Defence of Piret Koosa's PhD thesis "Negotiating faith and identity in a Komi village: Protestant Christians in a pro-Orthodox sociocultural environment"

Piret Koosa will defend her doctoral thesis titled "Negotiating faith and identity in a Komi village: Protestant Christians in a pro-Orthodox sociocultural environment" on 19 June 2017 at 14:15 in Ülikooli 16-214.

Supervisor:
Professor Art Leete

Opponents:
Professor Alexander Panchenko (St. Petersburg State University)
Dr Laur Vallikivi  (University of Tartu)

Summary:
This study explores the dynamics of post-Soviet religious life in Komi Republic, Northern Russia. Following the demise of communist and Soviet identity, the question of identity has been on the foreground in Russia in general as well as in the Komi Republic. Religion has acquired important social role as part of the resources of constituting and expressing identity and culture. Russian Orthodoxy as the historically and culturally most rooted religious tradition claimed and was granted a special and leading position in the religious landscape of Russia. At the same time, more or less explicitly this dominating position has been challenged in the context of exuberant religious diversity that quickly developed in the post-Soviet society. This thesis focuses on the relationship between Orthodox majority and Protestant minority on the example of a small evangelical group in the Komi countryside. Although numerically a minority, the social visibility and significance of evangelical Christians in Russia considerably exceeds their proportion in numbers. Looking at evangelical Christians’ interactions with the surrounding society allows examining tensions accompanying the growth of religious pluralism, tackling questions of belonging and discussing links between religion and national and ethnic identity. The study examines the difficulties a minority religion group has faced in establishing itself as legitimate in rural Komi and the strategies of how the group members negotiate their presence in the wider society frequently unsympathetic towards them. How the particularities of specific social context have influenced local interpretations, expressions and practices of faith are analysed. The study also discusses how the evangelicals use and adapt specific ideas and practices in ways that are meaningful to both their particular socio-cultural context and faith.

The study is based on ethnological fieldwork conducted in the villages of Kulömdin, Komi Repbulic, between 2006 and 2015.

You can download the pdf of the thesis at http://hdl.handle.net/10062/56363