Lecture | Research Seminar
Theopolitical Patchworks: Rule and Material Religion in Rio de Janeiro
- Date
- Monday 9 December 2024
- Time
- Series
- CADS Research Seminars
- Location
-
Pieter de la Court
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden - Room
- 0A28
Cities across the world display territorial struggles that in many cases involve violence and religious thought and practice. In Rio de Janeiro Brazil, the emergence of armed urban gangs that identify as evangelical/Pentecostal in a nation-state that was once considered the largest Roman Catholic nation of the world has produced moral outrage. Based on extensive fieldwork in the city, I critically reflect on the public condemnation that followed this rise. I show that extra-state rule and violence have been firmly entangled with urban religion for long, but evangelical mobilizations in the context of organized crime are regarded at odds with hegemonic religio-political constellations and therefore prone to be regarded as highly threatening. Nevertheless, such religio-political constellations have been transforming at different ends of the state/non-state spectrum in urban Brazil. Bolsonaro’s political base and legacy unites conservative Catholics and evangelicals in state-institutions such as the police and provide ample ground for exceptional state violence entangled with evangelical practices and aesthetics. To conceptualize these shifting constellations of rule and religion in Brazil, I propose the term ‘theopolitical patchworks.’ Patchwork signals the provisional character of order-making practices, and it highlights how the combination of apparently distinct elements can produce one relatively stable fabric. To call such patchworks ‘theopolitical’ signals my wish to keep in sight the seemingly contradictory vectors of evangelical mobilizations – promising liberation and a spiritual response to suffering while also fueling and legitimating extra-legal violence that seeks to establish order. Following recent writings on theopolitical anthropology, my description of theopolitical patchworks also highlights the material-cultural underpinnings of provisional urban orderings.
About the speaker
Martijn Oosterbaan holds the chair Anthropology of Religion and Security at Utrecht University. He is the PI of the ERC Consolidator research project: Sacralizing Security: Religion, Violence and Authority in Mega-Cities of the Global South (SACRASEC). His research focuses on urban and religious transformations in Brazil in relation to (in)security and the widespread use of mass media and popular culture (pop music, carnival, etc.). He has published on religion, the state, media, and security in Brazil and in Europe. He is the author of the monograph Transmitting the Spirit: Religious Conversion, Media and Urban Violence in Brazil (Penn State University Press). His recent publications include: ‘Rights and Stones: Pentecostal Autoconstruction and Citizenship in Rio de Janeiro.’ (Theopolitical police: BOPE, Christianity and popular culture in Rio de Janeiro’ with Carly Machado (Culture and Religion).