Geopolitics of Interconfessional Relations in Contemporary Ukraine - Tornike Metreveli

Description

On January 6, 2019 the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew signed a decree on autocephaly that allowed Ukraine to have its own canonical independent church. This escalated the dispute between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and at the same time gave the Russo-Ukrainian conflict a new religious dimension. Based on an ethnographic mixture of participant observation and anthropology of public policy, this project examines the geopolitical significance of Ukrainian autocephaly through the grassroots operationalization of the concept of Russkii Mir (Russian World). What does Russkii Mir mean to the Orthodox Christian communities of Ukraine that took part in the interconfessional changes? How is Russkii Mir practiced in daily life, as opposed to the conflicting ‘Unified State, United Church’ discourse advocated by Ukrainian political elites? Standing at the crossroads of symbolic interactionist and phenomenological traditions, this talk will first scrutinize how the two churches frame the narratives of the categories of practice (e.g. belonging, statehood, identity), and later critically reflect on how those categories of practice are negotiated and modified through a process of interpretation, interaction with the state, and interconfessional competition on a grassroot level.

Period	2019 Mar 11
Held at	Harvard University, United States, Massachusetts
Degree of Recognition	International