Overview

With a vivid ethnographic lens on a Spanish village, Josep Almudéver Chanzà brings to life the resurgence of religion at the heart of European public life amid the global rise of neo-conservatism. This book reveals how faith, far from fading, is being reshaped, reclaimed, and reasserted as a powerful force in Europe’s social, cultural, and political transformations. Through immersive fieldwork, including participant observation, oral histories, interviews, and archival digging, Almudéver Chanzà uncovers how villagers navigate and reinterpret religious rituals in everyday life. Faith emerges not as static tradition but as a living, contested space where the boundaries between secular and sacred, conservative and progressive, institutional and grassroots are constantly renegotiated From material religious practices to the shifting role of the Catholic Church, each chapter explores how new forms of faith-based identity are being crafted on the ground. Central to the narrative is the question of gender: how are historically excluded voices, especially sexual and gender minorities, reshaping religious life from within? Boldly interdisciplinary, Almudéver Chanzà draws on feminist theory, critical theology, and cultural politics to challenge dominant narratives and offer a timely, provocative account of religion’s evolving role in Europe today. This is not just a study of belief—it’s a story of power, resistance, and transformation.

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9781350500167

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Reviews

As a skilled anthropologist, Almudéver Chanzà persuasively argues that, far from being marginal figures in the Catholic Church, women and gay men are the beating heart of Catholic public devotional life in a Valencian village. As a native son of that same village, he offers an intimate and insightful portrait of local interpersonal relationships and the forms of religious creativity and spiritual resilience they engender. * Dr. Eric Hoenes del Pinal, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA * This innovative and rich ethnography beautifully challenges any easy idea that the traditional can’t be contemporary as it focuses on the way Catholicism is made, mostly by women, in rural Spain. * Jill DeTemple, Southern Methodist University, USA *

Author Information

Josep Almudéver Chanzà is a lecturer in Social Geographies at Newcastle University, UK and a poet. His academic research explores religious innovation, gender, sexuality, and Europe’s south.

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