Saint George the Anatolian, Master of frontiers

Maria Couroucli (1)

1 LAU - Laboratoire d'anthropologie urbaine

The existence of ‘shared’ holy places in the Mediterranean, and more especially the post-Ottoman world, relates to one of the general questions raised by both ethnology and history: the tension between the two principles that organize society, namely kinship and territory. Is a social group attached to a particular locality and defined in relation to a territory, or is it primarily organized around ties of kinship, descent and alliance (Leach 1982; Goody 1990; Derouet 1995)? Is it possible that the distinction between ius soli and ius sanguinis, which operates elsewhere, ceases to be pertinent when we are dealing with holy places, or in other words with the sites of important cultural activities that presuppose the existence of culturally significant representations derived from a specific organization of time and space? And what of claims pertaining to such places in the current political context?

Mots clés: shared sacred spaces; shared shrines; religious sites; pilgrimage; christian and muslim; ottoman culture

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Maria Couroucli. Saint George the Anatolian, Master of frontiers. Sharing sacred spaces in the Mediterranean. Christians, Muslims, and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries., , pp.118-130, 2012, 978-0-253-22317-3. ⟨halshs-01218190⟩