Alternative Modernities

Statecraft and Religious Imagination in the Valley of the Dawn

Bibliographic Data

ID2467997
AuthorsJames Holston (0000-0001-6712-3767, University of California San Diego, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume26
Issue3
Pages605-631
Publication date1999-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1999.26.3.605
OpenAlexW2010133569
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited15

Many new religions promote the emblems and institutions of modern nation-states. In this article, I consider an example from Brazil, analyzing the mimetic relations between its modernist capital, Brasilia, and a millenarian and ecstatic religion called the Valley of the Dawn located on the city's outskirts. I focus on the project of salvation that each sponsors and on a religious ritual that stages a judicial event associated with the state. Arguing against compensatory explanations, I suggest that both state and religion are performances, mutually critical, of the same paradigm of modernity. [Brazil, modernity, millenarian religion, spirit possession, ritual, nation-state, bureaucracy, law

Authoritarianism · Bureaucracy · Democracy · Demonology · Millenarianism · Modernity · Mysticism · Political science · Politics · Possession (linguistics · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society in Latin America · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies