2013/09/01 by Eckehard Pistrick · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Balkans: History, Politics, Society #Byzantine Studies and History #Religion and Society Interactions #Singing #Sociology #Identity (music) #Hegemony #Gender studies #Cultural identity #Common ground #Social identity theory #Aesthetics #Social science #Social group #Political science #Law #Art #Communication #Politics
paper · doi:10.3167/ajec.2013.220205
openalex publication_date 2013/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This essay provides grass-roots insights into interreligiosity in Middle Albania. I focus on two individuals, Muslim Arif and Orthodox Anastas, to show how notions of cultural intimacy prevail over hegemonic discourses on religious identity that have re-emerged in postsocialist and 'post-atheist' Albania. The process of religious revitalisation took place simultaneously with a pervasive reshaping of local cultural identity. These discourses give simultaneously an opportunity for religious differentiation and symbolic contestations, as well as for diverse collaborations on a social, cultural and economic level. I illustrate how cultural intimacy is performed and cultivated as a shared practice of multipart singing, and understood by the local shepherds not as a marker of difference but as common ground for mutual dialogue. By sharing the social activity of singing the shepherds do not only form a 'sonic community' but also celebrate an interreligious 'community of friends'.