IDENTITIES & BOUNDARIES. Configurations of Religious Diversity in Global Dynamics

In an indisputable evidence, the societal morphology of the 21st century has become an ethnic and religious mosaic, whose diversity is much more visible and intensely experienced by contemporary man. Interaction between religions, generated by global interconnectivity and by migration caused by poor living standards and current armed conflicts, places the identity (religious, cultural, social, etc.) in relation to another. Religious identity involves a note of the established particularity, namely the tendency of representativeness of the defining criteria that enter into its composition: dogmatic belief, worship, behavioral expression, religious affiliation. Boundaries are references of individual, social, cultural validation and marks the profile and constitution of an identity, separating the content of “what is inside” from the sphere of “what is outside”.

The current complexity of transnational dynamics and the multiplicity of human life demands a resizing of identities and boundaries (borders) in new valences, moving from the definition as static, fixed, linear and dichotomous structures to the examination of the continuous construction of them. In these circumstances, religious boundaries are rethought in terms of human everyday experience as interferences with otherness.

The conference aims to answer the following questions: (a) Is religious identity an inflexible, immobile, static reality in representation of and in relation to other identities that represent different religious cultures? (b) Is religious identity decomposing in the context of the “liquid” rhythm of global society? (c) Are the boundaries of identity de-substantialized in the experience of religious diversity and in the dynamics of current societal transformations?