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A politics of respect: Reconfiguring democracy in Afro‐Brazilian religious activism in Salvador, Brazil
Author(s) -
HARTIKAINEN ELINA I.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12601
Subject(s) - democracy , politics , deliberation , sociology , citizenship , hierarchy , secularism , gender studies , political science , law
Alternative politics of democracy shape and are shaped by dominant forms of democracy in circular fashion. In 2009 practitioners of Brazil's many Afro‐Brazilian religions gathered in Salvador to develop a religiously grounded mode of democratic politics. Mobilizing a religious formulation of respect, participants in the gathering subsumed government ideals of democratic practice under Afro‐Brazilian religious norms of hierarchy and the social order that they presupposed. These efforts were predicated on an artful combining and adapting of democratic and religious discourses and interactional practices. The Afro‐Brazilian religious politics of democracy that was articulated by this political project did not only reflect religious valorizations of hierarchy but it also established a new foundation for democratic politics in Brazil. [ alternative democracy , active citizenship , deliberation , religious activism , respect , Afro‐Brazilian religions , Brazil ]