Weaving new webs: trajectories of the sacred

• Grant number: 97/12619-0
• Support type: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Duration: December 01, 1998 - May 31, 2004
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Lisias Nogueira Negrao
• Grantee: Lisias Nogueira Negrao
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Co-Principal Investigators: Claude Lepine ; Josildeth Gomes Consorte ; Maria Helena Villas Bôas Concone

Abstract

The project aims at investigating common people and specialists attitudes towards the sacred and their behavior within the Brazilian religious field. Although frequently reported these attitudes and behavior have not yet received adequate attention either from anthropologists or sociologists no specific studies existing on them. We are referring to religious practices which are seen as manifold or ambivalent from an institutional point of view but lived as legitimate and even necessary by people who engage in them. Quantitative analysis by taking into consideration only on among the diverse religious options in presence overlooks not only one of its most original characteristics on the religions field - duplicity - as the dynamics of trajectories and pathways taken by religions agents. These are precisely the kind of phenomena we intend to study. By approaching the religious field from a qualitative perspective our focus will be on individual religious actions rather than on institutional standards. Our working hyppothesis is that pervading all institutionalized religious (or at least the majority) a "minimal common denominator" made up of a nucleus of conceptions, beliefs and religious attitudes there exists rending possible not only the easy traffic among them but also that they be lived in a coexisting way. (AU)