The spatial (map) and the sensory (images, videos, sounds) outcomes of the research are embodied in the Urban Religion Archive in three Polish cities: Kraków, Lublin, and Gdańsk. The created Archive takes the form of an urban religion map.

Map: Jonathan Z. Smith’s assertion “Map is not territory” (Smith 1993) frames our approach to the Archive’s nature. In the RUM Archive, the map serves as a spatial base for urban religion, simultaneously being a form of ontology and a description of urban religion. The map is not a simple replication of a geographical grid, but a spatialized form of narrative, a mental plan, an imagination formation, and a representation of power structures (Dodge, Kitchin, and Perkins 2009). In the RUM Archive, the map is also part of the research process and one of the analytical tools.

Archive: The archive is not a mere collection of data. It is inherently incomplete and subjective. Its form and interpretive paths are dependent on local knowledge formations and power; it exists between intentionality and contingency (Foucault 1977). The RUM Archive, therefore, is a “spectrum” of religion (Braun 2000); it is a record of the process of perception, understanding, interpretation, and situationality of urban religion (see: Tremlett 2020). Present in the Archive, the spatialized data in the form of maps (individual points or lines, referred to as religious icons) create a complex and relational system. The RUM Archive pertains only to the public sphere of the city, and hence it includes those materialities that are directly accessible to the senses: sight, hearing, and touch (movement). However, the RUM Archive opens up possibilities for analyzing invisible and concealed structures of urban religion. Based on the theses of Brian Larkin (2013) and AbdulMalik Simone (2004), material and invisible (infra)structures remain in relation and are mutually conditioned.

STAGE l

The research was carried out in three stages:

involved the documentation of urban religion in the city using the geolocation of documented data and placing them on the map. The concepts of a religious icon and a detector are key to this stage of the research process.

In the RUM Archive, a religious icon takes the form of a single point or a line.

Individual elements of urban religion become identifiable through religious icons, a concept defined by Kim Knott, Volkhard Krech, and Birgit Meyer (2016), drawing from semiotic tradition. According to the authors, “religious icons are objects (or sets of objects) such as buildings, images, places, statues, articles of clothing, texts, gestures, and bodily behaviors (…), which trigger religious communication, including action and experience, to which religious significance is attributed (…) or which initiate religious communication” (Knott, Krech, Meyer 2016, p. 132). A religious icon can be as diverse as St. Mary’s Church, Rakowicki Cemetery, a sticker on a lamppost or a car, a pharmacy sign, a pagan festival, a poster containing religious symbols, a nun walking through Planty Park, the blessing of Easter baskets at the Main Market Square, a protest utilizing religious content, jewellery referencing religious symbolism, a tag or graffiti on a wall, or a store display with religious elements. Ambiguous objects (candles lit under a memorial), spaces (e.g., the Ghetto Heroes Square or the New Square), or actions by groups such as “NATO close the sky over Ukraine” also qualify as religious icons. These icons create the RUM Archive and are documented through various media: visual (photos, videos; Pink 2007), auditory (soundscapes recordings; Atkinson 2011; Stanisz 2014), textual (ethnographic notes), and walking practices (Kusenbach 2003; Lee, Ingold 2006; Ingold, Vergunst 2008).

In the RUM project, religious icons are not only historically, socially, and culturally conditioned; they are also ambiguous, contextual, and dependent on the cognitive abilities, personality, cultural, and social competencies of the observer. Furthermore, religious materialities circulate, crossing various cultural, political, and social territories, and they penetrate different spaces and cultural dimensions. Hence, they belong to various interpretive cultures and their reading and understanding are often multidirectional and heterogeneous, even within the same geographical area (Chidester 2018). Thus, for example, a Celtic cross painted on a wall may be interpreted by some as a religious correlate, by others as referring to Christian roots, by yet others as linked to the national-nationalistic movement and certain groups of indigenous believers, and by others still as an act of vandalism. In the RUM Archive, a religious icon is any object or action that has historically passed through the religious field, thus including contemporary religious holidays as well as seemingly unrelated religious symbols such as a cross on a medical center. Moreover, despite their apparent religious indifference, some religious icons possess religious affordance, operational potential within the religious field. Such religious icons, often categorized as “like religion,” are also part of the RUM Archive.

Detector

Negotiation of 

 detection

Description / Categories

A key figure in recognizing, documenting, and registering religious icons in the RUM Archive is the city user, termed a “detector” within the archive.

This refers to a well-trained and “tuned” researcher, sensitive to the detection of religious icons within the urban sphere, and also an active city user.  

The detector serves simultaneously as a research tool and as an “analytical machine”. However, one must not overlook their individual and personal specificity, personality, education, preferences, technical skills, lifestyle, experiences, knowledge formation, or even their place of residence. Each act of detection is a product of objectivized and internalized patterns of religion in Poland (Berger, Luckmann 2010), and at the same time, it is marked by the subjectivism and individualism of personal perception, experience, and understanding. The detector, based on the practice of “living in the city” and on the cognitive patterns, largely represents the city user, though it is a user particularly interested in recognizing and documenting urban religion.

Conducted detections were discussed at regular weekly research team meetings, during which problematic detections (e.g., “lucky” horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, or commemorative obelisks) were debated and assessed for their potential inclusion within the field of religion in Poland. Consequently, the prepared database, the RUM Archive, results not only from the process of documenting icons but equally from the research process, the individuality of detectors, and an understanding of the local cultural and socioreligious context, allowing for an assessment of whether a given documentation has religious character or potential. Some decisions were not unanimous, making the RUM Archive open-ended and a starting point for further reflection.

Each religious icon is placed on a previously prepared city map, creating the structure of the RUM Archive. The religious icons are described using a range of categories developed by the research team. These categories attempt to provide a detailed and collective description of each religious icon based on its characteristics, such as visibility, temporality, functions, or relation to urban formations such as governance, politics, economy, or art. The categories proposed by the research team should also be viewed as propositions. Each category is fluid, and describing religious icons using these categories is always the outcome of a compromise.

A description of the categories developed within the RUM Archive can be found in the Glossary.

Assigning icons to the array of categories that form the ontology of the created database allows for the analysis of the relationality of icons with urban formations, as well as their placement within various social fields in the city. The collective analysis of icons and their mutual relationality, as well as their relationship to different types of urban formations, facilitates reflection on the essence of urban religion and its internal dynamics.

The data collection procedure did not assume any hierarchy of icons and did not consider differentiating icons based on their presumed significance, historical importance, or intentionality in the city.

In the first stage of the investigation, the detectors documented religious icons using three procedures. Firstly, they performed detections by systematically and methodically passing through every street, park, square, or other urban formation. Secondly, they collected data as ordinary city users, for instance, on their way to their daily routines, incidentally. Thirdly, they deliberately participated in events, information about which was presented weekly during team meetings.

A key figure in recognizing, documenting, and registering religious icons in the RUM Archive is the city user, termed a “detector” within the archive.

This refers to a well- trained and “tuned” researcher, sensitive to the detection of religious icons within the urban sphere, and also an active city user.

Detektor

The detector serves simultaneously as a research tool and as an “analytical machine”. However, one must not overlook their individual and personal specificity, personality, education, preferences, technical skills, lifestyle, experiences, knowledge formation, or even their place of residence. Each act of detection is a product of objectivized and internalized patterns of religion in Poland (Berger, Luckmann 2010), and at the same time, it is marked by the subjectivism and individualism of personal perception, experience, and understanding. The detector, based on the practice of “living in the city” and on the cognitive patterns, largely represents the city user, though it is a user particularly interested in recognizing and documenting urban religion.

Negotiation of detection

Conducted detections were discussed at regular weekly research team meetings, during which problematic detections (e.g., “lucky” horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, or commemorative obelisks) were debated and assessed for their potential inclusion within the field of religion in Poland. Consequently, the prepared database, the RUM Archive, results not only from the process of documenting icons but equally from the research process, the individuality of detectors, and an understanding of the local cultural and socioreligious context, allowing for an assessment of whether a given documentation has religious character or potential. Some decisions were not unanimous, making the RUM Archive open-ended and a starting point for further reflection.

Each religious icon is placed on a previously prepared city map, creating the structure of the RUM Archives. The religious icons are described using a range of categories developed by the research team. These categories attempt to provide a detailed and collective description of each religious icon based on its characteristics, such as visibility, temporality, functions, or relation to urban formations such as governance, politics, economy, or art. The categories proposed by the research team should also be viewed as propositions. Each category is fluid, and describing religious icons using these categories is always the outcome of a compromise in structuring.

Description / Categories

A description of the categories developed within the RUM Archive can be found in the Glossary.

Assigning icons to the array of categories that form the ontology of the created database allows for the analysis of the relationality of icons with urban formations, as well as their placement within various social fields in the city. The collective analysis of icons and their mutual relationality, as well as their relationship to different types of urban formations, facilitates reflection on the essence of urban religion and its internal dynamics.

The data collection procedure did not assume any hierarchy of icons and did not consider differentiating icons based on their presumed significance, historical importance, or intentionality in the city.

In the first stage of the investigation, the detectors documented religious icons using three procedures. Firstly, they performed detections by systematically and methodically passing through every street, park, square, or other urban formation. Secondly, they collected data as ordinary city users, for instance, on their way to their daily routines, incidentally. Thirdly, they deliberately participated in events, information about which was presented weekly during team meetings.

STAGE ll

of the research ran parallel to the first and included urban ethnography, which accompanied the use of the city, the data collection process, and participation in events.

STAGE lll

of the research involved interviews conducted with key people about the management or care of religious icons in a given city.

Data collected in the RUM Archive exist within the context of three main landscapes: the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion and full-scale war in Ukraine, and the rule of the populist, right-wing political party “Law and Justice” (“PiS”) in Poland.

These three landscapes undeniably shaped the urban religion studied.

Reflections

The research conducted within the RUM project allows for a range of further analyses:

• Urban religion as a theoretical and analytical proposition for the presence of religion in the urban public sphere.
• The relationality of contemporary urban processes and religious formations.
• Urban management of religion and grassroots processes of city formation. Religious “citizenship” and the struggle for the right to the city. Politicisation of urban religion and religious management.
• The relationship between urban religion and the multiplicity of urban ecologies. Urban religion and ambient faith.
• Critique of concepts such as diaspora, migration, multiculturalism, diversity, inculturation, and pluralism as parameters intensifying the “enchantment” and “disenchantment” of the world.
• Reflection on urban religion in terms of creativity, aspirations, and absences.
• Reflection on the specificity of urban religion in central and eastern European and post-socialist cities.
• Reflection on urban religion in the context of post-secular, postcolonial, and decolonial debates.
• The use and expansion of digital humanities tools, including GIS, for the study of religion and in the reflection of religious studies.