The Living Whole – an account from the meeting with Dr Anna Niedźwiedź during the launching of her book “Religia przeżywana – katolicyzm i jego konteksty we współczesnej Ghanie" [Lived Religion. Catholicism and its contexts in contemporary Ghana]

 “The ways of experiencing Catholicism presented in the book, analysed in an African context, explain both modern Africa and the transformations in modern Ghana, different local forms of the adaptation of so-called global religions and global trends, which are nowadays very often being relocated, no longer prominent in the Western global centre, but rather moved to areas considered in the past to be the so-called ‘global South’. As every anthropological project, the book emphasizes cultural diversity and enables gaining some understanding of human experience”.

“Anthropology – the way I understand it – is one of the most humane of all the fields of the Humanities, as it seeks encounters and dialogue, it is a demonstration of  polyphony and variety and disparity of opinions, at the same time indicating their ironical coincidence. Introducing ethnographic methods enables a cognition of that part of knowledge which is not realized but is acquired in practice through cultural participation and the engagement of one’s body and mind. Dancing at a funeral, dining with a local community and sharing a bowl, participation in local rituals, but at the same time struggling with one’s exhaustion, a difficult climate, one’s cultural habits and prejudices – these are elements of an ethnographer’s field research, one attempting to understand a distant culture and at the same time to understand oneself” – explained  the author, Anna Niedźwiedź.

Father Adam Boniecki (Tygodnik Powszechny), Dr Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska and the moderator Marcin Żyła (Tygodnik Powszechny) will participate in the discussion surrounding topics linked to the promoted book.

Anna Niedźwiedź –PhD with “habilitation”, an anthropologist and ethnographer, employed at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University. Her research interests focus on research into urban space and visual anthropology. She has been conducting ethnographic research in Ghana since 2009, mostly into African Christianity. The results of her research have been published in the book “Lived Religion. Catholicism and its Contexts in Contemporary Ghana”. In her anthropological research she seeks space and dialogue.  

Organizers:

Seweryn Udziela’s Museum of Ethnography in Cracow 

Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University

Publisher:

Wydawnictwo Libron

Media patronage:

Tygodnik Powszechny

Event on Facebooku: https://www.facebook.com/events/125152421222247/