Fabricating Origins - Russell T. McCutcheon
3. When the Stakes Are High
Fabricating Origins - Russell T. McCutcheon
Vaia Touna [+]
University of Alabama
Vaia Touna is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She is author of Fabrications of the Greek Past: Religion, Tradition, and the Making of Modern Identities (Brill, 2017) and editor of Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity: Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place (Equinox, 2019). Her research focuses on the sociology of religion, acts of identification and social formation, as well as methodological issues concerning the study of religion in the ancient Graeco-Roman world and of the past in general.
Description
Individuals and groups resort to telling origins stories to secure a certain position—whether that is to gain a status of worthiness in relation to a friend and among family members or as groups in relation to other groups—when either the maintenance of the status is fragile or, threatened by another challenger (real or imagined).