Paper short abstract:

The aim of my paper is to analyze the relation between the Pentecostal understanding of kinship and the reconfiguration of social, political and economic network in some favelas of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The work explores this relationship through the lens of subjectivity and violence.

Paper long abstract:

The present speech illustrates how the Pentecostal understanding of kinship helps us to reflect upon the ways in which subjects experience everyday crisis and disorders in a context of endless violence and insecurity. The presentation is based on my two-years ethnographic research carried out in some favelas of the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) between 2013 and 2014.

The paper analyzes how discourses on kinship and family produced by the emergent Pentecostal Brazilian Churches influence the way in which people try to create new senses to their own lives. Through the narration of some stories of conversion, the paper explores when and how these discourses are practiced and enable new kind of social, political and economic networks and conflicts.

The believers of each Pentecostal Church, by calling themselves as brothers and sisters and spending almost all their free time together, create a new model of "sacred family" and draw new meanings to reformulate almost all their relationships. Social and domestic networks which are often made vulnerable and changeable by a continuum of violence and social suffering.

The aim of the paper is thus to explore how the Pentecostal discourse on kinship is used by subjects to struggle, even if temporary, with the possibilities and the risks of the everyday life.

Finally, the presentation aspires to dialogue with the anthropological literature focused on subjectivity as framing-device for exploring the most intimate form of everyday life in relation to political and social processes.