The relationship between times of crisis (natural disasters, pandemics) and religious behaviour has been the subject of long debate. Theoretical models of religious coping propose that adversity caused by adverse and unexpected events instigates people to use religion more intensively. This research explores this hypothesis, comparing the effects of religious practices among people who declare themselves Catholics in the Department of Nariño, Colombia, during the coronavirus pandemic. I found that gender, the type of religious practices and the frequency of pre-pandemic participation are significant predictors of religious intensification. These findings, as well as the description of the ideas and reactions that the people of Nariño have about COVID-19, contribute to a more nuanced understanding of religious behaviours and the significant implications for the future of Catholicism in this region.
El desplazamiento forzado interno en Colombia es un fenómeno complejo y dramático debido a las dimensiones que ha adquirido, la heterogeneidad de las personas afectadas, sus múltiples causas y perpetradores, la persistencia de los procesos de expulsión, el alto nivel de impunidad y la respuesta insuficiente del Estado. El presente artículo centra su atención en los desplazados como población vulnerada y vulnerable que “espera” la intervención del Estado. De la expectación nace una relación desequilibrada entre el Estado y la población desplazada de tipo acreedor/usuario, donde la espera opera como fuente de sufrimiento social y es una forma de dominación por parte del organismo estatal sobre los desplazados. El análisis de algunos rasgos de la espera y sus implicaciones en la vida de la población desplazada muestran el desarrollo de un proceso en el que las condiciones y circunstancias objetivas de la tragedia vivida se convierten en una sujeción subjetiva. Esto conlleva a la despolitización del desplazamiento forzado interno y a que las víctimas sean rebajadas a actores pasivos que deben aguardar pacientemente la ayuda del Estado para obtener soluciones a su condición de vulnerabilidad.
Con base en un estudio etnográfico realizado en la página de Facebook de un santuario católico en Colombia, este artículo analiza la transmisión virtual de un ritual y la participación de los creyentes en él como una respuesta sociocultural a la pandemia del coronavirus. Desde la perspectiva de los estudios de religión digital, reflexiono sobre cómo estas plataformas pueden moldear las creencias y prácticas de los usuarios y cómo ellos las renegocian.
Internal forced displacement is a current social problem in Colombia. Although this phenomenon has been studied extensively, the purpose of this article is to analyse the administration of this crisis under the grille interprétative of humanitarian government during the presidential term of Juan Manuel Santos (2010–18). My argument is that humanitarian government functions as a biopolitical assembly that amalgamates two elements: resilience – a fundamental element of psychosocial attention to the displaced – and the language of compassion used publicly by President Santos. Finally, I will try to underline that this logic operates as a condition of possibility to normalise this phenomenon and hide the functioning of the violence that unequally distributes the compassion between lives considered valuable and those whose lives and problems simply appear to be not valuable at all.
In this article, I analyze the conversion retreats of the John XXIII Movement in Ipiales, Colombia in order to understand the swift spread of new Catholic groups in Latin America. Based on a qualitative research, I examined through twenty semi-structured interviews the definitions, narratives and meanings that some members and leaders of this movement attribute to their confessions and public testimonies of conversion. Instead of distinguishing John XXIII spiritual retreats and conversion testimonies as forms of domination, I propose the concept of pedagogies of conversion, in other words, a set of practices that seek to morally educate believers and that create a double economy of freedom and constraint. Finally, I drawn on various stories to show how moral agency relates to the intensity of these practices and to the past religious experiences of believers.
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