Hierarchy and Pluralism Living Religious Difference in Catholic Poland [Hardcover]

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 multireligious 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 communitys history, unveiling and exposing the paradoxes inscribed into the practice and discourse of pluralism and complex processes of negotiation of social identities.

Introduction: Seven Ways to God PART I: MAPPING RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 1. Poland: A History of Pluralism 2. Making Pluralism: The People and the Place PART II: PLURALIZING THE PAST 3. Caroling History: Heteroglossic Narratives and Religious Boundaries 4. Religion and Memories of Socialism PART III: ACTING UPON LOCALITY 5. The Different and the Common: About Multireligious Neighborhoods 6. Debating Pluralism Conclusions: Challenging Hierarchical Pluralism

Hierarchy and pluralism is a thoughtful and sensitive ethnography that will appeal to a number of different readerships. In addition to being very valuable to those interested in the anthropologies of Poland and of religion, it would be apt for courses teaching ethnographic methods, posing as it does such interesting questions about how the scale of a fieldsite relates to the research questions being explored. The book will invite cross-cultural comparison with other societies that include multiple religions & . ló–