‘Segnali di trascendenza’. Uno studio empirico sulle esperienze di rottura della realtà secolarizzata in organizzazioni, associazioni e comunità a sostegno della fragilità

According to Berger and Taylor, modern societies rely on predominantly secularized definitions of reality that appear exclusive and self-sufficient, making the sacred cosmos constructed by religion increasingly implausible. However, even under such conditions, experiences occur that can breach the secularized reality and encourage references to transcendence. After defining such experiences based on relevant literature, the article presents research that aims at empirically investigating this object in six organizations, associations, and communities supporting fragility (illness, end of life, poverty, migration, etc.), on the hypothesis that the encounter with fragility, under certain conditions, questions the exclusivity of immanent definitions and makes transcendent interpretive frameworks more plausible. By deploying case studies and adopting innovative tools and techniques to reconstruct the lived experience of social actors and their meanings, the research sheds light on the “liminal” conditions characterizing the realities under examination that favor experiences of breach of secularized reality and sustain them through time. Results suggest that the encounter with fragility provides a focus to empirically investigate the antecedents of religious experience and highlight the utility of the concept of breaching experiences for the sociological study of religion.