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Whatsapp como campo de batalha: reflexões ético-metodológicas a partir de uma etnografia em grupos de oração evangélicos

2024; UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.11606/issn.2525-3123.gis.2024.216670

2525-3123

Lorena Mochel,

Urban and sociocultural dynamics

How can anthropological research help to understand the effects of the centrality of the use of digital media in everyday religious life? Distancing myself from apparent and erroneous oppositions between traditional and modern that questions like this often raise, I investigated ways in which the use of smartphones is configured as “battlefields” for praying, preaching, telling testimonies, establishing intimacy with God and overcoming demons. . Through ethnography in “prayer groups” composed of evangelical women, I reflect in this article on my positionality in fieldwork carried out in co-presence circuits that included churches, homes and two WhatsApp groups leaded by a couple of Pentecostal pastors. By exploring the ambivalent meanings in the religious uses of cell phones, I point to intersectional dynamics that make WhatsApp a central religious device for non-institutionalized pastoral careers and the collective exercise of evangelical faith.