How are religious boundaries being reconfigured across contemporary Europe? This session examines how communities redraw the lines between self and other, world and withdrawal, past and future under conditions of social, political, and ecological strain. Rather than fixed or declining, religious formations emerge here as dynamic boundary-making projects that organize moral responsibility, collective identity, and forms of belonging. Bringing together ethnographic work on Hinduism in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Orthodoxy in Greece, the papers explore how peace-oriented ethics, ascetic discipline, and layered temporal imaginaries generate distinct yet overlapping boundary regimes. These include ethical distinctions between humans and the environment, negotiated separations between monastic and social worlds, and the extension of institutional authority across generations. Together, the papers argue that religious boundaries are not merely defensive but productive: they create new forms of connection, obligation, and endurance that shape possible religious futures in Europe.
This paper offers theoretical and empirical insights into the ecology of peace within Hindu texts and the lived experience of the minority Hindu religious community during and after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It examines how the ecology of peace is understood and applied in Hindu thought and practice through concepts such as ahimsa, karma, dharma, and vegetarian diet. It then examines how these ideas are articulated in concrete war and post-war contexts, and the ontological relationship between humans and Bhumi (the Earth), suggesting a moral responsibility toward people and the land during both periods. Through a comparative analysis, the paper establishes a framework that constitutes peace ecology from the Hindu perspective. By examining the contemporary role of minority communities and grassroots initiatives in the ongoing dialogue, the paper places the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina within broader conversations on religion and the peace ecology.
This paper examines contemporary ascetic performance in the Orthodox Christian monasteries of Mount Athos, Greece. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, it analyzes how forms of ascetic withdrawal and discipline are exercised in, and shaped by, the spiritual, political, and economic networks that connect Mount Athos to the ‘world’ beyond its border. It argues that contemporary forms of Christian ascetic detachment and soteriology constitute a moral, social, and material boundary regime that shapes how monks order their lives, make decisions about themselves and their community, and embrace or reject connections to others. By reflecting specifically on the interactions of Athonite monks with pilgrims, men and women in parishes, and wage-workers, it illustrates the effects of contemporary asceticism on the lives of individuals living at different degrees of distance from the community. The paper offers insights about how asceticism intersects with contemporary social forces, global discourses, and diverse human experiences.
In an NGO office in suburban Athens, a bureaucrat draws narrative parallels between historical and contemporary examples of displacement, arguing that the Church’s role has been identical in each. On an island in the Ionian Sea, a volunteer at a historic monastery tells tales of a walking saint that continues to protect those in need centuries after his death. At a church in downtown Athens, a priest pontificates about the future of Christianity, the borders of the Greek state, and the political incorporation of those within it. Across three distinct ethnographic vignettes, this presentation argues that the Orthodox Church of Greece both theorizes and strategically mobilizes an understanding of time as cyclically layered in which people both living and dead can act across generations and the Church’s institutional influence can withstand the waves of historic and political change.