The Opus Dei in Brazil

• Grant number: 14/06482-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2014
• End date: June 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Ronaldo Romulo Machado de Almeida
• Grantee: Asher Grochowalski Brum Pereira
• Supervisor: Saba Mahmood
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/10264-2 - Opus Dei in Brazil: work and social practices in the public space, BP.DR

Abstract

This research proposal is an update of my initial project about Opus Dei in Brazil. My intention is to develop the problems and issues raised here at the University of California in Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Saba Mahmood, during a 11 months research exchange. The initial project aimed to investigate the empirical articulations by the Opus Dei's actors of the category work. In this research proposal, I propound two objectives. The first is studying the conceptualizations that these actors do around the discursive categories work, religious and secular. The second is crossing the empirical articulations of the category work with gender constructions and practices regarding sexuality. Therefore, my starting point is two related hypotheses. The first is that the native understandings about religion and secular are connected empirically by the category work. The second is that this linkage is empirically operationalized based on constructions of gender and sexuality, thus the work of men is different from the work of women. Indeed, I intend to develop these issues based on data already collected through my field research at the Centro Cultural Pinheiros in São Paulo. (AU)