When the dead call - Kinship, Religion and Immigration seen in the practices of the Yuta in Brazil

• Grant number: 13/08160-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2013
• End date: June 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Igor José de Renó Machado
• Grantee: Victor Hugo Martins Kebbe da Silva
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Ellen Schattschneider has made a relevant discussion regarding Japanese kinship and religiousness in Social Anthropology, presenting an intricate relationship between kinship, religiousness, transmigration and cosmology in which kinship is responsible for the contact between the world of the living and the world of the dead in Tohoku, Japan. Similarly, we can see that the Okinawan shamanism performed by the yuta - mediums that act in Okinawa, Japan and Brazil- operates within a similar logic by uniting two distinct planes, the dead having an essential and active role in the life of the living. In their practice, the yuta introduce, signify and resignify the perceptions of Okinawan kinship that connects the living to their ancestors, with the possibility of the dead influencing on their kin: disrespectful practice or failure to worship the ancestors results in structural issues in the family, including families of Okinawan descendants in the city of Sao Paulo that have detached from the Okinawan "culture" and "tradition" long ago. This study seeks to study the Yuta practice among the families of Okinawan descendants in that Brazilian city aiming to comprehend the ways in which kinship is conceived and resignified within this complex relationship between Japanese immigration, kinship and religiousness.