O pensamento coletivo hare krishna e seus modos de institucionalizaçao: um estudo sobre comunidades globalizadas e identidades locais

Identifier:  TDX:1336

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX1336

Authors:  Da Silva Adami, Vitor Hugo

Abstract:
This study aims to discuss the types and degree of institutionalization as a religious tradition, in this case the Krishna consciousness tradition, can provide to those individuals that are willing to incorporate into their lives the beliefs that such a tradition represents. Through an ethnographic comparative data study, collected in fieldwork conducted in Hare Krishna communities in Brazil, India, Spain and England, it was possible to get acquainted with individual and collective institutionalized dynamics that produced different modes of institutionalization for those that maintain a local meaning of the ‘devotees of Krishna’ and the devotion to a globalized sense of Hare Krishna community. The dialectic of the public and the private were taken into account to characterize these modes of institutionalization. The institutionalized private mode refers to individuals and groups of defectors of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in search for their alterity. The institutionalized public mode was taken as the institutional hegemony of the Hare Krishna movement, which tends to homogenize the devotees and their communities. The impasse between alterity and equality thus became the core issue involving loss of identity of the devotees and ISKCON and the schisms among such communities. Finally, this study provides a theoretical and methodological basis that may lead to further research relating identity and community as a social construction heritage.