6. Migration, Religious Super-diversity, and Cohabitation: Notes from an Ethnographic Research on the Sinhala Community in Messina (Sicily)
Religious Super-diversity and Peacebuilding across Asia and its Diasporas - Alessandro Saggioro
Giovanni Cordova [+]
University of Catania
Giovanni Cordova is a social anthropologist whose main research interests span from religions and rituals (with special reference to Islam and Christianity) to migrations, with an areal expertise on North Africa and, more recently, South Asia. He has carried fieldwork in Tunisia and Italy. He is currently Post-Doc Fellowship in Ethno-Anthropological Disciplines at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Catania. In relation to this research project he is studying the religious and ritual realm among the Sri Lankan communities living in Sicily, exploring the co-existence between universal religious values, local forms of religiosity and migrants’ religious experiences.
Description
In this contribution, I examine from an ethnographic perspective the concept of super-diversity in relation to daily interactions between Sri Lankan Catholic and Buddhist communities in the city of Messina (Southern Italy). How does migration affect cultural representations and performances of identity and difference? And how does it lead to the re-shaping of categories of religious and ethnic belonging?