Markets of Singularities. Hybrid Religious Networks in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Klaus Hock; Professor Dr. Matthias Junge, since 10/2018; Professor Dr. Thomas Klie
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology ; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies ; Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289663135

Markets of Singularities. Hybrid Religious Networks in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania By taking recourse to the results of the preceding project on Religious Hybrids, this project aims at reconstructing the larger religious field (P. Bourdieu) in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Thereby, the three crucial areas of cure and spiritual healing, ecology and spirituality, and handicraft and spiritual craftsmanship are attributed to this larger religious field. It is constituted and organized as a social practice by means of network-like and market-shaped forms of Vergemeinschaftung and Vergesellschaftung in markets of singularities. These markets and belonging agencies of validation and confidence building can likewise establish, stabilize or strengthen religious communication. Religious-hybrid services and symbolically significant artifacts are traded as marketable singular products requiring external validation. As standardization and comparability cannot be taken for granted, exchange processes involve fundamental imponderabilities. Therefore, faith and trust must provide for reliability and prospect of continual exchange. These specific (market) mechanisms are rooted in symbolic systems joining knowledge and belief. As agencies of validation and confidence building, networks, experts and professions represent the social and cultural conditions for the possibility of those peculiar markets of singularities. Due to this approach, constraints caused by (neo)classical economic concepts of market are transformed and resolved. For the sake of encompassing these exchange processes, it is envisaged to resort to approaches from the sociology of religion (H. Hervieu-Léger) and particularly to recent concepts from economic sociology (L. Karpik). Besides questions about external conditions of structure and stability as to agencies of validation and confidence building, additional questions on the internal structure of that larger religious field will be investigated via methods of network analysis as well as by means of guided interviews and participant observation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Peter A. Berger, until 10/2018 (†)