From Wrestling with Monsters to Wrestling with God: Masculinities, "Spirituality," and the Group-ization of Religious Life in Northern Costa Rica (original) (raw)
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Anthropological Quarterly, 2018
This piece explores the support group movement's role in restructuring Latin American religion and contributing to the trans-denominational and trans-secular spread of the "reformation of machismo"-Elizabeth Brusco's (2010) name for Latin American evangelicalism's focus on transforming men and masculinity. Using ethnographic data from two years of fieldwork in an urbanizing area of northern Costa Rica and life history interviews with men from three churches and three men's groups there, this article argues that a region-wide popular discourse about a "crisis of masculinity/ma-chismo" and a "crisis of the family" has broadened the appeal of efforts to transform men and masculinity-not only among most churches, but especially among a proliferating number of trans-denominational and non-religious men's groups that are modeled implicitly on all-male Alcoholics Anonymous groups, which are extraordinarily popular throughout Latin America. This essay's argument borrows from Wuthnow's analysis of "the
2018
This piece explores the support group movement’s role in restructuring Latin American religion and contributing to the trans-denominational and trans-secular spread of the “reformation of machismo”—Elizabeth Brusco’s (2010) name for Latin American evangelicalism’s focus on transforming men and masculinity. Using ethnographic data from two years of fieldwork in an urbanizing area of northern Costa Rica and life history interviews with men from three churches and three men’s groups there, this article argues that a region-wide popular discourse about a “crisis of masculinity/machismo” and a “crisis of the family” has broadened the appeal of efforts to transform men and masculinity—not only among most churches, but especially among a proliferating number of trans-denominational and non-religious men’s groups that are modeled implicitly on all-male Alcoholics Anonymous groups, which are extraordinarily popular throughout Latin America. This essay’s argument borrows from Wuthnow’s analysis of “the restructuring of [North] American religion” under the influence of the support group movement (1988, 1994a, 1994b, 1998), but it also employs an historiographic approach, exploring the origins of this restructuring of Latin American religion in the same “Methodist model” of social organization that has driven evangelical growth throughout the Americas (and men’s conversions especially) during times of social change and male social dislocation (Martin 1990). The conversion histories of two Catholic men are used to illustrate how it is participation in these groups, rather than formal conversion, that transforms many men’s lives, their gender identities, and their relationships with others. Finally, the possible contributions of this research to anthropological studies of religion, ethics, and morality are explored, in particular the role that models of social organization might play in the spread of new ethical practices, discourses, or identity models.
2018
This dissertation argues that what Elizabeth Brusco (2011[1995]) called the Protestant "reformation of machismo" in Latin America is actually a part of much broader phenomenonthat the concerted effort by evangelicals to convert men to a caring, non-machista masculinity 1 is actually part of an overall "restructuring of Latin American religion" (and "spirituality") that lies at the heart of many religious transformations in the region. I argue that this restructuring pivots, at least in part, around two broader, widely acknowledged social crises: the "crisis of the family" and "crisis of masculinity" (or "crisis of machismo"), as they are frequently described in Latin American popular media and discourses. These crises have become a central focus not only for evangelicals but for a number of religious organizations and for a variety of apparently secular social movements. In many parts of the region, these movements have begun to organize men's groups that are designed to deal with the problem directly (even in areas as far flung as rural, northern Costa Rica, where I conducted two years of research over the course of a decade). Although this restructuring of Latin American religion has largely been told as the growth of non-Catholic and especially evangelical or pentecostal churches, detailed research has revealed that many of these changes, including the transdenominational "pentecostalization" of religion, are occurring across church or denominational lines and in fact across the lines traditionally separating religious and secular life (e.g.,
Neo-Pentecostal Masculinities and Religion in the Public Sphere in Latin America [2015]
Special Issue on the 2014 FTL Costa Rica Conference
This article dwels around the construction of masculinities among neopentecostal churches and how the men who belong to these faith communities interact between societies and public spaces in Latin America. It addresses the challenges that these spiritualities involve as living faith expressions and as public social identities, as well as the dynamics that arise from its practice as religious subjects.
Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic, 2016
Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic (University Press of Florida 2016), is an ethnographic investigation of Pentecostal Christianity—the Caribbean’s fastest growing religious movement—in the context of urban poverty in the Dominican Republic. Based on extensive fieldwork in a barrio of Villa Altagracia, Negotiating Respect examines the everyday practices of Pentecostal community members and the complex ways in which they negotiate legitimacy, recognition, and spiritual authority within the context of religious pluralism and Catholic cultural supremacy. Probing the interconnections of gender, faith, and identity from an anthropological perspective, I consider in detail the lives of young male churchgoers and their struggles with conversion and life in the streets. I show that conversion offers both spiritual and practical social value because it provides a strategic avenue for prestige and an acceptable way to transcend personal history. An exploration of the church and its relationship to barrio institutions like youth gangs and Dominican vodú, further draws out the meaningful nuances of lived religion and provides new insights into the social organization of spiritual authority locally and the cultural significance of Pentecostal growth and popularity globally. By focusing on the cultural politics of belief and the role religious identity plays in poor urban communities, Negotiating Respect illuminates the social dynamics of Pentecostal culture in practice and offers a fresh perspective on religious pluralism and contemporary religious and cultural change. This introductory chapter contextualizes this theme within the study of religion in the Caribbean and situates the book’s theoretical and analytical concerns within the growing field of the anthropology of Christianity. A summary of each chapter is also provided.
A New Type of Feminity and Masculinity: Looking at Gender in the Evangelical World of La Pintana
Estudios Públicos translated into English by John Bell …, 2002
SONIA MONTECINO holds a degree in Anthroplogy from the University of Chile. She teaches in the Department of Anthropology and is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of Gender Studies in the Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Chile. * I should like to express my gratitude to all the people who made this work possible: to Arturo Fontaine for his sensitivity and openness to new themes in the universe of La Pintana: to Elizabeth Millavil and her family for the welcome I received in their house in El Castillo and for her valuable contacts: to Claudio Ramirez and Maria Ines Muñoz, for their patience, information and kindness in helping us to get to know their brothers and sisters: to Manuel Ossa for his generosity in sharing his knowledge: to the Mayor of La Pintana, Jaime Pavez, to Gaston Muñoz and to pastor Luis Martinez, of the same institution, we owe our access to information about the community, maps and lists of churches. To Alfredo Machuca for the dedication he has given to the transcripts and to the Evangelical brothers of La Pintana for opening the doors of their churches, their houses and their innermost thoughts to us. Finally to Alexander Obach and Marcela Soto, with whom we shared this work on site and a good part of our thoughts. Translated to English by John Bell In this article Sonia Montecino explores the relationships between men and women in the Evangelical world of the borough La Pintana in Santiago, pointing out the existence of important cultural changes in definitions and conduct associated with both females and males. According to her, the masculine world has changed, abandoning the marks that popular culture designated as marks of virility: football, alcohol, and violence. The same thing is happening with the women, who are widening their horizons, adding as marks of femininity, motherhood, and affiliation to a community and the dignity of womanhood itself. Nevertheless these changes do not necessarily Centro de Estudios Públicos. www.cepchile.cl 2 ESTUDIOS PÚBLICOS Centro de Estudios Públicos. www.cepchile.cl T imply a change in unequal gender relationships while a rise in neomachismo causes men to hold arbitrary and unlawful power. Women however, can use the rhetoric of equality, thanks to Biblical interpretations, to offset male domination. Evangelical men and women, influenced by "the world" through the media, adjust their relationships to models without reference to their backgrounds, which means undertaking a "journey" which is both complex and at times tense, and which will, of course, vary from generation to generation.
2015
SONIA MONTECINO holds a degree in Anthroplogy from the University of Chile. She teaches in the Department of Anthropology and is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of Gender Studies in the Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Chile. * I should like to express my gratitude to all the people who made this work possible: to Arturo Fontaine for his sensitivity and openness to new themes in the universe of La Pintana: to Elizabeth Millavil and her family for the welcome I received in their house in El Castillo and for her valuable contacts: to Claudio Ramirez and Maria Ines Muñoz, for their patience, information and kindness in helping us to get to know their brothers and sisters: to Manuel Ossa for his generosity in sharing his knowledge: to the Mayor of La Pintana, Jaime Pavez, to Gaston Muñoz and to pastor Luis Martinez, of the same institution, we owe our access to information about the community, maps and lists of churches. To Alfredo Machuca for the dedication he has given to the transcripts and to the Evangelical brothers of La Pintana for opening the doors of their churches, their houses and their innermost thoughts to us. Finally to Alexander Obach and Marcela Soto, with whom we shared this work on site and a good part of our thoughts. Translated to English by John Bell In this article Sonia Montecino explores the relationships between men and women in the Evangelical world of the borough La Pintana in Santiago, pointing out the existence of important cultural changes in definitions and conduct associated with both females and males. According to her, the masculine world has changed, abandoning the marks that popular culture designated as marks of virility: football, alcohol, and violence. The same thing is happening with the women, who are widening their horizons, adding as marks of femininity, motherhood, and affiliation to a community and the dignity of womanhood itself. Nevertheless these changes do not necessarily Centro de Estudios Públicos. www.cepchile.cl 2 ESTUDIOS PÚBLICOS Centro de Estudios Públicos. www.cepchile.cl T imply a change in unequal gender relationships while a rise in neomachismo causes men to hold arbitrary and unlawful power. Women however, can use the rhetoric of equality, thanks to Biblical interpretations, to offset male domination. Evangelical men and women, influenced by "the world" through the media, adjust their relationships to models without reference to their backgrounds, which means undertaking a "journey" which is both complex and at times tense, and which will, of course, vary from generation to generation.