexts, for instance a church or a religious community, or a certain understanding of religion and religiosity.

From Folk Musicians to Popular Icons: The Resilient Uṟumi Mēḷam Tamil Folk Drumming Ensemble in Singapore

This article discusses the concept of resilience within the context of Singaporean uṟumi mēḷam groups. I begin by providing a brief historical background about the construction of social and official religious identities. I then investigate how the tension between practiced and prescribed identities forced Singaporean uṟumi mēḷam groups to be resilient. Finally, I examine how the transnational uṟumi mēḷam network has inspired Singaporean uṟumi mēḷam musicians to adopt strategies to sustain their musical tradition. By examining these strategies and their outcomes, I maintain that Singaporean uṟumi mēḷam groups have been able to refashion themselves in the image of popular culture icons.

Colonialism and the Construction of Religious Identities in Punjab: The Case of Muslims

The colonial state of India referred to as the Raj introduced multiple changes and sought modifications in the socio-cultural, political and economic spheres in the province of Punjab. Being the last province annexed and rendered the part of British Indian Empire, forming North Western area with proximity to the Russian Empire and contributing heavily, never lower than fifty per cent of the total British Indian Army, Punjab attained a special significance for the Raj. By the turn of nineteenth century, the extensive network of canals turned this area into a ‘basket of bread.’ Similar to the unprecedented physical infrastructure feats, the British carried out social-engineering as well to attain calculated goals. In addition, the colonialism was conjoined by colonial modernity which included, inter alia, decennial census and its concomitant process of enumeration, massive use of printing press and burgeoning press and publications market, electoral arenas of politics, and formation of a large number of social organizations. It provided impetus to the redefinition of social and political identities and an assertive quest for social mobility. This redefinition of increasingly religiously informed social and cultural identities among Muslims of Punjab in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is the focus of this paper.

Evangelicals and Politics in Argentina: Pentecostalism as a Constructive Framework of (New?) Political Identities

This paper aims to analyze the case of the Christian Centre New Life (Centro Cristiano Nueva Vida - CCNV), a Pentecostal church in the City of Buenos Aires that is part of the spectrum of evangelical churches in Argentina, but represents a particular case within that field, in terms of theological, religious and, especially, socio-political views. The study of the CCNV will allow us to explore how “the evangelical” and “the Pentecostal” represent floating signifiers (Ernesto Laclau) that can enable a diversity of ritual practices, institutionalization processes, and ethical and political positions within the same spaces of identity. According to the way in which these identities are addressed (theologically and philosophically), the contexts in which they are found and the processes of political articulation in which they are located, the results and practices can differ considerably, even antagonistically. From the approaches in the Argentine academy on the relationship between Pentecostalisms and politics, we will develop a definition of political identity based on the construction of religious identities. Then, we will analyze the construction of identitarian imaginaries and their consequences in political terms within the CCNV, especially focusing on how they stress, confront, and dispute hegemonic senses within the Argentine evangelical field.

Construction of Religious Identity in Pakpak Culture Community in Dairi District

the aims of the study is to find out the construction of religious identity in pakpak culture community in Dairi district. The result of the study shows that there are three variations of dependence of Pakpak religion / belief and culture acculturation on other religions and cultures, the first group, traditional groups, in this group Pakpak's identity is still maintained and is dominated by parents and village communities who live far from pluralism occupation culture. Second, the bicultural group, this group is dominated by the Pakpak people who live in urban areas and who have received an established education, the behavior of this group is still thick with its Pakpak identity but has accepted differences with other religions and cultures. The three modern groups, in this group are dominated by Pakpak people who have long migrated to other areas and their Pakpak identity has changed. Of these three groups, the level of open personality was found to be very prominent for adolescents who became embryos of the development of Pakpak culture, such as the formation of identity, and interacting with peers.