Project information

Research project’s title: Producing medieval history within Roman Catholic and contemporary Pagan religious practices in Poland

Project No: NCN 2022/46/E/HS3/00118
Project financing: Narodowe Centrum Nauki, konkurs SONATA BISResearch team: dr hab. Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska (PI), dr Kaja Kajder, mgr Paweł Karolczyk

Charakteristics

The project aims at ethnographic research on producing medieval history within religious practice. Fieldwork will be conducted in three regions of Poland: Małopolska (Lesser Poland), Wielkopolska (Great Poland) and Pomorze Zachodnie (Western Pomerania). The subject of the study are Roman Catholic and contemporary Pagan celebrations and their role in interpreting the past. Reflection on the place of religion in social life has been dominated by secularization paradigm which ascribes religion less importance. Such a research approach has limited looking for new places in which religion is present. This project offers investigation on one of such places, namely producing history within religious practice. To achieve this goal it applies post-secular perspective enabling research on how secular and religious are defined and used in social practice, dependently on situation or needs. Moreover, such an approach opens a way for considerations on intertwining of these two notions and finally leads to undermining the dichotomy: secular – religious. Therefore the post-secular perspective encourages crafting new interpretive categories allowing for leaving the secularization paradigm. Empirical research on producing history within religious practice and on the role of this history in the public sphere offers possibility to develop new approach discerning the unrecognized places of religion in the social life.