PROJECT: Parish Community and Liturgy: the space of the Orthodox church in communicative practices of parishioners
FUNDING: The project was supported by Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University and The Active Tradition Foundation in 2025-2026.
DURATION OF THE PROJECT: 2025 – 2026
PROJECT COORDINATOR: Ivan Zabaev
RESEARCH TEAM: Svetlana Bankovskaya, Victoria Idolenko, Elizaveta Kostrova, Anna Zueva, Nikolay Sloboda, Sergey Enin
ABOUT THE PROJECT
In social sciences, the parish community of the (Orthodox) church is understood as the sum of people involved in various types of extraliturgical activities. In this sense, it is no different from other social aggregates – communities and non-profit organizations. Theology, at least in some parts, rather provides the basis for such an understanding of the community (the central sacraments of the Orthodox Church are described as an individual encounter with God).
The idea of this project is to see the community as directly connected to the liturgical life of the church. To describe what is happening at the liturgy not as something that prevents the ceremonial performance of the service, but as the order generated and/or actualized by this very service. To analyze what happens (between people) during the liturgy, as an immediate part of the liturgy and as an important component of the life of the community.
The aim of the project will be to present a functionally differentiated/ordered space of the church during the liturgy through a video analysis of the communicative practices of members of the parish community. During the project, we will try to analyze the space of the church from the point of view of practices carried out in various parts of the church building. The researchers’ attention will be drawn to the nature of communication in various areas of the church, what regulates the communication of parishioners in these areas, and how they demarcate these zones. With this approach, we will try to see the space of an Orthodox church as the sum of communications between different actors. The project is based on the methodology of multimodal video analysis. The theoretical foundations of the project are the sociology of space, the analysis of the constitution of local order in ethnomethodology and empirical liturgical studies.
The project is a continuation of the work initiated within the framework of the study “Confession as a way of constituting the community of the Orthodox Church“; supported within the framework of the Scientific Research Program of the St. Tikhon University Development Fund and the Living Tradition Foundation for 2024-2025.
SEMINARS
Seminar №1. 10.09.2025
Discussion of the organization of the “field” and the installation of cameras in the temple premises.
Seminar №2. 24.09.2025
A presentation by Sloboda N. on the concept of “haecceities” by Garfinkel. Report by Idolenko V. and Zueva A. on the organization of the field part of the study.
Seminar №3. 08.10.2025
Discussion of the methodological text “An Introduction to Using Video for Research” and the organization of empirical material collection.
Seminar №4. 22.10.2025
Discussion of the observation made on 19 October at the late Sunday service in the church.
Seminar №5. 05.11.2025
Approval of the plan for installing cameras to collect empirical material.
Seminar №6. 26.11.2025
Discussion of methodological topics “Video production in space: the significance of various recording methods”, “Videography and video analysis” (Knoblauch & Tuma).
Seminar №7. 10.12.2025
Discussion of the book Parson’s Primer to develop a common theoretical and methodological framework. N. Sloboda’s report on the contents of the book.
Seminar №8. 23.12.2025
Viewing the empirical footage (the field was conducted on December 06-07) and developing a processing strategy for further analysis.
Seminar №9. 14.01.2026
Sloboda, N., and Idolenko, V., discussed the problems that arose during the editing of certain video segments. Possible solutions were identified, and a timeframe was set for further analysis.
Seminar №10. 28.01.2026
Presentation by S. Bankovskaya on the text “Analyzing Video: Developing Preliminary Observations” and its discussion. Viewing selected video clips edited by N. Sloboda and V. Idolenko.
Seminar №12. 25.02.2026
Participants discuss methods for analyzing video processed in programs (Da Vinci Resolve, After Effects), where human movement is converted into moving pixels or dots. Specific problems were identified and solutions outlined.
Seminar №13. 16.03.2026
A discussion of methods for encoding human flows in the analyzed space of the church, during which separate zones were identified for more detailed analysis.
Seminar №14. 25.03.2026
Discussion of the division of the church space into functional zones and strategies for their analysis.
Seminar №15. 08.04.2026
Discussion of zone coding and the general coding scheme for the analyzed space of the temple.
Seminar №16. 22.04.2026
Discussion of the project by Aleksin K. “Confession in the modern Russian Orthodox Church: categories of description and comprehension among priests and laity.”
Seminar №17. 14.05.2026
Discussion of the encodings of communicating groups and compilation of a list of their characteristics.
Seminar №18. 27.05.2026
Discussion of combining several analytical layers in a single framework, as well as identifying a set of “interesting” cases for subsequent in-depth analysis.
Seminar №19. 10.06.2026
A summary of the work accomplished over the year. Discussion of topics for further analysis and publication.
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