Religious Worlds

  Research Group 9, "Religious Worlds" (coordinator Jean-Pierre Albert), addresses  forms of internal organisation of religious practices and institutions, and the socially structuring effects of religious affiliations, in light of contemporary developments in religion and the experiences of believers. The main studies in this Group have focused on the contribution of rituals, and that of specific uses of language, in constituting a religious world. This Group’s studies also intersect with those of the Group on Mobility (on the health of migrants and their use of religious cures; on the relationship between religious affiliation, mobility and trade). In particular, the constitution of a religious world has been studied in two aspects: the role of objects in the formation of religious contexts and experiences; and the role of the body in ritual interactions and in religion. These two studies, together with monthly seminars, resulted in an international one-day seminar. In addition, the question of language is discussed in an interdisciplinary seminar involving ethnolinguists, which has enabled the creation of links with researchers from other institutions and the defining of research subjects to be studied in further detail with them.