Religion and Magic in Socialist and Postsocialist Contexts [Part I]. Historic and Ethnographic Case Studies of Orthodoxy Heterodoxy and Alternative Spirituality

Religion and magic have played important roles within Eastern European societies where social reality and socio-political balance may differ greatly from those in the West. Although often thought of as being two distinct, even antagonistic forces, religion and magic find ways to work together. By taking on various examples in the multicultural settings of post-Soviet and post-socialist spaces, this collection brings together diverse historical and ethnographic analyses of orthodoxy and heterodoxy from the pre- and post-1989 periods, studies on the relationship of religious and state institutions to individuals practicing alternative forms of spirituality, and examples of borderlands as spaces of ambiguity. This volume is at the crossroads of anthropology, history, as well as cultural memory studies. Its archival and field research results help us understand how repurposing religious and magic practices worked into the transition that countries in Eastern Europe and beyond have experienced after the end of the Cold War.

Alexandra Cotofana is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. She studied political science and anthropology at the National School for Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest. Cotofana is Director for the In Light Human Rights Documentary Film Festival at IUB. Dr. James M. Nyce is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Ball State University. He is also a visiting professor in Lund University's Master's Program in Human Factors and System Safety, and at the National Defence College in Stockholm, as well as an adjunct professor in the Departments of Health and Environment at Linköping University and of Radiology at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.