Dossier 2/2024: Material religion

Material Religion is a study field that comprises the study of religions in their empirical aspects – clothing, architecture, iconography, spatiality, food, music, dance, etc. – investigating how such aspects influence and form devotees through non-discursive means, but sensorial ones. Material Religion is transdisciplinary and polymethodical, but the central feature which pervades its approaches consists of the invertion of the common logic of human beings creating objects, in order to understand how objects form different ways of being human. Occasional religious experiences, as well as

everyday ones mediated by the body (senses) and by religious artifacts, lead religious subjects to incorporate concepts and values, as much or more than the study of sacred texts, often in a way that is imperceptible to consciousness and having lasting effects. A large part of our most basic preferences are related to religious aesthetics, even in subjects who do not perceive themselves as religious. The idea of dressing decently, what food is and sexual behavior, for example, always have relations with religious ontologies, even if distantly. These concepts are apprehended by practice, in a procedural way, through a long sensory training that varies from religion to religion. In this way, Material Religion thinks of corporeal-material religious relations as producers of meaning.

In this call for papers, we invite researchers who are interested in studying the agency of objects, in their use and manufacture (artistic or massproduction); architecture, proprioception, and other forms of approaching spatiality; bodily practices, corporeality (embodiment), movement (gestures, dance, pilgrimages); senses, aesthetic formation and sensory enculturation focusing on religions.