From ignis mundi to the world’s first oil-tanker

This article analyses mechanisms of heritagisation that transformed oil from a natural to a cultural resource through the case study of the Branobel corporation, which operated in Azerbaijan from the late nineteenth century, and by reflecting on the ro…

The Reformation and the university church in Leipzig

The purpose of this article is to investigate how memory activists from 2008 onwards used the past in their advocacy work for the restoration of the university church in Leipzig. The Paulinerkirche was built as a Dominican monastery church in the first…

When Magnus Johanson turned fifty

This article examines birthday party decorations as a way of understanding the materiality and religious place-making of an expanding Baptist congregation in central Sweden in the early twentieth century. The fiftieth birthday party for Magnus Johanson…

From church to museum and back again

In the small village of Kinnarumma in western Sweden an old wooden church was replaced by a new church buildning in the early twentieth century. The old church was de-sacralized by being moved to an open-air museum in Borås and used there for exhibitio…

Religious heritage in the North

The article takes as its point of departure the notion that the Scandinavian countries have been dominated by a monocultural Lutheranism. This notion is nuanced by focusing on everyday life and oppositional voices. In the nineteenth century, the Luther…

Wind of change

The value of diaconia is difficult to measure, its immaterial assets not easily grasped. In this article, I contribute to the area in analysing the perspective of 22 deacons on what is most important in their job and what could potentially be of greate…

Religious heritage and change in the North

The current issue of Approaching Religion is based on a conference arranged in Åbo/Turku, Finland, in November 2022, with the theme ‘Religious Heritage and Change in the North’. The conference was organized jointly by the research network Religious His…

The making of religious heritage

The proliferation of religious heritage seems to flow self-evidently from the processes of de-churching and secularization taking place in many European societies. Although having become redundant or outdated, certain religious buildings, objects or pr…

Releyendo ‘Ishi’

En este ensayo abordo el debate de los Derechos indígenas versus Derechos universales desde la relectura de Ishi. El último de su tribu, tomando en consideración tanto el relato de Theodora Kroeber como la historia del último siglo con algunas de sus p…

Tiempos y permanencias de la COVID-19

Vivimos bajo un mundo cada vez más amenazante, las vivencias/experiencias de salud están y estarán marcando nuestro futuro e inminentemente el próximo evento llegará, pero por ahora, dada la marca que ha dejado la COVID-19 así como la propagación plane…

Socialización en los centros escolares

El patio del recreo de los centros escolares, especialmente de los Institutos de Educación Secundaria, son espacios de mayor libertad y menor control frente a las normas generales del interior de las escuelas. En ellos, las relaciones e interacciones s…

Sacerdotes de Dioniso

Este trabajo parte del análisis de Heidegger en «¿Para qué poetas?», donde el autor interpreta la poesía de Hölderlin a partir de su elegía «Pan y vino», aquí expondremos algunas de sus explicaciones. También intentaremos entender la respuesta que da H…

El WhatsApp acusado de brujería

El presente artículo se encuadra en una investigación sobre el trabajo artístico independiente y el asociacionismo, en tiempos de pandemia y pos pandemia, en la Norpatagonia argentina, esto es, en un circuito lejano a los centros culturales hegemónicos…

Living with an iconic aid

There are plenty of objects that are conspicuous in the way they signal to the surroundings that the user has some kind of physical impairment. Most obvious are perhaps wheelchairs, motorized wheelchairs, hearing aids and crutches. These objects can…

Cinema and the prefigurative

Prefiguration is a term borrowed from political science, describing the experimentation with alternative ways of living, doing and being together in the present as a form of activism. In this article I will argue that cinema can be a powerful tool that…