Jonveaux, Isabelle, Palmisano, Stefania and Pace, Enzo (eds) (2014) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 5: Sociology and Monasticism: Between Innovation and Tradition. Leiden, Boston: Brill. - 322 p.
Since 2010, Brill has published an annual survey on the most relevant topics in the sociology of religion. Among them-religion and youth, religion and politics, new methods of studying religion, prayer, monasticism, which is dedicated to the fifth collection and this review of it, as well as religion and the Internet and the sociology of atheism1, a book that will be published this year. Among the pressing problems of the sociology of religion, the appeal to such subtle matters as prayer and monasticism is somewhat unexpected. It seems that monastic ideals, including prayer, are poorly connected with the social fabric of society. However, this conversion is as unexpected as it is natural, since in many religious traditions monasticism is a very significant, but little-studied phenomenon.
The current European religious situation is paradoxical: here the level of trust in traditional institutions is falling, while interest in monasteries and monasticism is growing. It's coming out right-
1. Reviews include the following publications in the order mentioned: Giordan, (ed.) (2010) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 1: Youth and religion. Boston: Brill; Michel, P. and Pace, E. (eds) (2011) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 2: Religion and Politics. Boston: Brill; Berzano, L. and Riis, O. P. (eds) (2012) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 3: New Methods in the Sociology of Religion. Leiden, Boston: Brill; Giordan, G. and Woodhead, L. (eds) (2013) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 4: Prayer in Religion and Spirituality. Leiden; Boston: Brill; Jonveaux, I., Palmisano, S. and Pace, E. (eds) (2014) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 5: Sociology and Monasticism: Between Innovation and Tradition. Leiden, Boston: Brill; Enstedt, D., Larsson, G. and Pace, E. (eds) (2015) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 6: Religion and Internet. Leiden, Boston: Brill; Cipriani, R. and Garelli, F. (eds) (2016) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 7: Sociology of Atheism. Leiden; Boston: Brill.
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leko goes beyond religious pursuits, including the demand for cooking classes and monastery products. Modernization and the personnel crisis (and in Europe there are few people who want to become monks) force monasteries to go to a number of innovations and experiments. The reviewed book is devoted to the topic "Sociology and Monasticism: between innovation and tradition". Its editors - Isabella Jonwu (University of Graz, Austria), Stefania Palmisano (University of Turin, Italy) and Enzo Pace (University of Padua, Italy) - are recognized experts in this field. 2 In 2015, I. Jonwu, S. Palmisano and their colleagues from the Universities of Graz, Turin and Bucharest (Romania) held a conference "Christian Monasticism from East to West", timed to coincide with the publication of the peer-reviewed compendium 3.
The authors of the book declare the topic "Sociology and monasticism" and immediately question the subject matter included in the title. Indeed, it is quite difficult to answer the question of what is monasticism and who can be called a monk. It is somewhat easier to determine which form of life is monastic, because both in Christianity and in other traditions, it is characterized by such fundamental features as cohabitation, prayer, rules, and physical discipline. And who is a monk? Someone who belongs to a monastic order (p. 22)? Or someone who prays for people who have neither the time nor the skill to pray (p. 77)? Or is it "a religious ascetic virtuoso who withdraws from the world in order to fully devote himself to God in communal life" (Jonveaux 2011: 45) or to achieve the highest degree of enlightenment (nirvana)" (p. XVI)? Or maybe someone who is "fascinated by the beauty of God and is called to embody this beauty wherever he lives "(p. 89)? This research question is the leitmotif of the entire book and reveals its orientation to Catholic realities, because, for example, in the Orthodox tradition, the boundaries of monasticism are drawn more clearly and do not cause such acute discussion.
The book includes 17 articles and consists of three parts: 1) Catholic monasticism, 2) Eastern monasticism, 3) methodology
2. Среди их публикаций: Jonveaux, I. (2011) Le monastere au travail: Le Royaume de Dieu au defi de l'economie. Paris: Bayard; Palmisano, S. (2014) "Asceticism in Modern Times. Challenging Monastic Pillars in a New 21st с. Catholic Monastery", Fieldwork in Religion 4(1); Pace, E. (1983) Asceti e mistici in una societa secolarizzata. Marsilio, Venice.
3. For more information about the conference, see: Medvedeva K. S. What can sociology say about monasticism? // Sotsiologicheskoe obozrenie. 2015. Vol. 14. N 3. pp. 153-160.
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and classical works on the sociology of monasticism. The number of male and female authors is about the same, but there is a slight emphasis on texts about female monasticism. The collection is characterized by disciplinary and methodological diversity. Despite the narrow scope of sociology stated in the title, the authors include social and cultural anthropologists, theologians, and some texts contain lengthy historical and ethnographic passages. However, sociologists make up a clear majority in the author's team.
The key concepts of "innovation" and "tradition" run through all the articles, and the monastic traditions of different religions and countries are considered through their prism.
Monasteries appear to the reader as laboratories where Christianity and modernity collide. They are becoming popular again, but not so much as religious objects, but as "folklore elements". The demand for monastic tourism and monastic products speaks for the folklorization of monasteries. Monasteries try to preserve a secluded lifestyle and satisfy the needs of modern society (Hervieu-Leger) at the same time. I. Zhongwu tried to understand how they manage to do this. It is true that fewer people are aspiring to monasticism, but does this mean that modern secular society does not need monasteries? Not at all. "The problem is not that monastic life is outdated, but rather that monks and nuns are less often seen in society as religious professionals" (p. 71), Zhong - woo rightly points out and considers the new role of monasteries. Monasteries appear as economic actors, which provides them with a place in modern secular society.
Accusations of archaism generate not only new social roles for monasteries, but also fundamentally new forms of monastic life. These include, for example, "new monastic communities", which S. Palmisano considers (she discusses this topic in more detail in her recently published book "The Study of New Monastic Communities" 4). The "new monastic communities" are not the old monastic orders that have been given new life. On the contrary, they represent fundamentally new communities, which, however, can freely move to other countries.-
4. Palmisano, S. (2015) Exploring New Monastic Communities. The (Re) invention of Tradition. Ashgate.
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to understand the way of traditional monastic life. They arise in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), are an alternative to classical monasticism and emphasize their innovation and break with tradition. Here it is appropriate to draw a parallel with the concept of "inventing religion", which became the main idea of a recent book about the religious situation in the post-Soviet space.5 Both cases involve innovation in a religious context, but they differ in nature. New monastic communities in Catholicism were a response to the challenge of the times, which led to a break with tradition in order to create a new one. In Russia and the post-Soviet context, on the contrary, innovations in the Orthodox environment are disguised as "ancient", as if "it was always accepted this way".
The reviewed collection is valuable from a methodological point of view. Here you can find examples of using included observation, self-ethnography, interviews, and questionnaires. Thus, a survey of visitors to 13" Christian spiritual centers "(n=284) at monasteries in the Netherlands showed that recollections (or" retreats") and other types of spiritual services are in demand mainly among women aged 60-65 with higher education, who received religious education in the Catholic or Protestant tradition. Approximately half of the visitors (46%) identify themselves as members of a church or community that adheres to religious beliefs, and the same number attend church services almost every week or regularly. Consequently, the authors conclude that spiritual centers attached to monasteries do not replace, but rather enhance, the religious life of their visitors (De Groot et al.).
Materials for the first part of the book on Catholic monasticism were collected in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The second part of the book, devoted to Eastern monasticism, includes articles on Orthodoxy, Buddhism, and interreligious dialogue. The reader's ideas about Orthodox monasticism are formed on the basis of research on Syriac monasticism (Poujeau), Athos monasticism in France (Denizeau), as well as Orthodox monasticism in France, Switzerland, Britain, the United States, Romania and Greece (Hammerli). A simple list of countries reveals the Eurocentrism of this book, because even the Eastern monastic tradition is represented mainly by Western examples. Cro-
5.Kormina J., Panchenko A., Shtyrkov S. (eds.) The Invention of Religion: Desecularization in the post-Soviet context. St. Petersburg: European University Press, 2015.
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In addition, despite the dynamics of monasticism in the post-Soviet period, the collection, unfortunately, does not include a single study on Russian Orthodox monasteries.
In general, unlike works about Catholic monasteries, texts about Orthodox monasticism are built around the concept of "tradition" rather than "innovation". Thus, the first author asks about the role of continuity in the monastic context (Denizeau). Using the example of Athos monasticism in France, he describes how the construction of religious identity takes place in the context of migration, and notes the important role of the elder confessor (geronta). The spiritual father is not only a behavioral model for monks, but also the "embodiment of tradition" (p. 138), a living tradition, an intermediary between ancestors and descendants. The topic of spiritual leadership in Orthodoxy is continued by M. Hammerley's article, which refers to examples of male and female Orthodox monasteries in Western Europe. What provides the elder's charisma? Is it only exceptional personal qualities, as Weber writes? According to Hammerley, the elder's charisma stems not from the personal attractiveness of the elder, which is based on self-affirmation, but from the preservation of tradition, which implies self-abasement, leveling the self of the confessor. Studies of Russian Orthodox monasticism in the post-Soviet context would be very useful here, since they contain heuristic potential for studying this topic.6
Despite the Christian-centric nature of the collection, there was room for two works on Buddhist monasticism in Britain and Korea. Modern Buddhism, like modern Catholicism, is revising the concept of monastic asceticism. In Korea, Buddhism is moving from the mountains to the cities, and large sach'al (meaning both a temple and a monastery) are adapting to the needs of the urban population, expanding their range of services, including education and medicine (Galmiche). The idea of a Buddhist monk is also changing. A modern monk is not necessarily a person who is in a state of liminality, as Turner wrote 7. K. Starkey analyzes the materials of the included observation and interviews in six sororities in Britain and concludes that Buddhist nuns in general are not isolated from society, although they pass
6. For example, see: Mitrokhin N. Russkaya pravoslavnaya tserkva: sovremennoe sostoyanie i aktual'nye problemy [Russian Orthodox Church: Current state and Actual problems].
7. Turner, V. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.
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ritual separation from him. Some nuns continue to play certain social roles, earn money, and own property (Starkey).
In addition to considering individual monastic traditions in different countries, the collection provides a comparative analysis of monasticism in Christianity( read, Catholicism), Buddhism and Hinduism. The need for a dialogue between them is caused by a number of reasons, among them:: missionary work in Asia, the spread of Eastern spiritual practices in Europe, which requires new competencies from religious professionals. As a result of this dialogue, Christian monasticism underwent a process of renewal and transformation in the twentieth century; having enriched itself, it enriched other monastic traditions (Reichl). What is this enrichment? M. Giordat and her colleagues compared three cases: a Cistercian monastery, a Hindu ashram, and a Zen monastery. All of them belong to different cultures, but they are located in Italy and use the same terminology ("monastery")., "monk", "monasticism"). The etymology of the word "monastery" is rooted in Christianity, but when a monastery is called, for example, an ashram, the meaning of this word expands, it becomes more universal and acceptable to describe similar ascetic traditions of other religions (Giorda et al.).
The peer-reviewed book contains an article by Jean Seguy, one of the leading sociologists of religion in France after World War II. This text is considered a program text on the sociology of monasticism. For Shogi, monasteries are a variant of utopia, an alternative model of society, a "different" society. The article was published in 1971 in French and was translated into English for the first time in this collection.
The authors of the book use a variety of social theories to explore monasticism. Shogi's idea of monasticism as utopia, Turner's idea of liminality, Trelch's idea of types of religious organizations, and Weber's idea of charisma, religious virtuosity, and rationality are all fruitful for the study of monasticism. However, the actual forms of its existence described in the collection break the stereotypes about monasticism as a monolithic phenomenon. Without claiming to be an all-encompassing picture, the collection presents the reader with many colors of monastic forms of religious life.
This book fills in serious gaps in the study of monasticism. First of all, this topic is well studied by historians, od-
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However, sociologists have not paid enough attention to it so far, so this is a serious attempt to systematically examine monasticism using sociological tools. Secondly, the book contributes to the study of Christian monasticism, which researchers refer to less often than to the monasticism of Eastern religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.). Third, existing research focuses on the study of the active community life of monasteries, their social work and contribution to the community. The authors of this book pay sufficient attention to the actual monastic religious practices and the inner life of monasteries to the extent that they are available.
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