Archive for 2017

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[ecrea] New book: Transmitting the Spirit

Tue Aug 22 16:52:05 GMT 2017





My first solo-authored book recently came out with Penn State Press: Transmitting the Spirit: Religious Conversion, Media, and Urban Violence in Brazil. In the book I describe the relation between media and religious conversion in the midst of favela life, going beyond media-effect models that are present in both evangelical discourse and in scholarship. Analysis of religious conversion, I argue, should include non-religious media such as telenovelas and worldly music that are part of the communicative ecology of favela life. Over the years I have benefitted much from the medianthro discussions and hope they may continue for a long time. I have attached a discount form that offers a 30% discount for anyone that might be interested in the book.

From the publisher:
Pentecostalism is one of the most rapidly expanding religious-cultural forms in the world. Its rise in popularity is often attributed to its successfully incorporating native cosmologies in new religious frameworks. This volume probes for more complex explanations to this phenomenon in the favelas of Brazil, once one of the most Catholic nations in the world.

Based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and drawing from religious studies, anthropology of religion, and media theory, Transmitting the Spirit argues that the Pentecostal movement’s growth is due directly to its ability to connect politics, entertainment, and religion. Examining religious and secular media—music and magazines, political ads and telenovelas—Martijn Oosterbaan shows how Pentecostal leaders progressively appropriate and recategorize cultural forms according to the religion’s cosmologies. His analysis of the interrelationship among evangélicos distributing doctrine, devotees’ reception and interpretation of nonreligious messaging, perceptions of the self and others by favela dwellers, and the slums of urban Brazil as an entity reveals Pentecostalism’s remarkable capacity to engage with the media influences that shape daily life in economically vulnerable urban areas.

An eye-opening look at Pentecostalism, media, society, and culture in the turbulent favelas of Brazil, this book sheds new light on both the evolving role of religion in Latin America and the proliferation of religious ideas and practices in the postmodern world.

You can find Transmitting the Spirit on the Penn State University Press web site at this URL: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-07843-4.html

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