Project: The heritagization of religion and the sacralization of heritage in contemporary Europe
HERILIGION focuses on the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices in relation to religious and secular experiences connected to these, and thus explores secular and religious forms of sacralization linking past, present and future. Since World War II heritage is increasingly seen as defining identities in times of change. The formation and proliferation of the idea of heritage constitutes one particular use of the past, especially when applied to religious sites, objects and practices. HERRILIGION seeks to understand the consequences of the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices which were not considered heritage before. Where the object of heritage is experienced as religious, heritagization may lead to tensions and conflicts as it involves an explicitly secular gaze that sacralizes non-religious aspects of religious sites, objects and practices in a cultural, historical, or otherwise secular, immanent frame. Sometimes this creates tensions between religious and secular forms of sacralizing heritage. As heritage and religion are studied by separate disciplines and subject to different policies, this process is poorly understood ? both theoretically and practically. Combining these two bodies of knowledge HERILIGION will produce new insight which can be used to understand, manage and defuse tensions, benefiting both religious and heritage constituencies in Europe. HERILIGION will do that by investigating how the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices relates to religious and secular experiences connected to these; and to secular and religious forms of sacralization linking past, present and future, using primarily ethnographic methods. The research will take place at religious and heritage sites in Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and the UK, or would focus on emerging practical heritage (so-called intangible cultural heritage) in these countries. HERILIGION will compare these places with each other in order to offer a more general, representative theoretical analysis of heritagization in Europe.
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