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raveling between different villages, I often passed the house of Mira, one of Krasne’s storytellers. If I had a chance to stop by a shop first, I would buy tangerines, Mira’s favorite fruit, and drop them off with the elderly lady. As I entered the modest chamber in which she spends most of her days, Mira would watch me carefully from beneath a flowery headscarf. Once she recognized me, she would smile and ask me to stay. Our meetings usually followed a similar script. After I sat myself on a wooden stool, my host, laying on an old sofa, would ask me the same series of questions: “Have you found a husband yet?” she would invariably begin, keenly interested. Very disappointed with my reply, she would add with a frisky smile: “Lonely nights are wasted!”Then, without giving up her inquiry, she would go on: “Have you found a job at least?” When I reminded her that I was carrying out research, she jumped to guessing that I must have become a student of a local agricultural school. Listening to my description of what anthropologists do, she would carefully repeat “anthropology,” as if pronouncing a mysterious, sacred word. In the end, she would sigh deeply and tell me it was a pity I knew nothing about farming and milking cows: if only I knew that, I could definitely find a good hus- band among Lemkos.
Due to worsening rheumatism, Mira can hardly walk and is totally dependent on others’ assistance. However, she does not complain about her situation and claims to have great people around her. She always praises her closest relatives, “the beautiful family” of her only son. She is particularly fond of her daughter-in-law, a Roman Catholic whom Mira describes as “a golden woman” who has supported Mira’s son in moments of difficulty (severe illness and risk of alcoholism),
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is a great mother, and a very industrious housekeeper. The family lives in a neighboring district, in a predominantly Polish village, and attends the Roman Catholic services there. However, the couple and their children visit Mira frequently and celebrate the Orthodox fes- tivities in Krasne. When I asked Mira if she minded that her son and grandchildren were not active in the Orthodox community, she stated firmly: “Two religions don’t sleep well under one blanket [pod jedną pierzyną]. It is better to abandon one’s faith and pray together with your spouse than to be divided by religion.” To Mira, religion is second to a stable family life.
Mira’s son and “golden” daughter-in-law recently recognized that the elderly woman could not live alone and asked their oldest son, a truck driver, to move in with his grandmother. Within a short period of time, he became one of the most active members of the local Orthodox parish. During her grandson’s absences, Mira can count on the support of her neighbors, an Orthodox man and his Roman Catholic wife, who own an apiary. They drop by her home several times a day, providing Mira with milk, eggs, and, when the season comes, homemade honey. Similar to Mira’s children, these neighbors celebrate Christmas and other festivities twice, striving to maintain both Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, and attend the two churches interchangeably. Mira describes her neighbors as kind and obliging people she is lucky to know, yet at the same time she empha- sizes that that’s how a (good) neighbor ought to be.
Attending to Mira’s and other inhabitants’ stories as well as scru- tinizing an array of neighborly interactions, this chapter sheds light on the figure of “neighbor” and the institution of “neighborhood” in the context of interreligious conviviality. It connects the phenomenon of neighborhood with that of intermarriage, demonstrating how both represent local modes of negotiating religious diversity and exhibit complex links between faith, family, and friendship. The seemingly simple question of “how a good neighbor ought to be” reveals in this context a complex intertwining of local history, patterns of rural life, rules of reciprocity, and religious beliefs. These observations come close to Cornelia Sorabji’s (2008) reflections on mixed neighborhoods, in which she calls for redrawing the point of attention from “mixed”
to “neighborhood.” Sorabji argues that no matter whether it is mixed or homogenous, a neighborhood always involves both “pros” and
“cons” and that neighborly relations of various sorts—obligations, expectations, habits—can be both enjoyed and detested, regardless of religious or ethnic identity (2008: 104–7).1 An overemphasis of ethno-religious factors leads to the perception of neighborhood as
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“a determining force able either to prevent or create a war” (2008:
98). This view of neighborhood’s “magic potency” is further rein- forced by the assumption that coexistence of different groups means, by default, a positive stand toward diversity and peaceful relations.
Consequently, many scholarly illustrations of mixed neighborhoods exemplify a fusion of purely descriptive considerations with prescrip- tive models and normative interpretations (cf. Hayden 2002).
Reflections on the politicized usage of the notion of neighborhood point to yet another problem, namely, the perception of religion as a force that enters into play only in moments of conflict—a factor that hardens divisions within a community and exacerbates differences expressed in ethnic or cultural terms—while “normal” conditions of neighborly interactions supposedly set religion aside. Depicting religion as a cause of conflict and its absence as a condition of civil- ity reinforces the view of a secularized, religion-free world as the only truly civil, nonviolent, and democratic one (Casanova 2009).2 Engaging critically with such an approach means shifting our atten- tion to the role of religion in everyday life, not just during moments of crisis. The power of religion is manifested in the fact that it both unites and divides, undermines and consolidates difference, gener- ates dispositions, embodies knowledge, and intentionally and unin- tentionally informs action. Only by exploring these different facets of religion and studying neighborhood as a setting of “ordinary plural- ism” (Gold 2014) is it possible to comprehend how the dynamics of differences and commonalities may trigger a shift from tolerance into xenophobia (Bowman 1997: 48), and to grasp the ambiguous nature of multireligious conviviality.
Discovering the Importance of Neighborhood
I became aware of the relevance of “neighborhood” shortly after I started my fieldwork. This important theme first came to my atten- tion during walks through the villages at the beginning of my stay.
I began my research in the early spring, and, striving to become more familiar with my fieldsite, I often walked or bicycled from vil- lage to village. My initial observations, scrupulously and enthusias- tically recorded in my field diary, talk of permanently open doors, women chatting while standing next to fences, or enjoying first warm evenings at the table outside the house, a group of men repairing a mower and conversing over a beer. They describe joyful conversations after the mass, friendly exchanges in a local shop, and care for others’
well-being expressed in conversations overheard on local buses. Newly
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discovered places and social gatherings conveyed togetherness and intimacy. Although today I read in some of these preliminary remarks an early enchantment with my fieldsite, they were very important for realizing the importance of neighborhood; even more so in light of the disenchantment that came later.
My appreciation for the significance of “neighborhood” deepened during my first visits to people’s houses, which often began with me looking for (nonexistent) doorbells and then knocking loudly on the doorframes, striving to draw the attention of household members.
When one of them, usually a woman, eventually came to the door, she would give me a surprised look and ask: “For God’s sake, why didn’t you come in?” In some cases, when I was still waiting at the door, it was actually a neighbor to let me in, as she or he was just about to pay a visit to the same house. During the conversations that took place after I finally set foot in the houses, the notion of neigh- bors was ever present, enabling me to understand that neighborhood was, in fact, “all around.”
Local people’s understanding of neighborhood is quite broad; the villagers define as neighbors even those people who do not live in their immediate proximity. Speaking about their neighbors, people usually say that they live “next door.” While this broad understand- ing may suggest that the closeness of relations exceeds the spatial distance, it also illustrates a specific, wide-ranging spatial percep- tion of the notions of “here,” “near,” and “close by,” accounting for an overall familiarity with the village’s space. As such, people’s talk about neighbors may constitute a challenge for an ethnographer and lead to confusion. Whenever people mentioned something with regard to “neighbors” and I asked for clarification about who those neighbors were, my hosts replied that they meant neighbors who live
“just here” or “right next to” them—phrases that could have referred to several different homesteads. And when, in a second attempt to discover where those neighbors actually lived, I asked what the neigh- bors’ house looked like, I was usually informed that their house is wooden—a far from helpful distinction. As a result, I often found myself in a very different house from the one I envisioned visiting or even from the ones that villagers meant to send me to; often, I would find myself talking, for example, to Jehovah’s Witnesses who “turned out” to be Roman Catholics.
Such mistakes could easily occur as villages in Rozstaje are never religiously or ethnically segregated. In all the villages, the concen- tration of any one religious or ethnic group in a certain part of the village is accidental rather than intentional. The lack of clear-cut
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ethnic/religious divisions makes this area different from many other pluralistic localities in which religious/ethnic divisions often run side by side with other differentiating factors, such as social class, wealth, and education (e.g., Harris 1972). In Rozstaje, it is hard to speak about richer and poorer areas, although individual inhabitants do dif- fer in terms of economic resources. While not denying the obvious differences between the inhabitants’ status, people tend to empha- size their equality as neighbors; this kind of egalitarianism indicates a recognition of common identity and the importance of communally defined goals (Pina-Cabral 1986: 150–1).
Neighbors are presented in people’s conversation in many different contexts: as central characters in their daily activities, as sources of information, as the subjects of rumors. Despite people’s complaints about declining sociability, during my visits a neighbor often dropped in or phoned “with news.” As nostalgic as people may be for past
“togetherness,” there is no apparent lack of help and assistance today.
For example, due to the scarcity of public transport, neighbors take each other shopping, provide elderly inhabitants with medicines, and organize shifts to take the children to the kindergarten. Farmers who keep cows assist each other during calving season, aid each other with milking, and provide help during times of trouble. The obligation to help others is understood, on the one hand, as a way of respecting neighbors and, on the other hand, as a norm of reciprocity, a form of
Figure 5.1 An ecumenical cemetery. Photo: Agnieszka Pasieka
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mutual obligation. During my first talk with Hanna, she explained her husband Henek’s absence by saying:
My man, he is . . . gregarious. Everyone comes to him to ask for some- thing. Sometimes I am angry, because he helps everyone else and the work at home lies fallow. But . . . when our roof was burning the entire village was here to help us.
Similarly, Bronek and Basia explain:
Bronek: Yes, yes, neighbors do help each other. Here, the phone rings at 2 a.m. and . . . and . . . usually it is a cow calving . . . And well, one has to go to the cow.
Basia: Once a neighbor phoned us from a wedding party to say that . . . there was such a heavy snow that they could not get back home and needed help. But I picked up the phone and said: “All right, he’s coming!” Because I was sure it was about the cows.
As mentioned earlier, the ideas of “equality” and “respect” appear recurrently in the narratives on socialism, which, it was suggested, provide a glimpse of the kind of community people want to experi- ence today. As in the case of memories of socialism, local inhabitants persistently emphasize that close neighborly relations do not depend on one’s religious or ethnic background. Two sentences constitute the leitmotifs of the discourse on neighborliness. “We are like one fam- ily” is often cited in order to stress not only the degree of intimacy, but also the fact that neighbors are the people one can rely and count on (cf. Freeman 1968; Straczuk 2006); while the expression “First of all he is my neighbor, and then he is an Orthodox, a Lemko, a Pentecostal” is meant to emphasize the greater importance of social bonds than religious and ethnic categorizations, that what is com- mon (being inhabitants of a village community) is more important than what makes them different. Both sentences closely relate to the ways in which local people respect other people’s religion. First, while inhabitants rarely establish ties of kinship with neighbors of different creeds by naming them godfathers or godmothers for their children, they do invite each other for family festivities, religious celebrations, and life-cycle rituals. Second, the inhabitants refrain from work when neighbors who belong to another religious community celebrate a religious festival. Every single inhabitant refers to this rule, expound- ing it with pride, but also a sense of obviousness. Put differently, while inhabitants perceive the rule as an exceptional achievement of the community, they also emphasize that they treat it as something
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“normal” since they are an open-minded, tolerant, and civil com- munity. Refraining from work is thus the foundation of local coex- istence, an illustration of their locally developed ecumenism, and a sign of civility, which finds its reflection in the respect for neigh- bors-dissenters. As such, the recognition of others’ right to celebrate and one’s obligation to duly acknowledge this fact serves as a shared grammar of conviviality and a local means of legitimizing pluralism (Gold 2014: 133).
Explaining the rule’s importance, people usually begin by stat- ing that their neighbors deserve to celebrate in peace. More elabo- rated clarifications of the rule reveal certain differences between the religious communities. Evangelical communities and Jehovah’s Witnesses find Biblical passages that refer to the need to respect one’s neighbors, even if they disagree with the form or the very idea of religious holidays. Orthodox and Catholics often add an explanation that sounds not unlike Pascal’s Wager: who knows which festivities are the “right” ones, at the “right” time, so it is best to refrain from work “just in case.” While talking about the importance of respect and equality, they stress that when attending to these values people
“act like Christians” or are “real Christians.” To say that a neigh- bor is a “good Christian” means that he or she is a kind and honest person, which may, but may not, have to do with his/her religious devotion. Unlike members of Protestant denominations, Orthodox and Catholics rarely refer explicitly to religious commandments.3 Emphasizing the value of hospitality, they are more likely to cite a well-known saying or proverb, such as “Guest at home, God at home”
(Gość w dom, Bóg w dom), which points to the importance of the guest (who is compared to God) and the fact that the house, which knows how to respect others, is blessed (it is visited by God). Hence, while religious norms, or sanctions (Freeman 1968), undoubtedly underpin the configuration of neighborly relations, they do not always mean a reference to concrete, officially prescribed principles, but rather point to a generalized understanding of “Christian” behavior and the way of “living righteously” (po bożemu, literally: “to live as God says”).
Notably, although both types of neighborly practices—accentu- ating or minimizing difference—are important, they relate to social boundary maintenance in different ways, leading to either “bright”
or “blurred” boundaries (Alba 2005). The common recognition of neighbors’ rituals accounts for “blurred” boundaries, while respect- ing different festivities simultaneously underlines the “brightness” of boundaries. Given people’s emphasis on both, it is important to note that these process are not mutually exclusive but complementary and
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beneficial for multireligious coexistence. At the same time, it needs to be emphasized that the rules regulating the sphere of commonalities and differences do not “apply” evenly to all religious persuasions. A relative similarity of dogmas and practices among Roman Catholics and Eastern Christians makes a joint celebration of Christmas pos- sible, but the rejection of “earthly feasts” by Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses precludes it. Additionally, syncretic practices and rituals are not only dependent on the possibility of reconciling different reli- gious traditions and the willingness of a religious community to join mutually intelligible practices, but are also a product of hierarchi- cal relations and hierarchical encompassment, which make certain
“alliances” and “encounters” more acceptable than others. In short, the process of blurring the boundaries between two neighbors may simultaneously reinforce the fence separating them from a third.
Parallel observations can be made with reference to mixed mar- riages. Studies of interreligious and interethnic neighborhoods have often focused on the issue of intermarriage (Botev 1994). One of the reasons is the assumed and often observed link between the extent of neighborly contacts and the likeliness of intermarriage. However, an even more important reason in Rozstaje, with its virtual lack of endog- amy and a rich record of conversion, is the similarity of rules under- pinning the institutions of both neighborhood and marriage. This similarity puts this particular region at odds with most of the multi- religious communities studied by anthropologists. What is generally common in multireligious contexts is an antithetical relation between neighborhood and intermarriage; members of different religious groups may, or even are supposed to, interact and support each other as neighbors, but the marriage between them is forbidden (e.g., Lubaś 2011). In others, intermarriage might not be forbidden but it is strictly regulated with regard to children’s upbringing and family’s religious life (Kubica 2011: 208). Crucially, the evidence from Rozstaje differs also from case studies in the Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Czech bor- derland, which demonstrate mixed marriages to be powerful tools of assimilation and equate conversion to Roman Catholicism with con- version to the Polish nationality (e.g., Babiński 2004).
In Rozstaje, uniquely, spouses tend to negotiate both domains of religious life and strive to continue practicing each partner’s creed, even if not on equal terms. The influences of Roman Catholicism are counterbalanced by the defensive and community-oriented policy adopted by the smaller denominations, as well as by the emphasis on religion as a corollary of ethnic identity in the case of Orthodox and Greek Catholic Lemkos. The cases of conversion that have resulted