Papers by Evgenia Mesaritou
Cultural Studies, 2024
This paper explores the politics of religious patrimony by comparing two cases where the heritagi... more This paper explores the politics of religious patrimony by comparing two cases where the heritagization of religious sites results in feelings of loss and estrangement rather than return and restoration. We show how shrines can function simultaneously as public and civic places of religious assembly but also as material and sensorial expressions of ambivalent forms of belonging and un-belonging – to the past, to a territory, to a religious denomination, to a domestic environment associated with childhood or previous generations. One case is of Greek Cypriots as they travel to a renovated monastery located in territory lost to them in 1974 after the island’s division. Encounters with the monastery are inflected by a broader, uncanny feeling of reentering a landscape that is familiar yet also estranged, studded by former childhood homes and villages now inhabited by others. The other case follows the experiences of Roman Catholics as they engage with the Christian pilgrimage site of Walsingham in the English county of Norfolk. The site now embodies a fractured heritage and pilgrimage space that recalls spiritual, material and cultural loss extending beyond biographical memory into the time of the Protestant Reformation. In both cases, ambiguities of ‘possession’ are provoked by forms of heritage restoration that embody but also obliterate memory in ways deemed to be deeply problematic by some populations. We argue that possession in these terms has economic and legal associations, referring to ownership of places and things, but it also points to situations where people are filled with an abiding and at times obsessive sense of the continuing urgency of the unsettled past.
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Politics and Religion , 2024
This paper explores the intersections of religion, heritage, and politics in divided societies by... more This paper explores the intersections of religion, heritage, and politics in divided societies by focusing on two events that occurred in Cyprus before the crossing points opened (2003). These are the Greek and Turkish Cypriot reciprocal pilgrimages to a Christian and Muslim site, respectively, and the two sites' restoration. I argue that in these events the Cyprus Issue effected the transformation of pilgrimage practices and sites into matters of political agreement, implicating them in processes of conflict management and resolution. In this context, pilgrimage facilitated inter-communal exchanges and intra-communal frictions and antagonisms that question binary oppositions through which questions of conflict and amity have been debated in pilgrimage studies.
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Eventum: A Journal of Medieval Arts & Rituals, 1(1), 106–127. , 2023
Focusing on the restoration of material culture associated with pilgrimages, the authors examine ... more Focusing on the restoration of material culture associated with pilgrimages, the authors examine how a temporally distant period might be reanimated in the present – or, by contrast, retains potential to be animated but remains dormant. They compare two pilgrimage sites, both characterized by disruptive historical caesuras that define salient periods of destruction of valued eras from the past. In Walsingham (England), the key break is represented by the northern European Reformation. At this site, the medieval remains prominent in the present, where it is repeatedly re-enacted, though in the context of loss. In the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas (Cyprus), the significant caesura is more recent, referring to the de facto partition of Cyprus in 1974. Here, the fifteenth-century chapel contained within the site has not been translated into substantial signs of medieval presence or performance. Despite their differences, both cases studied in this paper demonstrate how a caesura designates the period to be recalled and given an ‘afterlife’.
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Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
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History and Anthropology, 2021
Although the functions of pilgrimage have been well-documented in the literature, they should not... more Although the functions of pilgrimage have been well-documented in the literature, they should not be assumed a priori. Focusing on Greek Cypriots’ ‘return’ journeys to the monastery of Apostolos Andreas in Turkish occupied Karpass (Cyprus), I explore the different modalities of memory engendered by pilgrimage and the ways in which these interact with movement in producing unintentional, unwanted and at times uncomfortable effects and affects for pilgrimage participants. Arguing that while taking them back to their ‘roots’, pilgrimages to Apostolos Andreas reinforce Greek Cypriots’ sense of uprootness from a place which they consider and feel as ‘home’, I show that it is an emotionally difficult and traumatic experience through which loss is produced and reproduced. This has the effect of retaining memory and of creating new memories that can potentially act as reminders of action that needs to be taken in the present.
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Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing , 2020
Even though pilgrimages may often be directed toward what can conventionally be seen as “religiou... more Even though pilgrimages may often be directed toward what can conventionally be seen as “religious” sacred sites, religious and ritual forms of knowledge and ignorance may not necessarily be the only, or even the most prominent, forms in their workings. Focusing on Greek Cypriots’ return pilgrimages to the Christian-Orthodox monastery of Apostolos Andreas (Karpasia) under the conditions of Cyprus's ongoing division, in this article I explore the non “religious” forms of knowing and ignoring salient to pilgrimages to sacred religious sites, the conditions under which they become relevant, and the risks associated with them. Showing how pilgrimages to the monastery of Apostolos Andreas are situated within a larger framework of seeing “our places,” I will argue that remembering and knowing these places is the type of knowledge most commonly sought out by pilgrims, while also exploring what the stakes of not knowing/forgetting them may be felt to be. An exclusive focus on “religious” forms of knowledge and ignorance would obscure the ways in which pilgrimage is often embedded in everyday social and political concerns.
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Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, 2020
Even though pilgrimages may often be directed toward what can conventionally be seen as “religiou... more Even though pilgrimages may often be directed toward what can conventionally be seen as “religious” sacred sites, religious and ritual forms of knowledge and ignorance may not necessarily be the only, or even the most prominent, forms in their workings. Focusing on Greek Cypriots’ return pilgrimages to the Christian-Orthodox monastery of Apostolos Andreas (Karpasia) under the conditions of Cyprus's ongoing division, in this article I explore the non “religious” forms of knowing and ignoring salient to pilgrimages to sacred religious sites, the conditions under which they become relevant, and the risks associated with them. Showing how pilgrimages to the monastery of Apostolos Andreas are situated within a larger framework of seeing “our places,” I will argue that remembering and knowing these places is the type of knowledge most commonly sought out by pilgrims, while also exploring what the stakes of not knowing/forgetting them may be felt to be. An exclusive focus on “religious” forms of knowledge and ignorance would obscure the ways in which pilgrimage is often embedded in everyday social and political concerns.
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Groniek, 2018
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Culture and Religion, 2015
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British Journal of Educational Studies, 2015
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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2014
ABSTRACT This article builds on a growing body of research that shows an intrinsic but complex re... more ABSTRACT This article builds on a growing body of research that shows an intrinsic but complex relationship between the concepts and the ideologies of nationalism and racism. In doing so, it investigates how different, meaningful national and ethnic in-group identifications of a dominant national/ethnic group (Greek-Cypriots) within a given national context (Cyprus) influence their perceptions of different, meaningful ethnic and racial minority out-groups. Logistic regression analysis of quantitative survey data with secondary school children (N = 738) in Cyprus shows that the relationship between national/ethnic in-group identifications and out-group perceptions varies according to the social and political relationships between particular national/ethnic in- and out-groups. The findings show that future research on the relationship between nationalism and racism should consider the overlap between and context specific nature of national and ethnic in-group identification processes and the historical, political relationships between different in- and out-groups.
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Drawing on existing research in the fields of pilgrimage and tourism studies, the introduction to... more Drawing on existing research in the fields of pilgrimage and tourism studies, the introduction to this special issue reviews the ways in which guiding has been theorized and explored within the two fields, therefore putting them in dialogue with one another. Presenting guiding as a form of mediation, the authors construct a theoretical framework for the analysis of pilgrimage and guiding through adapting Eade and Sallnow’s (2000 [1991]) analytical triad of person, place and text. Arguing that person, place and text may fruitfully be seen as embedded in notions and practices of mediation, they explore (a) how such mediation involves forms of ideologically charged framing, editing, concealment and revelation, through which different and often competing accounts of pilgrimage journeys, destinations, and experiences are produced, and (b) the sources of legitimation of the various forms of guiding present in the fields of pilgrimage and travel, as well as their effects on journeys, participants, and destinations.
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Projects by Evgenia Mesaritou
The project explores how religion, politics and heritage intersect in a deeply divided European s... more The project explores how religion, politics and heritage intersect in a deeply divided European society, by examining the attempts to restore the monastery of Apostolos Andreas (Cyprus) and the revival of associated pilgrimages to it, both of which are occurring in conditions of ongoing division. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752103. For more information on the project, its related presentations and publications, please visit https://www.tamaproject.info.
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Book Chapters by Evgenia Mesaritou
Katić Mario, John Eade (ads.) Approaching Pilgrimage Methodological Issues Involved in Researching Routes, Sites, and Practices , 2024
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Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion. NY, Oxford: Berghahn Books (pp. 98-112), 2012
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Book Reviews by Evgenia Mesaritou
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 2019
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Edited Special Issues by Evgenia Mesaritou
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Papers by Evgenia Mesaritou
Projects by Evgenia Mesaritou
Book Chapters by Evgenia Mesaritou
Book Reviews by Evgenia Mesaritou
Edited Special Issues by Evgenia Mesaritou