From the family pluriverse to the small worlds of community life in Costa Rica: Towards a policy for the management of belief?

Abstract

This article examines the results of two qualitative research studies undertaken in Costa Rica on transformations linked to the experience of belief and gender in family and community environments featuring religious diversity. Actions and discourses are identified as forms of belief management that are tributary to non-hegemonic values, which are transferable from the private to the public sphere. In making a critical reading of the local context, the analysis is inscribed in the decolonial turn in Latin America (Quijano, 1992; Castro Gómez and Grosfoguel, 2007; Fornet-Betancourt, 2009; Walsh, 2010; Escobar, 2012). The construction of social agency is seen to arise from the colonial wound and the questioning of family and community universality in interreligious coexistence. The conceptual approach taken up is presented, discussion is made of the characteristics of interreligious coexistence in mixed families and of the particularities of the minority religious groups studied, and analysis is made in the conclusions of the decolonizing transformations of their narratives.