Power and the Definition of the Sacred; Popular Religious Regime Formation in Former Yugoslavia
Power and the Definition of the Sacred; Popular Religious Regime Formation in Former Yugoslavia

Summary/Abstract: The dichotomy sacred-profane has long been fundamental to the study of religion and has resulted in the assumption of the existence of two separate realms. The rigidity of that separation as well as its static implications have met with severe criticism. One of its consequences was the development of a more dynamic approach of secularization; but curiously, sacralization, the logical opponent, has received virtually no attention at all. This article is an ethnographic attempt to overcome that one-sidedness. It illustrates that sacralization and secularization may be approached as dynamically related elements in a power process aimed at the collective definition of the status of a mountain in a Herzegovinian rural community. At a more general level, the article pleads for systematically investigating processes of meaning in terms of processes of power.

• Details
• Contents