Brazilian contemporary religiosity: market, media, virtuality and reflexivity

Abstract

For the past ten years, the author has been investigating the new forms of religiousness (followers of the main branches of buddhism as Osho, Hare Krishna and Santo Daime). This is one of the most instigating phenomenom in the religious culture in Brazil, eventhough it is still an insignificant figure in a predominantly catholic country, where we have been witnessing, in the las decades, a rapi expression of the neopentecostalist churches. The other phenomenom that continues to attract a high level of attention among the researches specialized in the analysis of the religioun. Thence, the focus of the neopentecostalist churches fighting to gain legitimation through a strong use of modern methods of marketing and mass-communication, the public sphere. This analysis intended to be more a reflection, is concluded by the comparison of both: the neopentecostalist churches, who are striving for social inclusion, and those who are searching for new religious paths, in an affort to escape from modernized globalization.