Religious Markets, Church Competition, and Religious Revivals in Ukraine: New Longitudinal Data to Answer Old Sociological Questions

Religious Markets, Church Competition, and Religious Revivals in Ukraine: New Longitudinal Data to Answer Old Sociological Questions
Date
-
Event Sponsor
CREEES Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies
Location
Encina Hall West, Room 219

The revival of religion in Ukraine after the fall of the USSR has been ubiquitous. Scholars have studied links between religion and nationalism, politics, education, civil activism, subjective wellbeing and other social processes. Many researchers and pundits have acknowledged that religious landscape in Ukraine is relatively diverse and pluralistic. However, the question remains whether this pluralism has had any causal effect on religious identities of Ukrainians. Religious market theory (RMT) suggests that church competition should increase religious vitality by incentivizing formal religious organizations to improve their services and, thus, be more attractive for people. However, the empirical evidence to support this theory has been mixed. The present study employs novel statistical data on religious communities as well as longitudinal survey data on religious identities among Ukrainians in order to address this question.

Tymofii Brik, the 2018 Wayne Vucinich Fellow, is a researcher in sociology and economic history. An assistant professor at the Kyiv School of Economics, he received his Ph.D. with honors from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and Master’s degrees from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University (Ukraine). His research interests are focused on religious markets, long-term social mobility, and social network analysis. He is also a co-founder of a social restaurant, UrbanSpace 500, a member of the supervisory board of CEDOS, and an occasional contributor to VoxUkraine.

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