Keywords
conversion
social situation
regional society
modernity
Abstract
For Christian socio-religious actors, practices of rupture are related to a constant breaking with the past, a way of constructing discontinuity with their previous social relationships and behaviors that interrupt their search for an authentic conversion. However, when the rupture is practiced in social life, they face the difficulty of realizing the ideals of sharp change with the past, because the context of regional society is anchored in structural continuity. The above makes it prone to the emergence of contradictions, doubts and moral failures that cross and complement the convictions due to the rupture, demanding a temporary process of continuous realignment. It analyzes how the actors narrate and practice religious rupture in social life (ordinary/everyday/lived) and the local context where they develop, with the aim of drawing scales to think about processes of sociocultural change at a structural level, where the rupture arises. religious and other cultural strategies of modernity coexist simultaneously in Colotlán, Jalisco. The method used was processual ethnography and analysis of social situations, recovering three trajectories of conversion to different types of Christianity, which emphasize their conviction for rupture as a process of change. The techniques used were observation-participation, notes and ethnographic diary. The above was completed with a review of current debates in the field of the anthropology of Christianity. Using the ethnographic data, three situations of continuous realignment of Christian rupture were proposed: a) recursive; b) oscillating; c) continue. This type of temporary ruptures respond to the local conditions of the regional society that is going through processes of cultural fragmentation. The conclusion is that rupture operates as a process of change through continuous temporal realignment and takes shape in a social context that conditions the ideals of discontinuity.
References
Ammerman, N.T. (2021). Studying Lived Religion. Contexts and Practices. New York University Press.
Appadurai, A. (2001). La modernidad desbordada. Dimensiones Culturales de la Globalización. FCE.
Austin-Broos, D. (2003). The Anthropology of Conversion: An Introduction. En A. Buckser & S. D. Glazier, The Anthropology of Religious Conversion. (pp. 1-12). Roman & Littlefield Publishers.
Coleman, S. (2003). Continuos Conversion? The Rhetoric, Practice, and Rhetorical Practice of Charismatic Protestant Conversion. En A. Buckser & S. D. Glazier, The Anthropology of Religious Conversion. (pp. 15-27). Roman & Littlefield Publishers.
Daswani, G. (2015). Looking Back, Moving Forward: Transformation and Ethical Practice in the Ghanaian Church of Pentecost. University of Toronto Press.
Engelke, M. (2005). Discontinuity and The Discourse of Conversion. Journal of Religion in African, 34, pp. 82-109.
Engelke, M. (2010). Past Pentecostalism: Notes on Rupture, Realignment, and Everyday life in Pentecostal and Afrincan Independent Churches, Africa. 80(2), pp.177-199. DOI: 10.3366/afr.2010.0201.
Englund, H. (2018). From the Extended-Case Method to Multi-Sited Ethnography (and back). En M. Candea (Ed.), Styles of Anthropological Theory. (pp. 121-133). Routledge.
Evens, T.M.S. & Handelman, D. (2006). Introduction: The Ethnographic Praxis of the Theory of Practice. En T.M.S. Evens & D. Handelman (Eds.), The Manchester School. Practice and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology (pp. 1-12). Berghahn Books.
Friedman, J. (2001). Identidad Cultural y Proceso Global. Amorrortu/Editores.
Gluckman, M. (2006). Ethnographic Data in British Social Anthropology. En T.M.S. Evens & D. Handelman (Eds.), The Manchester School. Practice and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology (pp. 13-22). Berghahn Books.
Hefner, R. W. (2018). Conversion. En H. Callan (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (pp. 1-7). John Wiley & Sons.
Holbraad, M., Kapferer, B. & Sauma, J. F. (2019). Ruptures. Anthropologies of Discontinuity in Times of Turmoil. UCL PRESS.
Kapferer, B. (2015). Introduction: In the Event-Toward an Anthropology of Generic Moments. En L. Meinert & B. Kapferer (Eds.), In the Event. Toward an Anthropology of Generic Moments (pp. 1-28). Berghahn Books.
Kloos, D. & Beekers, D. (2018). Introduction: The Productive Potential of Moral Failure in Lived Islam and Christianity. En D. Beekers & D. Kloos (Eds.) (2018), Strayng From the Straight Path. How Senses of Failure Invigorate Lived Religion (pp. 1-20). Berghahn Books.
Lomnitz, C. (1995). Las Salidas del Laberinto. Cultura e Ideologia en el Espacio Nacional Mexicano. Joaquin Mortiz/Planeta.
McDougall, D. (2020). Beyond rupture: Christian culture in the Pacific. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 31(2). 203–209. doi:10.1111/taja.12364
Meyer, B. (1993). ´Make a Complete Break With the Past´. Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse. Journal of Religión in African, 28, pp. 316-349.
Moore, S. F. (1987). Explaining the Present: Theoretical Dilemmas in Processual Ethnography. American Ethnologist, 14(4). 727-736
Morello, G. (2021). Lived Religion in Latin America. An Enchanted Modernity. Oxford.
Pelkmans, M. (2009). Temporary Conversions: Encounters with Pentecostalism in Muslim Kyrgysztan. En Pelkmans, M. (Ed.) (2009), Conversion After Socialism : Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union (pp. 13-162). Oxford.
Robbins, J. (2007). Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture: Belief, Time, and the Anthropology of Christianity. Current Anthropology 48(1). 5-38.
Robbins, J. (2014). The Anthropology of Christianity: Unity, Diversity, New Directions: An Introduction to Supplement 10. Current Anthropology 55(10) 157-171.
Robbins, J. (2017). Can There Be Conversion Without Cultural Change?. Mission Studies 34. 29-52.
Schielke, S. & L. Debevec (2012). Intoduction. En S. Schielke & L. Debevec (Eds.) (2009), Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes. An Anthropology of Everyday Religion (pp. 1-16). Berghahn Brooks.
Strhan, A. (2012). Discipleship and Desire. Conservative Evangelicals, Coherence and the Moral Lives of the Metropolis. [Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Kent, 2012].
Trémon, A.C. (2012). Que faire du couple local/global? Pour une anthropologie pleinement processuelle. Anthropologie Sociale 20(3), 250-266. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.2012.00205.x
Van Velsen, J. (1979). The Extended-Case Method and Situational Analysis. En A. L. Epstein (Ed.) (1979) The Craft of Social Anthropology (pp-129-149). Pergamon Press.