Investigation of identity formations around 'shared shrines; in the Middle East and the Balkans

Aims and Objectives: Popular assumptions about the fundamental exclusiveness of religious identities, practices and communities are thrown into question by shared shrines. In the Balkans and the Middle East these have brought Muslims, Christians and Jews together around objects, tombs and sites believed to deliver boons or spiritual protection. Using textual and field-gathered materials, spanning the nineteenth century to the present, this project will investigate beliefs and practices related to sites shared between religious communities in southern regions of Former Yugoslavia and in the region around Jerusalem and Bethlehem in Israel-Palestine to assess the impact of such 'cohabitation' on cultural and political identities and understand the forces which work to undermine that cohabitation. The findings will be disseminated via a short book to be published by Berghahn as well as in conference papers. Elisabeth Koneska, a documentary video maker who is collaborating with me on the Macedonian (and Albanian) aspects of the project, and I, an active photographer and lecturer in Visual Anthropology, also hope to mount the archival and ethnographic work in one or more small exhibitions open to the people amongst whom we will be working. As this very much depends on local reactions we are not setting this up as a programmed output, but it is very much on our agenda.

Research Context the recent wars in Yugoslavia, in which religious identities were foregrounded in ethno-nationalist confrontations, fixed the region's reputation as a 'fracture zone' between East and West (Islam and Christianity, Catholicism and Orthodoxy). Analogously, the 'Holy Land' - already viewed as a setting for religious warfare - has become, with the establishment of a Jewish State in a demographically-mixed territory, an icon of inter­ religious antagonism enduring since 'time immemorial'. These developments support popular discourse, legitimated by some academics (see, for instance, Robert Hayden, "Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites in South Asia and the Balkans", Current Anthropology. 43:2. April2002. pp. 205-2311), is contending that persons' religious identities are fundamental and antagonistic to other religions. However both regions have seen intensive inter-communal activities around both urban and rural religious sites. Such commingling was often opposed by religious authorities 'owning' these sites but in other cases it was encouraged by, for instance, the Sufic Bektashi. Although both regions were part of the Ottoman Empire, the different systems of religious and secular authority in the two areas during the Ottoman Empire, the different forms of religious activity fostered or suppressed by post-Ottoman states, and the development of ethno-religious nationalisms provides grounds for comparative analysis of the development of religious communalisms in different contexts. The recent destruction, disbanding or exclusive expropriation of many of these shared sites makes especially vital the chronicling of their disappearance and the documentation of their former character.
Potential Application and Benefits: The work will connect contemporary ethnography and historical materials related to shared shrines in Israel-Palestine and the Balkans with other scholars' work, drawing those materials into analytical relation with studies of shared shrine usages relating to Asia, South America, Africa and elsewhere to provide both a benchmark for future studies and a solid work of scholarship with which to weigh the validity of academic and popular arguments about clashing civilisations and sectarian incommensurabilities