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Alternative Modernities: Statecraft and Religious Imagination in the Valley of the Dawn
Author(s) -
Holston James
Publication year - 1999
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 - 10.1525/ae.1999.26.3.605
Subject(s) - millenarianism , modernity , possession (linguistics) , state (computer science) , bureaucracy , sociology , mysticism , authoritarianism , demonology , religious studies , history , law , anthropology , philosophy , political science , politics , democracy , linguistics , algorithm , computer science
Many new religions promote the emblems and institutions of modern nation‐states. In this article, I consider an example from Brazil, analyzing the mimetic relations between its modernist capital, Brasilia, and a millenarian and ecstatic religion called the Valley of the Dawn located on the city's outskirts. I focus on the project of salvation that each sponsors and on a religious ritual that stages a judicial event associated with the state. Arguing against compensatory explanations, I suggest that both state and religion are performances, mutually critical, of the same paradigm of modernity. [Brazil, modernity, millenarian religion, spirit possession, ritual, nation‐state, bureaucracy, law]