Abstract
This study highlights the intersection between devotional things, persons, and places. By looking into how devotional things are emplaced, this research provides an understanding of how socially differentiated Filipino Catholic migrants face the challenges of unstable inter- and transpersonal relations in a foreign land. In doing so, the study, firstly, examines Roman Catholic theodicy—beliefs shared by Christians and their material representations drawn from the long history of Christian tradition—forming part of Roman Catholic devotional practices among Filipinos in Brussels, such as the altars in their homes and the religious paraphernalia they attach to their bodies. Secondly, it explores various forms of mediations and constraints—residency, gender, aging, job options, and security—that shape the possibilities of devotional things in particular places and times, navigating between dwelling and workspaces, pilgrimages, and daily travels. Finally, it examines how devotional things (re)shape moral subjectivities, manifesting in agents’ expanded purpose. The analysis shows how Roman Catholic materials, acting as extensions of the self, inflect shared structures to help manage identity, give permanence to relationships, and ground a sense of “placeness,” becoming enablers of moral desire and purpose. Predominant among these structures is the moral system, which subjects Filipino Catholics to certain rules of ordering lives while also being reinterpreted through their everyday experiences. This paper further stirs longstanding questioning of received essentialist notions of Filipino religiosity and sociomoral values.
Presenters
Hector GuazonFaculty, Anthropology, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Quezon, Philippines
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religions and Spirituality
KEYWORDS
Religious materiality, Filipino Catholic migrants, Moral Subjectivity, Precarity
