Paul Amar is Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of
Terreiro Politics and Afro-religious Mobilizations / Política do Terreiro e Mobilizações Afro-religiosas: Practices of Black Resistance against Christian Supremacism and Religious Racism
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Published:October 2024
Rosiane Rodrigues de Almeida, Leonardo Vieira Silva, 2024. "Terreiro Politics and Afro-religious Mobilizations / Política do Terreiro e Mobilizações Afro-religiosas: Practices of Black Resistance against Christian Supremacism and Religious Racism", Rio as Method: Collective Resistance for a New Generation, Paul Amar, Editor
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In August 2018, scant media attention was given to the dozens of Afro-religious community members, representing a variety of Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, who occupied the municipal legislative chamber in Rio de Janeiro. They did so to defend animal sacrifice, which is sanctioned in their religions and represents a key spiritual and collective ritual. The Supreme Court was at the time considering the constitutionality of such practices. This chapter highlights the complexity and diversity of Black practice emerging in the 1990s among Afro-religious peoples in Brazil, in traditional terreiro communities. Seen through an ethnographic approach, the political performance of Afro-religious people has given rise to a contemporary model of activism based on sociocultural diversity of religious practices. Such a scenario enabled a reconfiguration of the global fight against racism, not aligning entirely with other Black Brazilian movements but remaining in dialogue, more generally, with Black movements in North America.
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