After all, espiritism is religion?: the espiritist doctrine in the formation of the brazilian religious diversity

Author(s)

Celia da Graça Arribas

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2008-09-12

Examining board members

Antonio Flavio de Oliveira Pierucci; Bernardo Lewgoy; Jose Reginaldo Prandi

• Advisor: Antonio Flavio de Oliveira Pierucci

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the formation of the pluralism in Brazilian religious field. Its empirical object is the development process of part of the intellectual production on Religion during the last decades of the 19th century. A sociological examination of the emergency of the religious Spiritism was made in order to explain, through its own logic, the constitution process of a competitive goods salvation market. This research shows that this market is characterized by the loss of the religious monopoly from the Catholic Church and by the rising of the institutional legitimacy from other religions. By relating the Weberian idea of rationalization of the value spheres in this case, the religious one to the concepts of religious work and division of the religious work from Pierre Bourdieu, this research proposes an analysis of the struggles among the groups of agents whose material and symbolic interests have made the religious field become a field of operation for the struggles between different salvation companies (AU)