Religião, etnicidade e globalização: uma comparação entre grupos religiosos nos contextos brasileiro e norte-americano

Abstract

The objective of this paper is a comparative analysis regarding black Pentecostals in the US and Brazil, as well as popular Catholicism between groups of Azorean descent in the city of Rio de Janeiro and in New England (USA), where the Holy Ghost festivals are held. My purpose is to describe and analyze the social and symbolic construction processes of ethnoreligious subjectivity in these groups. This subjectivity is structured through symbols that are differently valued by these groups. Therefore, in the case of North American Pentecostals, this relation defines itself in contrast to the Baptists; while in the Brazilian case, in contrast to the members of the Afro-Brazilian religions. In the case of Azorean immigrants' popular Catholicism, ritual activities such as the Holy Ghost festivals, integrate them and oppose them to the official Catholicism and to Pentecostalism. The hypothesis I intend to develop is that this relation between religion and ethnicity cannot be thought of in an immediate form, where the mediations that constitute it be forcefully revealed, seeking an adequate comprehension. In reality this relation is part of a process called"the invention of culture" (Roy Wagner). The process is, in some moments, mediated by the religious code and in other moments by the ethnical one, without any of them developing a determining role.