Martino, G (2017). The Study of Indian Religions in Latin America. En International Journal of Latin American Religions, Springer, vol. 1. (original) (raw)

The State of the Arts of the Study of Indigenous Religions in South America.pdf

This article reviews the principal tendencies in the contemporary studies of indigenous South American religious traditions. It divides the field into studies of socioreligious formations (particularistic and universalistic formations, more specifically) and studies of cosmologies or worldviews (so-called perspectivism). It then discusses two recent, pioneering biographies of South American shamans which, more than any other in the field, offer original approaches to understanding shamanic historical consciousness, cosmopolitics, the constant struggles of shamanic spirits to sustain the cosmos against sorcery spirits that threaten to undermine the cosmic order.

How to Study Religion? Notes on Research Methodology in the Context of Latin American Religions

International Journal of Latin American Religions

The aim of this paper is to discuss on the main methodological procedures used in Anthropology and Sociology and applied in studies of Latin American religions, particularly in the context of diasporic Brazilian Protestantism-Pentecostalism. After introduce the two principal categories (quantitative and qualitative) – which include various types of procedures, such as the case study, interdisciplinary, historical, comparative and cross-cultural—and based on ethnographic experiences of the author in America, Europe and Asia, examine the world scale and ‘glocal’ multi-situated ethnography and the traditional localized participant-observation, including the ‘outsider-insider dichotomy’ and Asia, the article examines. However, today, with new digital technologies and the broad cultural and religious manifestations in the Internet, the researcher can complement the search for information (ethnographic data)—and accompany of the daily life of the group, of the community under study—using ...

Religious Studies in Latin America

This article critically reviews recent contributions to religious research in Latin America. Social scientists have long considered religion to be a struc-turing feature of culture and local society. Owing to the centrality of Catholicism in Latin America, early studies privileged the political influences of the Catholic Church with respect to the state and society at large. The " other-ness " of native folk religions received less attention, with scholars undervalu-ing the presence of indigenous and African religiosities. In Latin America, religions are currently experiencing a diversification and reconfiguration, owing in part to the growing influence of different Christian denominations , particularly Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Religious change is also occurring at the margins of institutional churches through New Age, neo-pagan, neo-Indian, neo-esoteric, and self-styled religiosities, as well as through popular religious syncretisms, indicating new experiments with what is considered sacred. This dynamism poses theoretical and conceptual challenges to scholars analyzing religious diversity and the renewed role that religions play in contemporary societies with respect to secularization, syn-cretism, and hybridization as well as the emergence of alternative identities (gender, sexual, ideological and political).

Indigenous South American Methodologies in the Study of Religious Traditions

The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Indigenous Religions. , 2024

This paper is a chapter in a volume organized by Graham Harvey, Sun Kim & Afe Adogame on Indigenous Methodologies in the Study of Indigenous Religious Traditions. My discussion is divided in two parts: the first explores indigenous scholarly, literary and artistic production over the past 40 years in South America, especially Amazonia. The second part reviews the written production from the fields of Anthropology, History, Religious Studies, and Literature from Amazonia and other areas of South America.

Culture and religion in Latin America

2006

O UR RAINBOW OF FAITH CONFRONTS global factors that tend to be totalitarian. Often we are being told to believe in one way and not in another. However, in Latin America there are many forms of Christianity, manifested in so-called people's religion and spirituality. Inculturation (often understood as a new concern in the Church of today) has been carried out throughout the centuries, by mestizo,1 Afro-American, and indigenous peoples. All of this is significant for churches in other regions of the world, since a deep human desire is to be persons Of faith, within different cultural paths, and in a common praise for the gift of life. We would wish these links be not an unbalanced relationship between North and South, West and East, but rather a co-responsible search for a new humanity that loves this earth and longs for heaven. This aim needs to motivate the communication between us, so that we appreciate our differences and can build an authentic global reality. In this process,...

Editorial Introduction to “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

Rupkatha Journal in collaboration with Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile and Doon University, India has published this special issue on the theme “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”. The volume is edited by faculty from Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile and Doon University, India along with a team of experts from the Rupkatha Journal. This special volume titled “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India” intends to shed light on the trans-axial South-South history that implicates academic, cultural, intellectual, commercial and political exchanges between India, Spain, Portugal and Latin America. This special issue is an attempt to fill in the existing void in the academic literature on the theme, by exploring the bonds between the two cultures, so distant from each other and yet continuing to contribute towards the process of mutual understanding of their respective societies and thus reinforcing socio-political and cultural relations between these two regions. We pro...

From Sociology of Latin American Religions to a Latin American Sociology of Religion

The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Latin America, 2020

Recent decades have seen important developments in Latin American writings in the sociology of religion field. Not only has there been exponential growth in the number of publications on religious phenomena in the region, but the field itself has also shifted from sociology about Latin American religion to a Latin American sociology of religion. This field takes contemporary Latin American forms of religiosity as an empirical referent, then goes even further to propose interpretive frameworks and new methodologies that contribute to the understanding of religious phenomena at a global level. This chapter introduces four prominent Latin American sociologists of religion: Roberto Blancarte’s work on laicity; the critical analysis of Cristián Parker on popular religions within multiple modernities; Hugo José Suárez’s conceptualization of “para-ecclesiastical agents,” a key concept for understanding religious collective practice in Latin America; and Eloisa Martin’s proposal of the heuristic potential of analyzing practices of sacralization for understanding popular religion in Latin America.