“Material religion” as a research program is a relatively new development in the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities. Though this approach has its own forerunners and predecessors, one can argue that it took shape in the wake of an epistemological critique of social and cultural anthropology which treated religion as embedded in the cognitive and psychological experiences of a human being. Accordingly, the material manifestation of religion used to be treated as secondary, optional, and even superfluous. Criticism of this understanding of the nature of religion and of the methods of its studying focuses on the cultural and historical specificity of this approach originating from the use of Protestantism as a model for any religion. The material turn, in contrast, argues that spiritual experience is or at least can be studied as a derivation of bodily practices and experiences caused by the communication of a human with things, substances, images, sounds, fragrances, and flavours. Taken as integral parts of religious infrastructure, they constitute both the mundane and devotional life of an individual believer and of a religious community. This trend in social research remains unnoticed in Russian social science and humanities. The forum aims to assess the state of art in the field of material religion and discuss perspectives of its development. Participants in the discussion highlight the role of the materiality of things and substances, bodies, and mechanisms in their own research and what heuristic perspectives this material turn opens for them. A separate line of discussion concerns the prospects of grafting material religion to the classic models of social research, such as Marxist sociology.

Статья посвящена женским практикам покрывания головы в странах Магриба (Тунисе, Алжире, Марокко). Головные покрывала являются неотъемлемой частью женского костюма в Северной Африке. В зависимости от региона и населенного пункта варьируют их название, материал изготовления, а также цвет, дизайн и способ производства, что в свою очередь делает этот предмет своеобразной визитной карточкой его обладательницы. Автор анализирует две сложившиеся к концу XIX в. вестиментарные традиции — городскую (арабскую) и сельскую (берберскую). Используя в своем костюме схожий по форме предмет, женщины из города и из сельской местности наделяют его разными символическими значениями. В XX в. в условиях процессов модернизации и деколонизации сельские и городские покрывала стали означаемыми для разных контекстов: так, городские покрывала пользовались большим престижем, нежели сельские, что в свою очередь повлияло на то, что именно они стали восприниматься как национальные символы новых североафриканских государств, а сельские покрывала сохранились на уровне персональных повседневных практик в той местности, в которой они изначально использовались. Автор ставит задачей прояснить причину формирования столь различных жизненных траекторий одного типа предметов. The article is devoted to women’s head covering practices in the Maghreb countries (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco). Head coverings are an essential part of women’s costume in North Africa. Their name, material of manufacture, color, design and method of production vary depending on the region and locality, which in turn makes this item a kind of visiting card of its owner. The author analyzes two vestimentary traditions that had developed by the end of the 19th century — urban (Arab) and rural (Berber). Despite the similar shape of veils used by women in the city and in the village, these were endowed with different symbolic meanings. In the 20th century, under the conditions of modernization and decolonization, rural and urban veils became meaningful in different contexts: for example, urban veils enjoyed greater prestige than rural ones, which resulted in them being perceived as national symbols of the new North African states, and rural veils’ use continued at the level of personal daily practices in the regions where they were originally used. The author aims to clarify the reason for such different life trajectories of the objects of one type.

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