Abstract
This article compares the ways in which two different religions in Brazil generate roads to certainty through objectification, one through gods, the other through banknotes. The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé provides a road to certainty based on cosmological ideas about gods whose presence in ritual is made indubitable through performance and social consensus. Candomblé has historically gained its spiritual force by being both marginal to mainstream religion and spatially peripheral. In contrast, the Neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God is located in easily accessible places within urban life. There is a certain parallel between these different locations and the difference in ritual roads to certainty in the two religions. The article draws out connections between different levels of infrastructure – material, spatial and ritual. The comparison between the two religions points to a social imaginary that in both cases has to do with how to deal with indeterminacies in life through objectification.
| Translated title of the contribution | Rituel infrastruktur: Veje til vished i to brasilianske religioner |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Journal | Cambridge Anthropology |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 65-78 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| ISSN | 0305-7674 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Dec 2017 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Brazil
- Candomblé
- infrastructure
- Neo-Pentecostalism
- objectification
- ritual