The Graveyard and the Table - The Catholic-Orthodox Borderland in Poland and Belarus

The book is based on long-term ethnographic research in the Polish-Belarusian borderland. It examines the dynamics of symbolic boundaries between the Catholic and Orthodox believers in their everyday lives. By analyzing the space of local cemeteries, rituals, and attitudes related to death, eating practices, and food sharing, the author points to the changing sense of ethnic identity and the feeling of familiarity and otherness. Confessionally mixed neighborhoods and families enable different forms of religious bivalency and become a crucial factor in bridging and crossing ethnic boundaries. Socio-cultural norms and social relations shape the ethnic identity of the borderland's residents more than the institutional frames of both churches.

List of contents

multicultural borderland - cultural and religious diversity - ethnic identity - Poland - Belarus - Orthodox and Catholic religiousness - peasant culture - funeral rituals - dead remembering - peasant cemeteries - food practices and sharing - religiously mixed families and neighborhood - village communities

About the author

Justyna Straczuk is a professor of sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the author and co-author of four books and several articles on borderland issues, sociology of food and anthropology of emotions. She has conducted ethnographic research in Belarus, Lithuania and Poland for over twenty-five years.

Product details

• Authors: Justyna Straczuk
• Assisted by: Jaroslaw Fazan (Editor), Alex Shannon (Translation)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 17.12.2021
• EAN: 9783631854525
• ISBN: 978-3-631-85452-5
• No. of pages: 252
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 22 mm x 214 mm
• Weight: 446 g
• Illustrations: 33 Abb.
• Series: Polish Studies - Transdisciplinary Perspectives; Polish Studies ¿ Transdisciplinary Perspectives
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries