Public lecture by Michal Uhrin

The rhythm of religious life: the role of day-to-day rituals and religious acts in the life of religious communities

This presentation aims to analyse the content, costs, context, and communicative aspects of signals that appear in religious contexts from the theoretical perspective of the costly signalling theory of ritual. These dimensions of rituals and ritualised acts will be explored through the prism of ethnography in three locations in rural Slovakia, inhabited by members of Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic faiths. I will try to illustrate, that religious rituals and ritualised behaviours with low cost and high frequency, low cost and low frequency, as well as subtle signals, are not only potentially effective means and platforms of communication but are also potentially effective in the process of building trust, social status, as well as in maintaining cooperation and group cohesion.