Doing Eucharist

Practice Theory Ethnography of Contemporary Protestant Communion in Germany

(Working Title)

Abstract

In my PhD-Project I investigate the Eucharist by Participant Observation and Videography. For this I understand the Eucharist as a ritual that is enacted in praxi. It's a complex interplay of various actors like humans and non-human entities (things, artefacts, spaces, clothes, soundscapes, …) and they carry affordances. Das Promotionsprojekt nimmt in Teilnehmender Beobachtung und Videographie Evangelische Abendmahlsgottesdienste wahr. Second, I understand the Euchaist as a bundle of practices (Reckwitz 2003 and others). Tacit knowledge is called up and used by doing the ritual. 

We can observe and describe various micro-practices like, on the one hand, eating and drinking, and, on the other hand, practices like community-building, differenciating, sharing, interacting, positioning (oneself), sacralizing and many more.

As a last step, I also seek to explain meaning that lies somewhere in the practices and is attributed to the social situation. In summary the research question and the project's aim is to describe observable practices and their interplay, to explicate implicit knowledge, and to ask for theological meanings which can contribute to the discourse as well.

Some Research Questions:

1. What happens in the Eucharist both in the procedure and within inner experience?

2. How can we understand the Eucharist with ritual studies? Does empirical research change this view?

3. Who and which things constitute, form and enact the ritual for what and how? -> How do people do the Eucharist?

4. Which practices, doings and sayings can be described?