Accepting the post-colonial challenge

Theorizing a Khaldûnian approach to the Marian apparition at Medjugorje

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3868064
AutoresJ V Spickard (0000-0002-4191-7953, University of Redlands, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume1
Fascículo2
Páginas158-176
Data de publicação2013-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Research on Religion (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2050-3032 • E-ISSN: 2050-3040
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/2050303213490039
OpenAlexW2160221089
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas57

This article seeks to expand the sociology of religion's conceptual toolkit beyond the focus on religious belief and on organizational structures inherited from Western Christianity. After criticizing these origins, I use Ibn Khaldûn's notion of al 'assabiyyah or "group-feeling" to analyze the events surrounding the Marian apparitions at Medjugorje, Bosnia, in the 1980s and the later events in the same region during the 1990s Bosnian wars. This concept's strength is its ability to treat religious and ethnic solidarity as part of the same phenomenon-something that previous literature on Medjugorje and the Bosnian war failed to do. Its weakness (for this case) is its focus on centripetal (attractive) solidarity rather than solidarity created by heightened social boundaries. The solidarities at Medjugorje were more often of the latter kind

Bosnian · Christianity · Epistemology · Phenomenon · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Byzantine Studies and History · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies