"You hit the drum there, I hit the drum here": Umbanda meeting places and their social conjunctures

Abstract

The african-Brazilian religions arose when thousands of Africans were brought from Africa to Brazil in order to have their workforces and themselves become commodities. This article presents as a field of problematization the interfaces between the religions of terreiros and the social, economic and political context in which they are inserted. As a working method, we use Institutional Analysis "on paper". The participants were three leaders of terreiros (Umbanda meeting places) and the respective practitioners/consultants of the religious spaces that they led. In the urban scenario, we can affirm that situations of violence are present in the daily life of the faithful of such religions. These people have occupied areas historically deprived of access to health, education, assistance, security, housing, high quality public transport and urban infrastructure. These cases operate at the level of the instituted, often producing consequences in the subjectivities of the faithful and consultants of these religions.