Conversion After Socialism : : Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union / / ed. by Mathijs Pelkmans.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Broz, Ludek,; Clark, William,; Engelhardt, Jeffers,; Lankauskas, Gediminas,; Peel, J.D.Y.,; Pelkmans, Mathijs,; Vallikivi, Laur,; Vaté, Virginie,; Wanner, Catherine,
• HerausgeberIn: Pelkmans, Mathijs,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.)

The large and sudden influx of missionaries into the former Soviet Union after seventy years of militant secularism has been controversial, and the widespread occurrence of conversion has led to anxiety about social and national disintegration. Although these concerns have been vigorously discussed in national arenas, social scientists have remained remarkably silent about the subject. This volume’s focus on conversion offers a novel approach to the dislocations of the postsocialist experience. In eight well researched ethnographic accounts the authors analyze a range of missionary encounters as well as aspects of conversion and "anti-conversion" in different parts of the region, thus challenging the problematic idea that religious life after socialism involved a simple "revival" of repressed religious traditions. Instead, they unravel the unexpected twists and turns of religious dynamics, and the processes that have challenged popular ideas about religion and culture. The contributions show how conversion is rooted in the disruptive qualities of the new "capitalist experience" and document its unsettling effects on the individual and social level.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: Post-Soviet Space and the Unexpected Turns of Religious Life -- 2 Conversion to Religion? Negotiating Continuity and Discontinuity in Contemporary Altai -- 3 Redefining Chukchi Practices in Contexts of Conversion to Pentecostalism -- 4 Christianization of Words and Selves: Nenets Reindeer Herders Joining the State through Conversion -- 5 Right Singing and Conversion to Orthodox Christianity in Estonia -- 6 The Civility and Pragmatism of Charismatic Christianity in Lithuania -- 7 Networks of Faith in Kazakhstan -- 8 Temporary Conversions: Encounters with Pentecostalism in Muslim Kyrgyzstan -- 9 Conversion and the Mobile Self: Evangelicalism as ‘Travelling Culture’ -- 10 Postsocialism, Postcolonialism, Pentecostalism -- Notes on Contributors -- Index