[ecrea] New book: Transmitting the Spirit

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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