The ethnographies in this volume highlight some of the aspects of a very complex picture of religiosity in the Caucasus. The essays analyze different sites of the sacred on the periphery of institutional religion: pilgrimage spots and religious practices shared by different groups and open for interpretations. They mostly fall into the category of non-institutional beliefs and practices, variously defined in this collection of essays as folk religiosity (Chapters 2, 3), and vernacular or informal religion (Chapter 8). The volume offers rich ethnographies on the Caucasus as a whole, without dividing it into South and North Caucasus, a rare view for this region. It tries to divert the gaze of academics from the prevalent view of the Caucasus as a region of conflicts. The book skillfully shows the complex choreography of coexistence as practiced on contested sites.

The volume centers around religion as a complex phenomenon, offering possibilities for sharing or not sharing. As sharing implies the existence of certain differences, the chapters establish a range of binaries: male-female, indigenous-foreign, sacred-not sacred, religious-secular, “folk”-institutional, formal-informal. The volume mostly adopts a functionalist perspective in analyzing the role of shared sites in the lives of the communities. Some chapters represent sacred places as a means to assert antagonistic tolerance, while others focus on shrines as fostering mutual belonging. In an unexpected turn, Florian Mühlfried (Chapter 7) questions the widely-accepted positive notion of sharing. He shows how the not-sharing of the sacra helps maintain the existing peace in a village in Georgia. The complex analysis of the ambivalent nature of Georgian-Judeo relationships and culturally rooted ideas of hospitality helps to understand the polysemy of sharing or not sharing.

The book consists of an introduction and nine chapters. An introduction by Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried, and Kevin Tuite lays out the main theoretical background. As the editors state, the volume should “offer a new perspective in understanding and theorizing desecularization processes and religious pluralism in the post-socialist Caucasus beyond the prevailing views and ideas, and discourses on little and great traditions” (13). The ethnographies show that the so-called “little” traditions are not so little as assumed (25). The processual approach the editors adopt is the main strength of this volume, showing the complex picture of Soviet atheism and the dynamics of change (Chapters 1–3).

The volume takes the readers on a journey to very diverse settings to show similarities and differences, sharing and not sharing across religious and state boundaries. It switches from rural to urban, focuses on a particular shrine, or traces State-Church relations. Darieva offers a gripping analysis of urban religiosity as practiced in Baku, Azerbaijan, choosing the popular Saint Mir Movsum Agha (Chapter 1). She explores the ways in which the sacred sites are constructed and fit into the urban style of life, with its tempo and flexibility. The chapter by Levon Abrahamian, Zaruhi Hambardzumyan, Gayane Shagoyan, and Gohar Stepanyan discusses how the entire chain of sacred places is built and maintained in Armenia. In a great ethnography, the authors show how the pairing of eight shrines affects their survival (71).

One of the most abiding themes of the essays is the restrictive power of religious freedom. The stance of institutional religions vis-à-vis informal religiosity is one of the central themes. Hege Toje demonstrates in case of a village in the North Caucasus how the re-institutionalization of religion and the increased importance of the Russian Orthodox Church brings tensions and restrictions into a multi-ethnic village (Chapter 6). Similarly, the ethnography on Svaneti (Chapter 2) highlights how the attempts to monopolize the field of religion by the Church is negotiated by retaining some of the rituals out of plain view. In a similar vein, as Abrahamian et al show (Chapter 3), the conflict with the institutional religion leads to stigmatizing certain groups as “pagan,” whereas the study on Abkhazia by Igor V. Kuznetsov (Chapter 4) shows how state-sponsored tolerance towards paganism functions as an escape in the diverse field of religiosity there. The chapter on Abkhazia as well the following chapter by Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne offer a rare insight into the hybridity of religious practices (Chapter 5).

The volume fascinates with in-depth studies of the gendered dimension of religion, like the study on Women Bread-Bakers and Ritual-Makers (Chapter 2). It is a complex study of the interplay between gender, space, and ritual functions and more generally, of the life-worlds the sacred places create and are created by. Similarly, Hamlet Melkumyan's rare in-depth view of a Yezidi community in Armenia (chapter 8) offers the reader a fascinating example of sharing and switching, even of dreams and visions between male and female practitioners (185). As these essays show, women mostly play a shadowy role. Still, non-institutional religion offers them a space that can be turned to a front-stage (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5).

Several chapters touch on the issue of the contested relationship between the state and revived institutional religion, but the study by Silvia Serrano analyzes this question in all its complexity. This inspiring chapter, rich with historiographic, ethnographic, and theoretical considerations opens up new ways to think about a range of topics, including antagonistic tolerance, spatiality and religion, and materiality of symbols.

The lens of the volume emphasizing the binaries sometimes turns into a hindrance, shifting the view away from the bricolage and hybridity, undeniably part of the lived religion in the Caucasus. The look beyond binaries could open up new avenues for interpretation. The volume illuminates the changing dynamics around sacredness, and as such is a very valuable contribution for scholars interested in the Caucasus, in shared sacred spaces, or broadly, in desecularization and in the function of sharing or not-sharing.