Neste artigo, tentarei descrever "religião e mídia" como um campo de pesquisa em expansão, e também farei algumas propostas metodológicas sobre o que considero serem os caminhos mais promissores para futuras pesquisas nesta área. Dada esta ambição, deverei abordar este campo a partir de um nível de ampla generalização, baseando-me em muitos exemplos sem, no entanto, dar a nenhum deles a atenção detalhada que merecem. Ainda assim, espero conseguir captar as sensibilidades intelectuais que animam a pesquisa atual sobre religião e mídia, e que meu relato sirva de base para o diálogo entre os cientistas sociais engajados no estudo da religião, tanto no Brasil como internacionalmente.Os estudos sobre "religião e mídia" caracterizam-se sobretudo como um empreendimento interdisciplinar. Nos últimos 15 anos, as pesquisas em religião e mídia têm reunido estudiosos de diversas disciplinas -incluindo, mas não limitando-se a algumas delas, tais como a antropologia, a história da arte, as ciências da religião e a comunicação -visando comparar e discutir como o lugar ocupado pela "religião" vem passando por uma dramática reorganização em todo o mundo atualmente: uma reestruturação, que também demanda um novo pensamento sobre a própria categoria de religião 1 . Durante muito tempo, o estudo social da religião foi conduzido sob a égide conceitual da teoria da secularização. Motivados por avaliações concorrentes a respeito do impacto da industrialização, do colonialismo, do nascimento do nacionalismo,
ArtScroll-a major contemporary Orthodox Jewish publishing house based in Brooklyn, New York-offers a compelling case for studying the roie of materiality in religious print culture. This essay draws upon actor-network theory to examine the "material agency" of key ArtScroll publications, such as prayer books. Bibles, and cookbooks, showing how these artifacts play an active roie within various arenas of Jewish social life, from public prayer to domestic display to kitchen labor. By focusing on the role of book covers, binding materials, and graphic icons in the constitution of ArtScroN's material agency, this essay explores how these devices help to define patterns of ritual performance and consumer lifestyles and how they contribute to struggles over institutional identity and the politics of Jewish authenticity. By examining the actual processes of distribution of actions among people and their books, this analysis complicates the stereotypical image of Jews as a "people of the book" and challenges sweeping claims about Jewish text-centrism.
This article develops a theoretical framework for analysing the growing public prominence, and rising influence, of transnational religious movements on the contemporary world stage, with specific reference to the case of Agudat Israel, a prominent ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Jewish organization. It first considers the place of ‘religion’ within the context of the historical emergence of the world system of modern nation-states, addressing some of the conceptual ambiguities associated with the ideas of national vs transnational religious formations. The article then provides a historical sketch of the European Jewish encounter with modernity, focusing on the rise of transnational movements like Agudat Israel. Lastly, the article situates Jewish Orthodoxy within a comparative framework for the study of transnational religio-politics. The article concludes by asking whether transnational religious movements might be trapped within the instrumental logic of state governmentality they claim to oppose, and if so, with what consequences.
This introduction elaborates how the relationship between religion and light can and should be addressed as a key theme for the critical study of religion. It synthesizes the principal arguments of the 6 articles collected in this special journal issue and locates them in a broader theoretical framework, focussing especially on the politics of knowledge production.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.