Paper short abstract:

A comparative study of personhood, religion and family among urban middle classes in Brazil, both in a circle of upper and highly cultivated social status (regarding transgenerational ties) and in a medical context of palliative care (regarding the propitiation of a good death).

Paper long abstract:

Urban middle classes in contemporary Western societies are considered as the main bearers of the individualistic ideology that is so intrinsic to modern cosmology. Under closer scrutiny it is possible to discern a much more complex organization of personhood, one that far exceeds the limits of the biopsychological units privileged by hegemonic knowledge systems. One line of ethnographic experience deals with the lived sense of family ties and kinship belonging, both in a synchronic and a diachronic dimension, involved in a quasi-religious aura. The other deals with the mingled experience of family belonging and religious encompassment in a medical setting. In the first case we rely on observation and interviews (life histories) with some members of upper middle classes in Rio de Janeiro concerning their relations with kin and with their family tradition and memories. In the second case we deal with observation and interviews with health personnel in the context of palliative medical institutions, dedicated to the propitiation of a good death for terminal patients. In both cases, prevails a deep and complex enmeshing of family and religion. Our interest is to discuss the general question of the conceptions of the self beyond individualistic models, to contribute to the understanding of the processes and characteristics of the extended personhood in 'modern' conditions, to explore the different circumstances in which these dimensions tend to become more explicit, as phenomenological limits and counterparts to the process of disenchantment that has characterized Western societies since, at least, the 17th century.