Paper short abstract:

In the 21st century the perception of the spirituality of an historical church sited adjacent to an ancient landscape are seen in a distinctive manner by those within the community.

Paper long abstract:

In both academic and non-academic writing, there is a continued discourse as to what is sacred, what is heritage, and if the site(s) embodies both. However, it is from those who are part of the geophysical community and actively engage with the loci that we find what may be a spiritual site to some, could be considered only as a tourist venue to others. Even more telling is that these values may be ascribed by persons who are outwith the supposed spiritual group.

This paper will draw upon research conducted during my MLitt studies at University of Aberdeen (and currently within my PhD at University of Exeter). Utilising historical documents and ethnographic fieldwork, my preliminary research analysed how those within the community (both physical and spiritual) perceived the connection between the recumbent stone circle and the active Church of Scotland kirk, which is sited 10 metres away.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses religious heritage spaces on the Royal Hill in Kraków. The Hill is perceived in Poland as a national pantheon, a historical monument and a Christian pilgrimage site. It also attracts spiritual practitioners who locate one of the earth chakra - the energy spot - at the hill.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the complexity of discourses and practices related to religious heritage spaces at the Royal Hill in Kraków. The hill, known also as the Wawel Hill, hosts the medieval Roman Catholic cathedral (with royal tombs) and the Royal Castle (where the royal historical treasure and the State Museum are located). Wawel Hill is perceived in Poland as a national pantheon, a historical monument as well as a pilgrimage site connected to the cults of medieval and contemporary Polish saints. It is where a reliquary of the late pope (St. John Paul II) is exhibited next to the relics of Kraków's medieval bishop, St. Stanislaus, the patron of Poland.

Various discourses - historical and contemporary, Christian and national, touristic and political - shape the religious heritage spaces of Wawel Hill today. The controversial burial of the late Polish president Lech Kaczyński in the Wawel Cathedral after a 2010 plane crash in Russia, triggered a public dispute about national heritage sites, the Catholic Church and contemporary relations between religion and politics. However, the complexity of Wawel Hill stretches even further. The popular belief that one of the 'earth chakras' is located there attracts spiritual seekers and meditation practitioners. These groups publicly perform their practices at the site, even though the cathedral and museum managers oppose them and confine access to a very small 'energetic area'. Ethnographic material collected in Kraków reveals the multivocality of the Wawel Hill, therefore, where the 'religious heritage spaces' are variously defined, lived, practised and negotiated.

Paper short abstract:

The study discusses the politics of ownership and appropriation of a shared religious heritage space, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. By employing a materialist view the study examines diverse attitudes of the communities towards the Church's sacred localities.

Paper long abstract:

The study discusses the politics of ownership and appropriation of shared religious heritage spaces, that is sacred sites visited by followers of diverse religious communities, in the context of a major shrine of Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (called Anastasis) in the Old City of Jerusalem. The site is located in a contested city amidst political conflict, itself marked as a protected Christian holy site subjected to Jerusalem's Status Quo. Within the Church, fragile legal agreements between different international Churches and the intersection of ethnicity and theology, create a complex reality of overlapping borders, strict time-schedules and a fragile coexistence among the resident communities. The presence of thousands of pilgrims and tourists that visit the site daily, further promotes the negotiation and enforcement of borders around sacred localities by the resident custodians. By drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Church, the study examines diverse attitudes of the communities towards the Church's sacred space and traces intra-communal boundaries and borders. The study employs a materialist view arguing that any examination of the ways borders have been shaped in the Anastasis will benefit from considering the material aspects of religious practices as these shed light onto how people perceive similarities and differences across boundaries and borders. By exploring how various actors negotiate boundaries and borders around a major sacred site, this study makes a novel contribution to discussions of contemporary religious heritage spaces as well as to debates in anthropology of religion and its material culture.

Paper short abstract:

Looking at the contested conversion of a Catholic church in Amsterdam, I describe its central role in local quests for feeling at home. Local debates about religious heritage point to a rethinking of the place of Christian culture and a reworking of fault-lines in today's 'unchurched' society.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the widespread abandonment and conversion of church-buildings in the Netherlands. It is estimated that, on average, as many as two to four churches close down every week. These closures, and the often uncertain fate of these buildings, tend to spark emotionally charged debates in local settings. My paper looks at one particularly striking case: the early twentieth century Roman Catholic Chassé Church in Amsterdam, which has been recently converted into the Chassé Dance Studios and Hotel. Its abandonment and repurposing involved a long and contentious process. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the site, I argue that the local, affective debates about this abandoned church have been substantially informed by notions of home and by desires for feeling at home - albeit in diverse and often opposite ways for different groups of people. To former parishioners, the converted space represents the loss of a familiar home. For many local residents, by contrast, the building signifies local belonging and togetherness, yet in ways that diverge from its original religious signification. If the building is still interpreted religiously, this tends to be in terms of cultural heritage. Paradoxically, and similarly to other local debates around closed church buildings, those advocating the preservation of the Chassé Church have perceived Catholic organisations as jeopardising this aim. Closed and repurposed church buildings like this, I argue, are focal points for debates about the place of religion in society, exposing new fault-lines in our era after secularization.

Paper short abstract:

A Franciscan convent is part of the monumental and religious heritage of the Sintra Park, in Portugal, classified in 1995 as a UNESCO site. This paper will analyze different heritage/religious regimes and the conflicts between the past austere use of this space in contrast with present day uses.

Paper long abstract:

Sintra was inscribed as a UNESCO site in 1995, and described as a model of Romantic monumental and natural heritage. It includes over 20 different classified religious sites, megalithic monuments, chapels, churches, bringing together ancient pagan religious traditions and elaborated 16th century church altars. One of them is the "Convento dos Capuchos", funded in 1560 and given to the Franciscan order, as a result of a religious promise.

Build in a very simple way, the convent materializes the ideals of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi: the search for spiritual improvement through alienation from the world and renunciation of the pleasures associated with earthly life. Its rusticity and austerity relate to the surrounding vegetation, in total integration with nature.

In recent times the convent has been used by different religious groups as a site for offerings and religious contemplation. Since the creation in 2000 of the enterprise Parques de Sintra-Monte da Lua it was fenced and subjected to the rules of the visitable monuments of the Park. This fact causes indignation of the former users of the space, who claim that such buildings and surroundings belong to everyone and one should be able to use it freely. This is a clear case where, although "religious" and "heritage" go hand in hand, their touristified joint venture also causes tensions and disputes. This paper will analyze these different heritage/religious regimes and the conflicts between the past austere use of this space in contrast with present day uses.

Paper short abstract:

This paper unravels the way the Utrecht St Martin celebrations authenticate the city as heritage site. It shows how the celebrations shape experiences of 'Utrecht' as an inclusive heritagised space, foregrounding a secularised perspective which veils the Saint's religious origins from the city.

Paper long abstract:

On the evening of 10 November 2018, the streets of the Dutch city of Utrecht transformed into a spectacle of moving light sculptures, music and performance art. The inner city was taken over by the annual Saint Martin's Parade, a participatory lantern parade attracting thousands of people. The parade forms the highlight of the week-long Utrecht Saint Martin celebrations. Over the past decade, this feast has expanded from a children's procession to a multiplicity of rituals and practices symbolically reflecting the act of sharing, inspired by the city's patron saint St Martin of Tours (316-397). In 2012, the Utrecht Saint Martin celebrations became recognised as Dutch Intangible Cultural Heritage, protected by UNESCO.

The Saint Martin celebrations offer insight into how heritage sites—in this case, a city—become authenticated as such. The celebration's custodians promote Utrecht as the 'Saint Martin city' of the Netherlands. The Parade in particular draws on notions of St Martin's Day as a public folk festival, contributing to this status. The celebration is meant to create and perform an inclusive urban identity based on St Martin's 'ideology of togetherness, sharing and justice'. Paradoxically, in order to accomplish this, the Saint's religious origins become contested and veiled from the city space.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper investigates how the Utrecht Saint Martin celebrations aim at shaping experiences of 'Utrecht' as an inclusive heritagised space. Important here, as I will show, is the foregrounding of a secularised perspective as to guarantee a heritage that is open to all.

Paper short abstract:

Has Modernity constructed a rivalry between religion and heritage, and thereby created problems in use and conservation? This paper explores the history of the division between heritage and sacredness, leading to contemporary examples on managing encounters between visitors and religious heritage

Paper long abstract:

"Why museums are the new churches" was the title of a BBC Culture essay (June 2015), reflecting on how museums and art galleries have replaced churches as places of meaning and context, perhaps even worship, in society today. Is the reversed true as well: that churches - and other religious heritage buildings and sites - are identified and marketing themselves more as museums, where heritage narratives and preservations are competing with religious identity? Or, is this polarization an invention in the spirit of Modernity, while the sacred, the historical and the worldly in fact have coexisted and reinforced each other through history?

No matter the answer to these questions, they present challenges to the management and display of religious heritage sites and religion in museums - not least in terms of addressing the visitors and their shifting expectations and beliefs. What can be allowed in a museum: kissing, caressing, kneeling, or praying? Who has the insight to separate believing pilgrims from fitness and culture minded tourists at a pilgrimage site - and do even the visitors know how to label themselves?

This problem may seem like emblematic for our post-secular time, while in fact it dates back several centuries to the earliest shift from pilgrims to tourists in early modern Italy and France. This paper aims at exploring the history of the division and competition between heritage and sacredness, and presents a number of international contemporary examples on how encounters between visitors and religious heritage can be managed

Paper short abstract:

When considered heritage, religious spaces become a spectacle for a public that is different from the religious constituency and for whom the sacrality of the place is not necessarily religiously defined. This paper explores the spatial evocations and effects in three Danish World Heritage sites.

Paper long abstract:

In deconfessionalizing north-western Europe churches often seek financial resources by highlighting the cultural heritage value of the church building, religious objects and/or ritual practices. At the same time, state agencies, cultural experts and part of national publics seek validation and recognition - both domestically through the promotion of national culture and internationally through UNESCO and tourism. For the religious constituencies that claim their religious space (usually a church) as a sacred site of worship, it constitutes a localized claim to religious sovereignty enacted by religious and ritual practice in the present. But when considered heritage, the site becomes a spectacle for a public that is different from the religious constituency and for whom the sacrality of the place is not necessarily motivated by religious belief or enacted through religious worship. Instead, the church as heritage site may be a sacralized focal point for ontological pride on behalf of another, secular constituency, like the region or nation; or for vicarious nostalgia of a tourist public. The religious congregation itself might even become the object of a heritage gaze on the part of cultural experts and of tourists seeking a culturally "authentic" experience mediated by the memorial and religious practices of the congregation and by the putatively unmodern, religious spatial environment of the place. In this paper we explore the spatial evocations in the three Danish World Heritage sites of Jelling, Roskilde and Christiansfeld, and the consequences effected through the spatial channeling and separation of religious and heritage practices and publics.

Paper short abstract:

Transforming 'religious' spaces into 'heritage' sites is a messy, complex, and disputed process; a space may shift between these, just as the categories themselves take on multiple meanings. I aim to explore these issues through the transformation of a synagogue into a museum space in Luxembourg.

Paper long abstract:

There is currently a project underway to establish a Jewish museum in Luxembourg in a restored synagogue. Though still in its early stages, project coordinators have taken several key steps towards the creation of this museum. First, they have negotiated with national government representatives and the administrative body of the Jewish community to have the structure declared national patrimony. Second, they have facilitated the sale of the building from the Jewish community to the local government, such that the government is now responsible for any financing and upkeep, but can only use the space for 'educational purposes'. And third, they have de-sacralized the space and begun erasing traces of its secular (and Christian) uses in the post-war period. Together, these processes 'museumify' the space and transform it into 'heritage' by rendering it inactive as a religious and ritual space, and simultaneously work to create an interior space that evokes religious presence and history. At times, these concepts of 'religious' and 'heritage' are positioned as contradictory and become key mediators in contested representations of the past, present, and future of the space and the Jewish community. At other times, these contradictions are neutralized such that the concepts of 'religious' and 'heritage' are understood to easily co-exist and even work together toward particular ends. Based on ongoing ethnographic research, this paper will explore the processes through which the 'religious' and 'heritage' articulate across various contexts and audiences and the roles these categories play in contested conceptualizations of Jewishness and Jewish community history.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation concerns the ways in which a complex of seven Krakow synagogues, seen as a representation of the Jewish heritage of Krakow, is used to construct a narrative of the past and the present of the Jewish inhabitants of the city.

Paper long abstract:

Kazimierz - a Jewish district in which seven historic synagogues are situated - constitutes one of the biggest touristic attractions of the city. Nowadays, it is an important point on the map of the Jewish past in Poland and is perceived as not only a Jewish heritage site but European and world heritage as well. The presentation aims to take a closer look at the way the symbolic complex of synagogues operate outside of the tourist context, and how it is used to create a narrative about the past and the present of the Jewish communities in Krakow.

Presently, the synagogues are a constant reminder of the Jewish inhabitants of the city murdered during the Second World War. At the same time, the synagogues remain important places for the contemporary life of the Jewish communities and the place of various initiatives connected with Jewish history and culture. Synagogues are also used by city tour guides to shape the image of the Jewish Krakow. Lately, there is a tendency to emphasise connection between the memory of Shoah and the concept of a Jewish Revival.

The subject matter discussed derives from ethnographic studies of city walking tours. The purpose of this presentation is to investigate the meanings given to synagogues' spaces by the narrators and their active role in creating images of the Jewish communities. Given that the walking tours are also popular among the locals, I reflect on the ways the Jewish heritage of Krakow is tangled with the local identity.

Paper short abstract:

Mértola, in the southern Portugal, is an icon of Portuguese Islamophilia and a stage to exhibit political and religious projects, sometimes contradictory. The Islamic festival which is held every two years overshadow all the paradoxes with its orientalistic atmosphere and scenography.

Paper long abstract:

Mértola, a small and impoverished village in the southern Portugal, became an icon of Portuguese Islamophilia since a regional and developmentist project grounded on its multi layered heritage - led by a charismatic left winged archaeologist - was promoted in the following years of the Carnations Revolution in 1974.

Every two years Mértola - which is labelled as a Museum Village, and now applying for UNESCO nomination - held a so called «Islamic Festival». At this festival it becomes clear how different political, religious and economic projects converged along the years into a tiny, but symbolically thick site, making use of different displays and scenographies, in different stages, to exhibit their ideologies often contradictory. But the Islamic festival overshadow all the paradoxes under its orientalist atmosphere and spectalularity.

The festival is held since 2001. In this paper, I will take both its chronological and spatial dimension to evince the way different agents, with different projects - academic, political and/or religious - built their stages and play they roles in a heritage arena which is nowadays framed by an aesthetic cosmopolitism of consumption.

Paper short abstract:

Islamic religious heritage sites became content in the practice of Muslim lifestyle blogging. This paper explores the impact of this practice on the making of Muslim identity on one hand, and its contribution to the discourse of imagining the Muslim present and past, on the other hand.

Paper long abstract:

A Muslim couple face the Kaaba; a Muslim woman poses infront of the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem; amidst the flowers of Alhambra's gardens, a young Muslim woman in a headscarf fashions a white dress: These are Muslim lifestyle blogger's posts of Islamic heritage sites.

This paper seeks to shed light onto this phenomenon and the questions that arise from it. Muslim lifestyle bloggers create images of Muslims in general, but particularly, of Muslim women, differing from negative portraying of Islam and Muslims.

While they offer a different visibility of Muslims, their blogging practices intersect with those generally associated with digital culture: putting the self and its presentation at the core.

The posing infront of sacred spaces and religious heritage sites, such as the Kaaba during pilgrimage, using the hashtag muslimcouples, appear as an immediate condratiction of the assembeled symbolisms of spirituality and "worldly" practice.

This paper argues that this practice indicates the making of new Muslim identities, negotiating tradition, religion and modernity, and furthermore, understanding it as part of imagining the Islamic past and present.

I will do so by focusing on Instagram samples that include Islamic heritage sites, exploring questions such as:

What debates and discourses on lifestyle, consumerism, imagining an ideal past and present and re-connecting with the Islamic past are mirrored in digital culture?

Does the presentation of the self online through selfies and posts lead to"reducing" religious heritage sites into props for blogging, or is it a continuing re-defining and enlivening of these spaces?