Village Kurban as the Constructing of Local Identity and the Ritual Process in Post-Socialist Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia

Abstract

The paper deals with the specific use of collective rituals focused on the blood sacrifice among Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, known mostly as kurban. In studying a variety of kurbans, the analytical focus is on the collective feasts, which celebrates the small village community as a ‘homeland’, but also as a ritual community living under the protection of a patron saint. This paper pays particular attention to examples of the collective kurban in abandoned villages. Kurban is therefore understood as a ritual that helps produce and/or re-produce a group identity within a broader national framework, and also as a means of social cohesion for kinship-based and territory-based groups, beyond confessional attachment. In a selection of cases, the paper demonstrates how through a blood sacrifice, shared around a common table, as well as by the symbolic use of the saintpatron, the cohesion between the former members of a now deserted village is recreated. By concentrating on the celebrations of village communities that have been completely depopulated by the rural
exodus, mainly due to socialist urbanization and industrialization, this article shows how every year, the mobilization of the symbolic capital of the community allows for the formation of its “real” or “virtual” boundaries.