Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, volume 135)

Past scholarship on the Gagauz people has focused on their ethnic origins and the tension between their Christian faith and Turkish linguistic identity. This study, based on extensive fieldwork in the Republic of Moldova, approaches the problem of this central dichotomy in Gagauz identity through the lens of daily religious practices. This empirical approach reveals how scholarly discourses on folk religion guide the local fieldworkers identification of what are folk religious practices and thus actualises 'folk religion' in a given context.The book offers a fresh methodological perspective on folk religion as discourse and object of study and is the first monograph in a Western European language on the religion, history and identity of this under-studied European people. This ethnographic study of Gagauz religion offers an original perspective on 'folk religion' as discourse and object of study. It is also the first monograph published in a Western language on this little-known European people's history and culture.