About
Pilgrimage of Ajvatovica, Bosnia
Shared Sacred Landscapes: Interfaith Dialogues in Cambridge
This project focuses on the spatial and temporal modes of proximity between persons and communities of ‘different’ faith. It features visual and ethnographic investigations of the tangible and intangible effects of such proximity, embodied in shared landscapes, whether past, present or imagined as the future. Thinking of ‘sharing’ and ‘proximity’ already includes the proposition of some kind of distinction (between persons, genders, religions, ethnicities, etc.), which is usually the result of deep epistemic differentiations. In other words, we might not notice some sacred landscapes as ‘shared’ unless we have already mastered the vocabulary for their ‘different’ constitutive elements. Such languages of distinction may be a methodological fallacy with far-reaching consequences for the communities we write about.
Rather than emphasising political difference, this project seeks to understand what happens to sacred environments when varying forms of knowledge and practice encounter each other. Such contact may be brief, intermittent and fractured, or steady, durable and even deeply ontological. It may be fraught with conflict, but also temper into forms of resilience to social antagonism. In climates of a heightened politics of distinction, religiously plural and shared landscapes may appear as anchors of change, promising a way out of the quicksand of exclusionary, discriminative regimes.
Projects to disconnect communities of faith have had long histories and continue to be painfully visible across the world. We are particularly aware of the recent surges of nationalism and exclusionary politics, including wars, ethno-religious engineering, construction of separation barriers and outbursts of physical and verbal violence made ‘in defence’ of religious ‘purity’. In response, this project points to the abundance of enduring shared religious landscapes, testifying to rich and creative coexistences and mixtures.
The ‘Shared Sacred Landscapes’ project is supported by the University of Cambridge, through the Public Engagement Starter Fund. It will be inaugurated through three main activities: a) an exhibition of anthropological photography; b) a public symposium, and c) a drawing competition for Cambridgeshire's schoolchildren.
Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović
Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović, the principal investigator on this project, is a Research Associate in Inter-Faith Relations with the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme in the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. His research first and foremost considers the historical and contemporary relations between Christians, Muslims and Roma in Bosnia. It builds upon his long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Dinaric Bosnian highlands, as well as stints of fieldwork across Bosnia, the Basque Country, Palestine, Israel, and archival research in Sarajevo and the Hague. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Goldsmiths, an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (Hughes Hall) and BA degrees in History of Art and Sociology from the University of Sarajevo and Kenyon College.
Safet has convened a wide array of anthropological courses at the University of Cambridge, SOAS University of London, the University of Bristol, Goethe University Frankfurt and Goldsmiths University of London. He currently convenes the Academic Summer School in Inter-Faith Relations at the University of Cambridge and the Anthropology of Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage Summer School at SOAS. He has written on syncretic landscapes, temporality and historicity, war crime archives, political agency of nonhuman beings and ontological approaches to the question of home. He is the author of Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape (2018), co-editor (with Marija Grujić) of Post-Home: Dwelling on Loss, Belonging and Movement (2019) and a co-convenor of the Xenia Series. He is a contributor to the project 'A Red Golden Legend: Hagiographic Experiences in the Former USSR and Popular Democracies'. Safet's current major ethnographic project investigates syncretic cosmologies, nationalism and subterranean rivers in south Bosnia.
Safet has convened a wide array of anthropological courses at the University of Cambridge, SOAS University of London, the University of Bristol, Goethe University Frankfurt and Goldsmiths University of London. He currently convenes the Academic Summer School in Inter-Faith Relations at the University of Cambridge and the Anthropology of Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage Summer School at SOAS. He has written on syncretic landscapes, temporality and historicity, war crime archives, political agency of nonhuman beings and ontological approaches to the question of home. He is the author of Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape (2018), co-editor (with Marija Grujić) of Post-Home: Dwelling on Loss, Belonging and Movement (2019) and a co-convenor of the Xenia Series. He is a contributor to the project 'A Red Golden Legend: Hagiographic Experiences in the Former USSR and Popular Democracies'. Safet's current major ethnographic project investigates syncretic cosmologies, nationalism and subterranean rivers in south Bosnia.
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