Özet:

This paper is an attempt to reframe current religious architectural projects in Bucharest resorting to the methodological purchase of the concepts of scale and holism. In the first part, I aim to put holism back at the centre of contemporary urban anthropology. After sketching the main nuances this term assumed so far, I will point out which is its main configuration today and how it still inspires, though without any apparent recognition, some well-established approaches in urban anthropology. Through the notion of ‘scalar holism’, I hold that scale is the new avatar of holism; therefore its properties are worth of further discussions and reflections. A more accurate description of a specific case study (the construction of the national cathedral) forms the second part of the paper together with some of the ethnographic material I have been able to collect in Bucharest so far. The Romanian capital is today a contested arena animated by specific forms of religious revival, strategies of townscape re-consecration and anti-clerical drifts. In order to figure out how these social facts interact, I matched nation-scaled contextualization with city-scaled practices and discourses reported in my ethnographic accounts. Here holism – intended as a theoretical approach based on the concept of scale – comes back at the heart of the matter: at the light of the Bucharest example, the script ends offering some reflections on its analytical and methodological value.

Anahtar Kelimeler: