"Cherez nashe sielo ishla Bozha Matier". Public Religion and Enchantment in Contemporary Ukraine. Villages of Murafa and Klekotyna, Vinnyts'ka Oblast

The article starts with an attempt at outlining the historical and cultural factors that, in the author's opinion, affect the exceptional significance of religious institutions in the examined region. In Murafa religion is a public, and by no means a private issue both upon the level of institutions and that of the individual; moreover, it is strongly connected with identity and conversions are rare. The second part of the article focuses on explaining within this context the term: "the enchantment" of the world and on that, which is decisive for the different visions of the world harboured by the author's interlocutors regardless of their declared creed or the way of perceiving the world to which the researcher is accustomed. The whole article also tries to undermine some of the well-worn theses proposed by the sociology of religion, speaking about the "disenchantment of the world" as well as frequent descriptions of the religious situation in Ukraine [italic]via[/italic] Western conceptions of secularisation and the "free market of religious services". [web URL: http://www.konteksty.pl/summaries/67,310]