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Masarykova česká sociologická společnost

a Česká asociace pro sociální antropologii

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na 105. GELLNEROVSKÝ SEMINÁŘ,

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ve čtvrtek 14. ledna 2010 od 16:30 hodin

v reprezentativní místnosti Richter New York University v Praze, v 1. patře

Malé náměstí 11, Praha 1 - Staré Město

Doc. Dr. Ingo Schröder

Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale

Struggles over Hegemony: The Catholic Church and Its Others in Lithuania

K pozvánce přikládáme teze přednášky a životopis

Petr SKALNÍK, v.r.Jiří MUSIL, v.r.Zdeněk UHEREK, v.r. Alena MILTOVÁ,v.r.

Struggles over Hegemony: The Catholic Church and Its Others in Lithuania

Abstract by Ingo W. Schröder

The presentation outlines a political approach to the study of the Catholic Church in Lithuania by using the concept of hegemony. Ethnographic data were collected during a recent field research among urban middle-class people in Kaunas and Vilnius. Hegemony describes a mode of domination that operates mostly in the domain of culture and strives to promote a view of the world and existing inequalities that is accepted as natural - and therefore, uncontested - by the majority of the population. Rooted in the writings of Antonio Gramsci, the concept was popularized in the study of culture by Raymond Williams and has been introduced to anthropology by Marxist researchers like Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith. So far it has only rarely been employed for the study of religion. However, I argue that it can be a highly useful tool, in particular in those societies whose religious field has been dominated over a long period of time by a single church - like the Catholic Church in Lithuania.

After discussing the concept of hegemony and its anthropological applications, I sketch an analysis of the contemporary religious situation in Lithuania in terms of a hegemonic struggle that has been going on throughout the twentieth century. While still boasting 79% of self-proclaimed Catholics in the 2001 census, the church is today, despite its claims to providing the nation with a hegemonic narrative of faith and morality, facing increasing indifference and rejection. Moreover, the large figure of ‘statistical' Catholics hides a wide variety of attitudes toward Catholicism and the church, as well as a predominant consumerist approach to the church as a provider of services that do not interfere with an essentially secular lifestyle.

The church's opponents in the current hegemonic struggle are mainly three simultaneous social processes: (1) an understanding of national culture and tradition that has historically been detached from the idea of Catholicism and rather builds upon an idealized notion of an ‘authentic' peasant folk culture, ultimately rooted in a pre-Christian past; (2) ‘Western'-style modernization with its concomitant manifestations of secularism and individualism that makes faith a matter of choice and tends to subordinate belief to a capitalist ideology of commodification that has been enthusiastically adopted by Lithuanians; (3) the spread of non-Christian religious ideas, mostly derived from either Baltic paganism or global New Age thought, that have been especially attractive to the urban and better educated.

While the hegemonic aspirations of the mainline Catholic Church are obviously failing, Catholicism has the potential to function as a counterhegemonic force to the dominance of ideas of commodification and cynicism toward the common good in Lithuania. As I will show in the final section of the presentation, there are groups within the Catholic spectrum that are striving to create a version of Christian culture that can be seen as a ‘counterculture' to mainstream society.

Ingo W. Schröder holds a PhD from the University of Frankfurt and a postdoctoral degree (Habilitation) in Anthropology from the University of Marburg. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale and a lead researcher in the project "The Catholic Church and Religious Pluralism in Lithuania and Poland", as well as a Professor of Anthropology at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas. His main geographical fields of expertise are Eastern Europe and Native North America, and his research has focused on Catholicism, Neopaganism, ethnohistory, socialism/ postsocialism, and the politics of identity, heritage and culture. His most recent publication is the edited volume (with Asta Vonderau) Changing Economies and Changing Identities in Postsocialist Eastern Europe (2008). In 2008/9 he has spent a year of fieldwork on urban religiosity in Lithuania.