Issues Of Religion Research Articles

Countermemories of desire: Female homosexuality, “coming out” narratives, and British multiculturalism in Shamim Sarif’s I Can’t Think Straight

This article examines Shamim Sarif’s novel I Can’t Think Straight (2008), with occasional reference to the film of the same title, and in light of intersecting issues of ethnicity, religion, and sexuality in multicultural Britain. It argues that Sarif’s narratives, which depict the burgeoning romantic relationship between a British woman of Muslim heritage and a Christian Arab woman with ethnic links to Palestine, challenge the Western stereotypes of Muslim and Arab women as submissive and of their male counterparts as uniformly patriarchal, which have become all the more prevalent since 9/11. It also examines the collusion in British and cosmopolitan contexts, as evidenced in Sarif’s texts, of religious and Western medical discourses about homosexuality that denounce it as a disease. The article assesses these qualms as cultural values more closely aligned to social status and religious practice than to strict religious dogma. It also surmises that, despite Sarif’s configuration of same-sex desire in relation to the Western cultural model of “coming out”, which is shown as potentially homonormative, and in spite of the limited vistas offered by her narrow class perspective, her deployment of queer bodies helps to forge a clandestine countermemory challenging the contemporary Islamist erasure of female homosexuality. The article demonstrates that Sarif’s queer narratives act as a welcome antidote to the routine omission of the dissident perspectives of non-normative women of Muslim and Arabic ethnic heritage in dominant LGBTIQ discourses in the West, as well as in contemporary debates about British multiculturalism.

Race and Religion in Social Services

Members of non-dominant racial and religious groups may experience discrimination and inequalities in American society simply because of their race or religious affiliation. The experience may make recipients feel disempowered, humiliated, angry, and hopeless. Social service providers, including mental health counselors and social workers, are tasked with helping to improve individuals’ well-being in ways that range from basic needs to mental health. Given the growth in racial diversity and the role it plays in religion in the USA, it is important to understand social service providers’ experiences, thoughts, attitudes, or actions as they relate to the role of race and religion in service provision in order to better meet the needs of clients who may be marginalized and discriminated against. This qualitative study explored the research question of: What role do issues of race and religion play in social services. Themes identified included: (1) the marginalization of smaller racial and religious groups; (2) the existing assistance provided by religious organizations; and (3) the role of race and religion in social services. Findings from this study may contribute to a better understanding of the impact of race and religion on vulnerable populations in order to provide better social services.

Diversity

This series of diversity caselets is designed to present short, quick vignettes of different workplace situations involving issues of gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, age, religion, culture, and ethnicity.

Religion as a Determinant of Child Welfare in Custody Cases in Malaysia and Classical Islamic Law: A Comparative Overview

It is paramount to consider the welfare of a child when determining the custody of a child. However, in the event of a parent’s conversion to Islam, the issue of religion also arises, i.e. whether the religion of a parent is considered the main factor or one of several factors in determining the interests of the child. In Malaysia, since both Islamic and civil law recognise conversion as grounds for divorce, the question concerning the custody of children and the determinants of religion for the best interest of children will be the main issue. This research aims to examine the significance of religion in determining the welfare of children in custodial dispute cases and to search for possible solutions from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence relating to custodial conflict upon conversion of one spouse to another religion, particularly in a multiracial country like Malaysia. Our findings show that religion is the primary criterion in determining the welfare of children in custody cases from the classical Islamic point of view. However, Islamic law also offers various other solutions if there is a conflict involving non-Muslim parents.

Derrida and Freud on the Return of Religion

Derrida and Freud on the Return of Religion Kevin McShane (bio) This essay will attempt to show that Derrida, in one of his most important texts on religion, often has Freud and his views on the psychogenetics of religion in mind even when discussing aspects of faith and religion in other thinkers. In the paper “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” which takes off partly from Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone and partly from Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis—not to mention Derrida’s deconstructive analyses of them—is not just an undercurrent but often the main current. In this paper, originally presented at a seminar in 1994, and published in French in 1996 (English translation 1998), Derrida discusses several concepts that he considers central to the revival of religion, especially in its more fundamentalist forms, that was taking place at the end of the twentieth century. Two of these ideas he names “the messianic” and “the chora.” Both are related to justice. By “the messianic,” Derrida means “messianicity without messianism. This would be the opening to the future or to the coming of the other as the advent of justice, but without the horizon of expectation and without prophetic prefiguration” (1998, 17). In Specters of Marx, Derrida distinguishes the messianic—which he describes as a “structure of experience” rather than a religious belief—from Abrahamic messianism, the hope for an actual messiah who would come in the future (or in the case of [End Page 111] Christianity, already has come and will return) (2006, 210–11). The promise of the messianic is that justice and salvation will come when the Messiah arrives and triumphs. Derrida thinks the messianic arises in human experience whenever injustice happens on a large scale. Marxism and other secular programs that look forward to the arrival of justice or salvation without the help of a messiah are nonetheless messianic. This eschatological idea that justice will come by means of a divine intervention into the ordinary world where injustice and suffering reign is similar to the traditional ideas of Jewish or Christian messianism, but without the hope for a messiah. Derrida thinks messianicity is essential to all human discourse, that it is built into who we are and why we have faith in each other, “an invincible desire for justice” that “inscribes itself in advance in the promise, in the act of faith or in the appeal to faith that inhabits every act of language and every address to the other” (1998, 18). Messianicity is “faith without dogma.” By “faith without dogma,” Derrida seems to mean faith not in God but in “the other,” that is, other people. Since we can never know or experience the other as the other experiences him-or herself, we can only have faith in the other, not direct experience of the other. Faith is essential not only to the hope for justice but to any kind of human discourse, including the most “rational” or scientific. Even when it is buried by rationality, scientificity, progress, or the “technoscientific or tele-technological,” messianic faith in some kind of redemptive justice, for those who feel that justice has not been done, always resurrects itself, often in the form of religion. “Wherever this foundation founds in foundering, wherever it steals away under the ground of what it founds, at the very instant when, losing itself thus in the desert, it loses the very trace of itself and the memory of a secret, ‘religion’ can only begin again: quasi-automatically, mechanically, machine-like, spontaneously” (19). The messianic that goes underground, which is suppressed or repressed, returns in some form or other, just as the Freudian unconscious returns the repressed emotional experiences to the individual who has had them in disguised or transformed symptomatology. Derrida believes [End Page 112] that this messianicity can give rise to the return of religion in supposedly enlightened eras such as ours but also that it is responsible for the overturning of religious belief by, for example, revolutionary movements that promote universal rationality and democracy. Without this repressed messianicity...

Etat et Religion : Une Reflexio11 Autour de la Gestion du Religieux en Roumanie [State and Religion: Managing the Religiom Sphere in Romania

The issue of religion and Church status in post-communist Romania generates reflections on the elements that legitimize the relationship between the political sphere and the religious phenomenon, as well as the variety of its configurations. One configuration is the normative framework built by the new democratic structures. However, the development of new norms was gradual and presented a certain liquidity. This project aims to examine the reconfiguration of the relations between the political regime and the religious communities through an analysis of the religious presence in the national normative space.

Anglophone Novels from the Tibetan Diaspora: Negotiations of Empire, Nation, and Culture

This short essay examines how Tibetan authors who live in exile and write in English have used the novel to re-imagine a common history and cultural identity for Tibetans both inside and beyond the borders of Chinese-occupied Tibet. On the one hand, critics have argued that Tibetan literature focuses too narrowly on issues of politics and religion. And one could add to this critique that the novel, in particular, does not adequately represent the vast scope of Tibetan literary output. On the other hand, as this essay illustrates, an accomplished novel such as Jamyang Norbu's The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, even as it engages with an exorcized Tibet, does so in order to re-orient the politics of the representation of Tibet in its colonial historical context.

Translation and Transmission in the Early Americas: The Fourth Early Americanist “Summit

Translation and Transmission in the Early Americas: The Fourth Early Americanist “Summit Andrea Pauw (bio) Cosponsored by the Society of Early Americanists and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Washington, DC, and University of Maryland June 2–5, 2016 The Fourth Early Americanist “Summit” brought together more than 150 scholars to discuss the theme of “Translation and Transmission in the Early Americas.” The four-day, multilingual occasion featured three keynote addresses and forty panels led by experts in the fields of anthropology, history, linguistics, and literary studies. The event emerged on the Twitter stratosphere with its very own “hashtag.” Conference attendees could share their thoughts before, during, and after the event, such as Marie Taylor’s optimistic reaction, “Feeling energized to write after a great conference #UMDColonialTranslation” and Alejandra Dubcovsky’s praise of a fellow attendee’s presentation: “@Jillio brilliant comment to ‘task of translator’ panel #UMDcolonialTranslation ‘translation as a haunted space.’” This interface transported discussions beyond the walls of Tawes Hall so that even those who regretfully missed the conference (“Wish I had been there #UMDColonialTranslation”) could take part in the dialogue. Indeed, praise for the conference and for fellow participants was not confined to Twitter. When asked about her impressions of the summit, one participant remarked on the highly collegial atmosphere sustained throughout the weekend. Seasoned attendees greeted familiar colleagues and welcomed new faces. In addition to the friendly and supportive environment of the conference, I also appreciated the early American “field trips” to local cultural attractions. Co-organizers Ralph Bauer and Allison Bigelow facilitated outings to downtown Washington for Davíd Carrasco’s and Michael Witgen’s keynote addresses at the Mexican Cultural Institute [End Page 257] and the National Museum of the American Indian. The long bus rides into DC did not bother conference participants, providing a chance to reflect on stimulating panel presentations or simply to catch up with friends. Throughout the summit, scholars repeatedly called attention to the interpretive and ideological hazards of translation. Panels fostered interdisciplinary dialogue concerning the problematic issues raised by the practice of translation in the early Americas and beyond. Examples of translation in religious, scientific, literary, and political discourse offered a wide variety of complex cases to consider. With titles such as “Languages of Belonging and Exclusion in the Early Modern Circum-Caribbean,” “Talking Books: Alphabetic Literacy in Colonial Encounters,” and “Translating Nature: A Transcultural History of Early Modern Science” among others, panels and especially the participatory roundtables allowed for open discussion and creative brainstorming among conferences attendees. Many panelists prefaced their work by asking for constructive criticism from the audience during question-and-answer sessions. As noted in the Twitter comments, the conference was a useful place to present incipient research projects in order to receive alternative perspectives from collaborative participants. Panels deliberated on the issues of transmission and religion—evidenced in the militant theology used to indoctrinate newly converted Christians in sixteenth-century Brazil, in Peruvian criollo Fray Jerónimo de Oré’s evangelistic texts, and in the significant role of Jesuit translators in eighteenth-century Yucatan. Roundtables addressed literary questions of translation such as early modern theorizations of horizontal and vertical translation, the Othering language of Abel Posse’s twentieth-century retelling of colonial shipwrecks in El largo atardecer del caminante, the “contagion” of sentimentality in eighteenth-century French texts produced in Spanish Louisiana, and the defiant graffiti of conquistadores in colonial Mexico. Other sessions considered scientific knowledge in translation such as Álvaro Alonso Barba’s advocacy of Quechua mining techniques in seventeenth-century Spain, as well as the pervasive contemporary privileging of European Enlightenment epistemologies that “accommodate” indigenous knowledge. The downtown outings provided access to relevant venues that promoted further reflection on the issues discussed during roundtables throughout the day. On Thursday evening I was enthralled by Roberto Cueva del Río’s colorful murals as I climbed the winding staircase to hear [End Page 258] Davíd Carrasco’s keynote address at the Mexican Cultural Institute. Carrasco introduced the theme of translation with his fascinating story of the discovery and restoration of the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan Número 2. He highlighted two of the recurring themes prevalent throughout the conference: the...

German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill

Reviewed by: German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill Barbara Kosta German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. 208. Cloth $90.00. ISBN 978-1571135841. This engaging, provocative volume insists on a renewed focus on "women's literature" and on the significance of a feminist analysis to reflect critically on gender within a larger discursive complex of representation. Well aware of the potentially "loaded" meaning of the title given its associations with second-wave feminist approaches, Baer and Merley Hill assert their aim to develop "new ways of conceptualizing gender and feminism" in view of their analytical and political potential for German studies. In the introduction to German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century, Baer and Merely Hill thus caution against an essentialized, prescriptive understanding of gender, while advocating for placing gender at the center of analysis as one significant aspect of the many complex markers of identity. The volume, they explain, sets out to "consider women's writing by examining how the politics of gender continue to inform practices of reading, writing and representation … and [to address] how women's writing participates in the feminist project of transforming gender relations" (2). All nine contributors reclaim feminism, and redefine and demonstrate its critical effectiveness. Feminism is articulated in various ways, but at its foundation is a call for an attentive, critical engagement with gendered experiences as they relate to issues as disparate and intertwined as transnationalism, sexuality, ethnicity, consumerism, labor, and intimacy. Moreover, as Baer and Merley Hill write, "one key emphasis of this volume is to interrogate the ways in which women's writing—in aesthetic and representational terms—might contribute specifically to understanding the neoliberal present." Reading contemporary women's writing through a feminist lens, especially at a time when market pressures and neoliberal thinking deflect from a politicized literary practice, this volume boldly reclaims a feminist analysis of literature as an interdisciplinary, theoretical practice invested in examining how gender works in configurations of language and power. The nine contributors critically analyze a wide selection of themes and issues that contemporary women writers tackle, and the genres and trends that they employ and create, from popfeminism, to a new wave of women's writing that expands on the insights of 1970s feminism, to the Fräuleinwunder, a term coined to market the work of a group of young women writers. The range of aesthetic styles and topics and the reception of the works discussed in the nine essays reflect the vibrancy of women's cultural production and the complex "mosaic" of women's writing that seeks to question, unsettle, and confound notions of gender while historicizing and expanding articulations of gender within larger networks of identifications such as race, class, sexuality, ethnicity and religion, just to name a few. Merley Hill and Baer draw attention to discussions about intersectionality and Butlerian theories of gender performativity, and look to new theoretical approaches [End Page 710] to challenge and undo its normative representations. Significantly, the volume starts off with Necia Chronister's eloquent contribution, which identifies the queering of gender in works by Antje Rávic Strubel and Judith Hermann, whose fluid gendered personas confound heteronormative expectations. Other contributions focus on the experience of Germany's Nazi past and gender. Katherine Stone looks at memoirs in which women authors grapple with family histories to expand the narrative repertoire of women's complicity with and resistance to National Socialism. Valerie Heffernan recognizes in intergenerational matrilineal narratives a multiperspectival account that lends a voice to often marginalized historical actors with little known agency. Sheridan Marshall explores the intersection of gender, faith, and religion, both Christianity and Judaism, in narratives that work through Germany's fascist past and its legacies. Other topics include Lindsay Lawton's analysis of the stereotypes that are used to market Muslim women's writings that undermine the critical issues of ethnicity, motherhood, the body, and religion explored in these texts. According to Lawton, these texts exhibit "the way that gender intersects with and shapes other articulations of difference" (109). Mihaela...

The Role of Culture and Arts in Peace Building and Reconciliation

This paper argues that conflict resolution, peace building and reconciliation in the 21st century requires a cultural slant in addition to conventional political and military approaches. This development should not be surprising especially given the nature of recent wars which have turned out to be more intra-state than inter-state. Since the end of the Cold war, wars have been focused on issues of culture, ethnicity, politics and religion than on nationalisms. Thus, cultural beliefs, norms, traditions, ethnicity and religion have contributed towards many major disruptions that have cost innocent lives and loss of valuable property. In addition, conflicts and divisions within societies reflect lack of appreciation and intolerance of others` cultural beliefs, views and are motivated by cultural differences. In the wars of recent decades, rape has been used as a weapon of war and children have been abducted to be killers and sex-slaves. Millions of families have been uprooted from their homes. Taken as a whole, these current developments allow us to witness how everyday people are experiencing the historical, cultural, economic and social forces that shape our world. As such, this present effort unpacks the role that culture can play in peace building and reconciliation. The research is qualitative in nature and applied discourse analysis to draw information from journal articles, published books as well as reports in the area of reconciliation and peace-building. Examples will be drawn mainly from Zimbabwe and other different countries in world to substantiate some of the arguments put forward in the paper.

The Discrimination of Women in Buddhism: An Ethical Analysis

Position of women in Buddhism has been debated for a long time. In my article, I will try to figure out the real situation of women in Buddhism. I will discuss something about sexism in Buddhist religion. There seem to be many difficulties that women following Buddhism are facing. I will highlight some of them in my article. I will also discuss the inferiority issues and how women are perceived as an inferior being in Buddhism. I will focus on the birth issues in Buddhist culture and religion in my article. I will be talking about how the birth of a woman is considered in Buddhism. I will also talk about the difficulties women are facing following Buddhism. In this way, I will try to explore the room for women in Buddhism in my article.

Political Polarization based on Religious Identities: Empirical Evidence from the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial

According to a research conducted by Anis Baswedan, Saiful Mujani and R. Will- iam Liddle, political Islam in Indonesia during the post Reformation had a mod- erate and pluralistic character. But this qualitative case study finds that a new phenomenon of polarization based on religious identities emerges among vot- ers in the elections. In this article we argue that the results of the second round of the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election provide strong evidence that sup- ports the idea of ideological polarization. We apply the root cause model presented by Veldhuis and Staun to understand how Islamic radicalization occurs in the Jakarta election. In line with the argument of Mainwaring and Torcal, we also argue that due to weak institutionalization, political parties did not play a dominant role in shaping the sharp ideological gap among voters. We found that polarization of identity based on religiosity occurred due to social dynamics that were manufactured by campaign strategies and staff, politicians, and religious leaders. Political marketing strategies in the event of elections have, in fact, blatantly exploited the issue of religion as a political weapon in elections. It has led to the resurgence of religious identity in entering the political debate. Hence growing intolerance and conflicts based on religious identities during elections may have provided initial evidence to support the idea that Indonesian democracy is pro- gressing towards illiberal democracy.

Midiatização da religião e Estudos Culturais: identificando diferenças a partir de Stuart Hall

Although the issue of religion does not occupy a prominent place in the works of Stuart Hall or even in Cultural Studies in general, some contemporary phenomena related to media and religion relations can be analyzed within this key of interpretation, mostly when we think on the intersection with identity. In this text, some theoretic and conceptual possibilities are outlined in order to understand the process of mediatization of religion from a perspective of articulation of identities, focusing, in particular, on questions related to body and culture.

Giorgio Agambens Paulus og “the return of religion”

In recent years, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has received more and more attention. Political philosophers increasingly discuss his political philosophy, and theologians and biblical scholars discuss his book on Paul and Paul’s letter to the Romans. This article situates the work of Agamben (especially on Paul) within a broader philosophical and theoretical context. Furthermore, it provides an interpretation of Agamben’s Paul in relation to his concept of “messianism” and in relation to a broad movement within continental philosophy called “the return of religion”. Finally, this article discusses some of the hermeneutical implications of a “philosophical Paul” or a “Paul ofthe philosophers”.

Integrasi Sains Dan Agama Dalam Pendidikan Islam

<p><em>Discuss the issue of science and religion, we would come to the discussion of the interaction of science and religion at the same time meaningful symbolic level. In geneologis we can see the complexity of the interaction of religion and science in the debate between faith dimension textually understood and understand the marginalizing science because of religious doctrine often considered incompatible with the common sense arguments. Though science and religion born from the same womb that is the "experience" of humanity. Up to now, there are still strong presumption in the wider community who say that "religion" and "science" are two entities that can not be met. Both have their respective areas, separated from each other, both in terms of formal object-material, research methods, criteria of truth, the role played by scientists.</em></p><p><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Key words</em></strong><em> : Integration, </em><em>interaction</em><em> </em><em>of science and religion</em><em></em></p>

Worldview Diagnostic Scale: Educational Instrument for Enhanced Pedagogy on Religion and Spirituality in Social Work Education

The academic literature has identified the urgent need for training competency-based social workers on issues of religion and spirituality. The academic institutions, however, have not responded to this need with curricula inclusion and classroom pedagogy on the subject. This study offers a concrete methodology that attempts to bridge the identified gap. The introduced Worldview Diagnostic Scale (WDS) is a classroom instrument for enhanced pedagogy for teaching on religion and spirituality in social work education.

RESISTENSI PEREMPUAN TERHADAP TRADISI-TRADISI DI PESANTREN ANALISIS WACANA KRITIS TERHADAP NOVEL PEREMPUAN BERKALUNG SORBAN

Gender issue in a pesantren (Islamic Boarding House) is a part of larger gender issues in Indonesia, either in education or religion. The main indicator of gender issue in pesantren is a striking gap between men and women. Themes related to this issue actually are not new for novels in Indonesia. Some novels related to pesantren usually portray women as helplessness, subordinate, inferior, and marginalized. However, in Perempuan Berkalung Sorban (PBS) novel, the author tried to empower women through his writings. Women in PBS novel was portrayed as smart, brave, and critical towards pesantren’s hegemony such as power relation between santri (students) and kiai (teachers), the understanding of classical books (Kitab Kuning), social relations between men and women in pesantren, and so forth

Религия и атеизм в публицистике авторов русского зарубежья второй половины XX века

<p>Статья посвящена темам веры, религии и атеизма в публицистических работах авторов русского зарубежья второй половины XX в. В СССР в период «оттепели» вопросы религии и научного атеизма стали активно обсуждаться в среде деятелей культуры, писателей, публицистов. Социально-политическая обстановка в стране обусловила череду громких политических дел и последующую высылку, вынужденный выезд из государства ряда талантливых писателей и журналистов, которых стали называть представителями «третьей волны» русской эмиграции. Статья посвящена анализу вопросов веры, религии, атеизма и содержит исследование творчества А. И. Солженицына, В. Е. Максимова, А. Д. Синявского, А. А. Зиновьева, В. П. Аксенова, Ф. Н. Горенштейна, М. Н. Эпштейна, А. А. Гениса.</p><p>Творческая эмигрантская интеллигенция из Советского Союза по-разному относилась к вере и религии. В значительной мере это объяснялось приверженностью авторов русского зарубежья к разным литературным направлениям и методам. Так, сторонники духовного реализма А. И. Солженицын и В. Е. Максимов ратовали за возрождение православия, постмодернист А. Д. Синявский интересовался расколом христианства и сектантством, эстетикой народной веры, А. А. Зиновьев называл себя «верующим безбожником». Однако и те и другие отмечали духовно-нравственный кризис как советского, так и западного общества на исходе XX в. Важную роль в социальной и культурно-просветительской жизни эмигрантов сыграли православные издания. Особое значение вопросы духовной нравственности получили в эпоху «перестройки», когда свобода слова и печати позволила открыто обсуждать ошибки и упущения советской власти в отношении веры, религии и религиозных институтов.</p><p>Сделан вывод о том, что авторы русского зарубежья активно обсуждали в своих публицистических произведениях проблемы религии и веры, а также атеистического мировоззрения. В рассмотрении этих вопросов они исходили из самоанализа собственных религиозных взглядов, чувств, переживаний.</p>

Fiction and religion: how narratives about the supernatural inspire religious belief – introducing the thematic issue

This article introduces a thematic issue of Religion that interrogates the religious use of fantasy and science fiction in the contemporary religious field. The overall aim of the thematic issue is to identify those textual features that make it possible for a given fictional story to be used as a religious narrative, that is, to inspire belief in the supernatural beings of the story-world, and to facilitate ritual interaction with said beings. The contributions analyse the religious affordance and actual use of a wide range of texts, spanning from Harry Potter and Star Wars, over The Lord of the Rings and late 19th-century Scandinavian fantasy, to the Christian Gospels. Over the course of the thematic issue, the conclusion emerges that there exists a hierarchy of three levels of religious affordance that fictional narratives can possess: to afford belief in the supernatural beings of the story, a text must present those supernatural beings as real within the story-world; to afford ritual interaction with said beings, a text must include model rituals and inscribe the reader into the narrative; to afford belief in the historicity of the narrated events, a text must anchor the story-world in the actual world. Although we focus on the religious affordance of fictional texts, we also spell out implications for the study of religious narratives in general, and for the narrativist study of religion.

“Ritual” and “Structured”discard in archaeological interpretations: Case study of water supply system at the site “Kale” in Krševica

The issues of cult, ritual, religion, and magic are important though to a large extent neglected and theoretically insufficiently developed subjects in the current archaeological literature. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate, on particular examples of potentially ritual activities associated to the erection and subsequent “ritual killing” of the water supply system at the site “Kale” in the village Krševica, that this neglect is not merely the consequence of trends in choices of research topics, but that it further points to certain disadvantages of current approaches based upon the archaeology of identity and the concepts of structured or symbolic deposition.