Hierarchy and Pluralism. Living Religious Difference in Catholic Poland

Autorin
Agnieszka Pasieka

Verlag
New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Jahr der Veröffentlichung
2015

ISBN
978-1-13750-052-6

OPAC

Abstract
What is the place of pluralism in the context of a dominant religion? How does the perception of religion as "tradition" and "culture" affect pluralism? Why do minorities' demands for recognition often transform into exclusion? Through her ethnography of a multi-religious community in rural Poland, Agnieszka Pasieka demonstrates how we can better understand the nature of pluralism by examining how it is lived and experienced within a homogenous society. Painting a vivid picture of everyday interreligious sociability, Pasieka reveals the constant balance of rural inhabitants between ideas of sameness and difference, and the manifold ways in which religion informs local cooperation, relations among neighbors and friends, and common attempts to "make pluralism". The book traces these developments through several decades of the community's history, unveiling and exposing the paradoxes inscribed into the practice and discourse of pluralism and complex processes of negotiation of social identities.