Scalar holism: Some methodological reflections on Bucharest's religious mega-projects

Abstract

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.