Crossroads of interpretation: care and meaning in Umbanda

• Grant number: 13/26071-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: July 01, 2014
• End date: June 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: José Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrão
• Grantee: Alice Costa Macêdo
• Supervisor: Véronique Boyer
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/17036-5 - Crossroads of interpretation in Umbanda, BP.DR

Abstract

Umbanda is characterized as a possession cult, whose members, in a trance, incorporate spirits in public ceremonies, to work in service of his faithful and consultants. The objective of this project is to investigate and describe the processes of interpretation in Umbanda ethnopsychological perspective, that is to search through his native ethnotheories in contrast with academic concepts. This is a case study, in a longitudinal overview, based on the method of listening participant, understood as the extension of the psychoanalytic method to field research, using ethnographic techniques. The research will be developed in the "Tenda de Umbanda Oxalá e Yemanjá", where the queries issued by the "pai de santo" in a trance will be accompanied by full records in a field diary. For this, the researcher was admitted to the place of "Cambona do pai-de-santo" , as an auxiliary of the ceremony. The interpretation's Lacanian theory assumes a heuristic value in this research, by enabling the formulation of working hypotheses as guidelines that allow the researcher to seek understanding of the interpretive processes in Umbanda. (AU)