Rural world and sanctoral catholicism in the Participatory Research of Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

Abstract

This article seeks to cover some central aspects of the participatory research developed by Carlos Rodrigues Brandão with rural communities in the interior of the states of Goiás, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. It is a question of relating his biography to some field research on the celebrations of popular Catholicism and the relations of life and work in the rural world. From an interdisciplinary epistemological perspective, between geography, anthropology, and religious sciences, it seeks to apprehend how the relationship between society and nature and its times and spaces changed with the process of urbanization and industrialization that intensified from the 1960s in the country and unfolded until the current molds. Brandão's intellectual trajectory begins currently and involves field research on the mythical-ritual practices of Catholicism, such as the Folias de Reis and the festivals in honor of saints of devotion to blacks. During this period, Brandão was also involved with social movements focused on the causes of the oppressed and with popular education initiatives – always privileging subjects from the countryside, whose relationship with the place and the land escapes the Western-centric imposing logic, with its binomial competence-competition, and presents a peculiar rustic resistance whose festive rituals are based on the logic of reciprocity, from both sides. To measure this discussion, a literature review was conducted.