Call for Papers: The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions
We are calling for papers for an edited collection to be published by Brill focusing on the global spread of religions originating in Brazil. A centre of religious innovation and production, Brazil exports not only dynamic indigenized forms of Pentecostalism and Charismatic Catholicism, but also African-based religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda, as well as diverse expressions of New Age Spiritism and Ayahuasca-centered neo-shamanism like Vale do Amanhecer and Santo Daime.
We welcome papers on religions that have spread through the migration of Brazilians abroad, through the explicit missionary activities of Brazilian religious entrepreneurs, and as a result of spiritual tourism, as foreign visitors come to an imagined Brazil to find their roots (for those of African descent), enlightenment, or a sense of belonging. Papers should be 7,500 to 8,000 words in length. We are particularly interested in ethnographically-informed essays, which analyze the social, cultural, economic, and political conditions that have made possible the construction, circulation, and consumption of Brazilian religious identities, worldviews, and lifestyles. Among the over-arching themes that may be explored are religious hybridization; multi-directional transnational networks; the glocalizing power of mass media and computer-mediated communications; the consumption of exotic alterity; primitivism and the nostalgia for purity, authenticity, and autochthony; the linkages between tourism, popular culture, and religious practices such as pilgrimage, healing and self-improvement; and the tension among local, national, and transnational sacred geographies.
If you would like to be considered as a potential contributor for The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions please send a 300-word chapter outline detailing title, content and structure as an email attachment to Manuel Vasquez (manuelv@ufl.edu) or Cristina Rocha (c.rocha@uws.edu.au). Outlines should be submitted by October 30th, 2009.