The Utilitarian Sacrality – Finding out the Roots of Tolerance Cover Image
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Утилитарната сакралност – откриване на поносимостта
The Utilitarian Sacrality – Finding out the Roots of Tolerance

Author(s): Evgenia Ivanova
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Институт за етнология и фолклористика с Етнографски музей при БАН

Summary/Abstract: The article is based upon the results of the research study, called “Interethnic and Interconfessional Relationships in the Sacral Centre of Krastova Gora”. The starting point of the study was the hypothesis that the esteem of one and the same place as sacral by members of different ethnic and religious groups was due to its ancient sacredness that had gradually absorbed elements of Christian or Muslim mythology. Accepting this hypothesis, the author had introduced, yet in the time of research work, a key term, which had proved to be relevant even in the early stages of analysis of the fieldwork material. This is the term of “utilitarian sacrality”. It refers to sacrality as emerging on the profane level and as seen through the focus of everyday Christianity and everyday Islam, on the one hand, and of the actual human everyday pragmatism, on the other. Paradoxically enough, it is the pragmatic attitude toward sacrality, that forms mutual tolerance. Rationalism, fostering the pragmatism and the profane, is the strongest opposition against the irrationalism of fundamentalism.

  • Issue Year: XXI/1995
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 102-117
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Bulgarian