The City and African-Brazilian Religions

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the relationships between ethnicity and religion, based on anthropological studies of religions in the urban context. I also discuss the transformations of these studies since the 1970s. Since I have myself contributed to this field of studies, my own experience as a researcher must be taken into account. I focus on the uses of the categories of ethnicity and religion during two distinct periods in the history of Brazilian anthropology. In each of these periods, I point out significant transformations in the way Brazilian researchers describe themselves and how they conceive the relationship between their research topics and the city. ResumoNeste artigo discuto as transformações no campo de estudo das religiões afrobrasileiras desde a década de setenta. Exploro os usos das categorias etnicidade e religião em dois momentos distintos da história da antropologia no Brasil. Em cada um desses momentos aponto transformações significativas no modo como pesquisadores brasileiros descrevem a si mesmos e como concebem a relação entre a cidade e os temas de suas pesquisas. Minha própria experiência, enquanto pesquisadora, foi incorporada nessas reflexões. Palavras-chave: Etnicidade e Religião; Antropologia das PopulaçõesAfrobrasileiras; Religião e Cidade; Etnografia e Religião; Pesquisadores e Religiões AfrobrasileirasMoments of crisis in people's religious and personal lives allow them to change religion. In this sense, insofar as this access to the sacred takes place in the universe of a large modern metropolis, Rio de Janeiro, these practices tend to assume, beyond their ritual form, the aspect of a 'spectacle,' in order to meet the demands of the clientele living in this heavily populated city.Translated from the Portuguese by Colin Michael Foulkes and revised by