Fusion or identification? Rituals, memory, and social (dis)connection between isolation and community
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
The seminar revisits the polarity between solitude/isolation and connection/community through a distinction rendered analytically tractable by Whitehouse’s modes of religiosity and Swann’s construct of identity fusion: forms of belonging are not equivalent, and they shape social ties in systematically different ways. Rare, high-arousal rituals (the imagistic mode) consolidate shared episodic memories and tend to foster identity fusion, a visceral integration of personal and collective motivation that can sustain unusually strong commitment. By contrast, frequent and standardized rituals (the doctrinal mode) privilege semantic memory, normative routinization, and more scalable forms of identification and alignment, yet typically with lower “relational density” in face-to-face life. In the seminar it is advanced the hypothesis that a significant portion of contemporary loneliness stems less from a lack of belonging than from its reconfiguration into predominantly identificatory forms that remain compatible with practical isolation and the thinning of close ties. This poses an analytical and practical question: which micro-social ritual devices (synchrony, commemoration, shared ordeal or experience) can thicken relational density without eliciting the dysfunctional correlates of fusion (exclusivity, antagonism toward outsiders)? In the conclusion, the implications for the design of civic and institutional rituals aimed at rebuilding reliable bonds in contexts of community fragmentation are sketchied.
PIETRO VERENI | University of Rome Tor Vergata
Cycle of Seminars: “Solitude and Communion in Religion and Ethics“
Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, FBK-ISR
The event, organized by FBK’s Center for Religious Studies, will be held in Italian.
The event will be in-person in the FBK Aula Piccola, while seats last, and online.
Registration by 27 February, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. is required so as to arrange the connection.
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Image: AdobeStock_518968971
Speakers
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Pietro Vereni - SpeakerUniversità degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"Pietro Vereni teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He previously carried out research and taught in Greece, Northern Ireland and Slovenia. His work has focused on political anthropology and identity, and media anthropology; in Rome he has conducted empirical research in economic anthropology on the transnational diaspora of Bangladeshi fatherhood, the Italian prison system, religious diversity and the political function of housing occupations (squatting). He is currently working on the ritual dimension of the religion politics nexus and is conducting research on the Sanctuary of the Divino Amore. After the Covid-19 pandemic, he became convinced that anthropology should invest less in deconstruction and far more in reconstruction. Recent publications: Data mining, research ethics and practice: A view from Italy (Anthropology Today, 2024); Sui limiti della profezia in antropologia (RAC, 2024); Il paradosso dello Stato-nazione (Dialoghi mediterranei, 2025)
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Organizers
The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.