Gender, Heritage and Changing Traditions: Russian Old Believers in Romania

This chapter analyses the fluidity of gender roles in the community of Russian Old Believers in Romania with regard to their religious heritage. To analyse heritage as embodied in persons, it looks at how bodies, living carriers of gendered heritage processes, can be conceptualized. The role of gender in the closed community extends beyond the personal body to issues of access to religious places and sacred places can highlight the problematic relationship of Orthodox religious sites between their universal nature and their particularism. As the official language of the Russian Old Belief Orthodox church, knowledge of Slavonic is essential for religious practice and transmission. The community's life is embedded in Romania's social, economic, cultural and political life, and thus subjected to wider influences. The tenacity that has kept Old Believers' heritage alive, along with its patriarchal structures, offers interesting insights on the tensions between heritage, gender and a traditional sense of place in a postmodern world.