Religious Beliefs and Superstitions in Contemporary Romania. A Socio-Anthropological Perspective
This paper reveals some of the contemporary beliefs, rituals and religious superstitions of the Romanian people. It is underpinned by two sociological field research activities carried out by the Romanian Institute for Assessment and Strategy (IRES (Ro)/R
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Abstract This paper reveals some of the contemporary beliefs, rituals and religious superstitions of the Romanian people. It is underpinned by two sociological field research activities carried out by the Romanian Institute for Assessment and Strategy (IRES (Ro)/RIAS (En)) in August 2013 and October 2014. This study purports to show and interpret the contemporary beliefs of the Romanians with regards to the meaning of life and the imports of death, to the world beyond and the entities populating it. Much of its weight is carried by the beliefs of the Romanians in the year 2013 in respect of the importance of the Church in their personal life and of the answers the Church should give to certain social issues: infidelity, the third world, racial discrimination, ecology, religious tolerance, abortion, nuclear disarmament, euthanasia, unemployment or homosexuality. The last part of this study focuses upon the contemporary superstitions in the Romanian social mind set with regards to talismans and the Halloween; witchcraft and premonition dreams; gambling and the horoscope. Keywords Religion Superstitions
Life Death The world beyond Magic Witchcraft
1 The Methodology of the Sociological Research of Beliefs and Superstitions This study is underpinned by two sociological field research activities carried out by the Romanian Institute for Assessment and Strategy (IRES (Ro)/RIAS (En)) in August 2013 and October 2014. The former was carried out between the 5th and the 7th of August 2013 on a multi-layered probabilistic sample comprising 1370 N. Gavriluţă (&) Department of Sociology and Social Assistance, Faculty of Philosophy and Social and Political Sciences, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi, 11 Carol I Boulevard, Iaşi, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 A. Maturo et al. (eds.), Recent Trends in Social Systems: Quantitative Theories and Quantitative Models, Studies in Systems, Decision and Control 66, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40585-8_1
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subjects of 18 and over 18 years old. The tolerated uppermost error limit was ±2.7 %. The latter research was carried out on the 31st of October 2014, on a multi-layered probabilistic sample comprising 1214 subjects of 18 and over 18 years old. The tolerated uppermost error limit was ±2.8 %. In both research activities, the method used was CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing). Some of the questions of the former research were adapted from the World Value Survey study, achieved by The World Values Survey Association (www.ires.com.ro). Based on these empirical research activities, I propose an interpretation of the hidden significances related to the survival in the 21st century of certain religious beliefs which border canonicity, i.e. some superstitions belonging to the stock of Romanian popular culture.
2 What Is There Left for the Romanians to Believe in Nowadays? Sociological field research carried out in Romania in the wake of 1990 confirms the tremendous social import of Christian religion in t
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