The good faith: the presence of spirituality in Brazilian's publishing market

• Grant number: 19/12982-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Ferreira Toniol
• Grantee: Isabela Mayumi Hirata da Silva
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/05193-5 - Institutionalized spirituality: public policies, clinical uses and medical research in the legitimation of spirituality as a health issue in Brazil, AP.JP

Abstract

This research project seeks to analyze the increasing amount of scientific divulgation texts about the positive relationships between spirituality and health. At least since the 1980s, a series of Brazilian magazines and newspapers have amplified the repercussion of this subject, reflected in North American publications which were result of a growing wave of studies concerned about the neurophysiological bases of ecstasy and other phenomena characteristic of religious universe. Thus, the main contribution of this research is to shift the empirical focus of legitimizing the benefits of spirituality towards health beyond medical clinics, medical-scientific research and public policies directed to health, given that the phenomenon discussed here is out of that scope, as it's built specially for what we can call "lay public". Although such displacement, the publication of those research can also be understood as a way to legitimate the spirituality, but addressing its communication to the lay public. (AU)