Presentation: “Between tradition and innovation”: tensions and negotiations between religion, secular, and heritage categories in lusophone contexts

Abstract

The structure of the dossier was modeled based on studies in which religious and secular practices are addressed in an interconnected manner, avoiding their isolated analysis or consideration as neutral descriptive terms. Instead, they were treated as elements intrinsic to the very object of investigation or as analytical tools connected to other relevant categories, such as heritage, modernity, and nation. Our goal was to compile ethnographies that highlighted the new dynamics in which “sacredness and secularity inform, reinforce, and overflow into each other,” especially in the processes of “heritagization of the sacred” and “sacralization of heritage.” We started from the concept of “secular sacred,” which encompasses the intertwined processes of secularization and sacralization. In this context, ideas, feelings, emotions, motivations, experiences, perceptions about people, objects, images, representations, or places intertwine, merge, and sometimes conflict. This approach was inspired by the Talal Asad’s and Saba Mahmood’s insight in the sense that the secular regime does not necessarily oppose religion. The foundation of this perspective lies in understanding religion as a complex social construction process, intertwining history and power. This allows us to identify multiple social agents competing in the construction of their sources of authority, claiming “heritage” through discourses and practices. Therefore, our focus is not on the separation between the categories of religion and secular but on the way they participate in the processes of sacralization and desacralization of heritage endeavors.