From the act of 'kissing the saint's image and leaving it' to the ''virtual buying of the saint's member': the several uses of sacred in the Jubilee Fair of Congonhas

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting an investigation about inter-relationships between religious, economical and political practices performed by the Catholic Church during the celebration of Jubileu do Bom Jesus, held in Congonhas do Campo city. We intended to better understand how symbolic manipulations between sacred and profane occur inside organizations. In this way, from a study in the Catholic Church context, we wanted to bring new insights to the field of Organizational Studies that deals with the symbolic approach in general. We opted for an exploratory and descriptive research, by doing a qualitative case study. Interviews were done with inhabitants and merchants from Congonhas city and also with the priest responsible for the local parish. We applied discourse analysis for data interpretation, as we understand that discourse is an objective manifestation of a historical and ideological background. Results showed a duality between sacred and profane, which emerged from the flexibility of dominant religious concepts, in order to absorb economical practices that finance the religious capital of the church in Congonhas.