Dissertation Research: Social-Political Analysis of Gender and Religion in Ireland

本项目涉及肯塔基大学一位文化人类学家的学位论文研究。研究问题是要了解爱尔兰对圣母玛利亚的崇拜是如何通过个人的性别来调节的，这些信仰和做法如何影响个人的健康行为，以及虔诚和宗教信仰如何影响对爱尔兰与更大的社会和政治环境，特别是欧洲共同体的关系的看法。在这个探索性项目中使用的方法包括在具有代表性的城市地点进行参与者观察，对治愈叙事和仪式过程进行密集采访，对选定的宗教会众成员进行几次正式调查，以及分析关于宗教组织、仪式和社会活动的档案材料。这个项目很重要，因为它将提供关于宗教信仰和活动如何影响通常的世俗信仰和习俗的信息，在这种情况下是关于健康和国际政治的。虽然这些社会变量之间的联系通常不在公众视野中，但世界上--例如在前南斯拉夫--的人们的行为表明，当地的群体认同往往变得至关重要。这样的案例研究将为建立一个关于宗教、性别、健康和政治行为的一般社会理论提供信息。

This project involves the dissertation research of a cultural anthropologist from the University of Kentucky. The research problem is to understand how devotion to the cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland is mediated by the gender of the individual, how these beliefs and practices affect the individual's health behavior, and how devotion and the religious beliefs affect opinions about Ireland's relations with the larger social and political environment, specifically the European Community. The methods used in this exploratory project include participant observation in a representative urban location, intensive interviews of healing narratives and ritual processes, several formal surveys of selected religious congregation members, and analysis of archival material on the religious organizations, ceremonies, and social activities. This project is important because it will provide information on how religious beliefs and activities impact on normally secular beliefs and practices, in this case about health and international politics. While the connections between these social variables are normally not in the public eye, the behavior of people in the world -- e.g., in the former Yugoslavia-- shows that the local group identities often rise to be of paramount importance. Case studies such as this will provide information to build a general social theory relating religion, gender, health and political behavior.