Catholicism Doesn't Always Mean What You Think It Means
Anthropologists of Catholicism should consider "floating" Catholicism as a signifier and resisting ingrained habits of essentializing and assuming its referent or content, exemplified by still-frequent quotations of sociologist Andrew Greeley's exceptionalist idea of the "sacrame...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Brill
[2019]
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In: |
Exchange
Year: 2019, Volume: 48, Issue: 3, Pages: 214-224 |
RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy KBQ North America KDB Roman Catholic Church NBE Anthropology |
Further subjects: | B
independent Catholics
B Essentialism B Empire B micropolitics B virtual assemblage B lapsed Catholics |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | Anthropologists of Catholicism should consider "floating" Catholicism as a signifier and resisting ingrained habits of essentializing and assuming its referent or content, exemplified by still-frequent quotations of sociologist Andrew Greeley's exceptionalist idea of the "sacramental imagination." I use examples from my work including everyday micropolitics, independent Catholics, and cultural Catholics, as well as the work of Maya Mayblin and Jon Bialecki, to suggest a catholic—in the small-c sense of all-encompassing—approach that has the potential to sustain the anthropology of Catholicism as a radical space for investigation and discovery. I revisit Greeley's "sacramental imagination" in the context of its quotation in a U.S. museum exhibit and connect its appeal to Roman Catholic empire-making. |
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ISSN: | 1572-543X |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Exchange
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/1572543X-12341526 |