My research agenda focuses on practices; what people do when they do religion (including lighting candles, getting tattoos, doing yoga, wearing garments, church attendance, etc). I pay attention to the concrete historical and cultural context, to the practitioner’s material and embodied engagement, exploring how a religious person relates to divinity. 

How do people connect with religion?

Religious things happen when there is an ongoing relationship between the person and the supra-human. Exploring religion from the perspective of practices, I am not necessarily talking about a reality that conforms to churches’ mandates, nor to the variables sociologists have been using to measure religious practice (church attendance). Instead, I study what people do to connect with the supra-human.
I try to bridge Latin American with U.S. and European scholarship, not only engaging with academic productions from the North and the South, but also publishing and participating in conferences in both English and Spanish; and developing academic collaborations with colleagues in different countries in the Americas and Europe.
Morello

Catholicism & Argentina State Terrorism - Pictures of Religion and State Violence

I was 18 years old when Argentina recovered its democracy and the first news appeared about missing people. It was the time of the Dirty War in the country. Many people from the Church were accused of supporting perpetrators of human rights violations and it was proved that some bishops denied help to the victims. I started to work in a small left-wing political party at Córdoba’s National University, where I studied journalism. Most of my fellow students were left-wing people who were critics of what had happened in the country and did not understand how, after all, I could remain Catholic. For me, it was my faith that made me concerned about social justice. What seemed particularly odd for others was that this marked the start of my calling as a Jesuit.

I explored the relation between Catholicism and Marxism in the Sixties, the time of the beginning of the political violence in Argentina’s contemporary history.  The Montoneros were the most important guerrilla movement in Argentina’s history. Two main differences from traditional Marxist guerrillas were that Montoneros never asked for collective property, and they claimed to be building Jesus’ justice on earth. I used a mixed methods approach to researching the intellectual roots of this group. First, I did content analysis of all 30 issues of the journal Cristianismo y Revolución (CyR published between 1966-1971). I also conducted interviews with the second director of the journal, Cassiana Ahumada. She was the wife of the first director, Juan García Elorrio, who was killed in 1970. I also performed ten interviews with people who were active in the church in those years. Two of them were young Christian men who founded Montoneros and took part in military actions.

Books

2003 Cristianismo y Revolución. Los orígenes intelectuales de la guerrilla argentina. Córdoba, Editorial de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba (EDUCC)

Articles 

  • 2013 ‘Christianity and Revolution. Catholicism and guerillas warfare in Argentina’s Seventies’ in The Journal of Religion and Violence, Vol, 1, # 1, p. 42-59.
  • 2009 ‘Los católicos en el Cordobazo’, Reseñas de enseñanza de la historia, (Argentina) octubre # 7, p. 273-277.
  • 2007 ‘El Concilio Vaticano II y su Impacto en América Latina: a 40 Años de un cambio en los paradigmas en el catolicismo’, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, XLIX, 199, enero-abril: 81-104.
  • 2005 ‘Cristianismo y Revolución’, Istmo - Revista virtual de estudios literarios y culturales centroamericanos, # 10 enero – junio 
  • 2004 ‘20 años de democracia: La iglesia en Córdoba’ en Studia Politicae, Córdoba (Argentina) #02 verano, p 147-178.

 

The research on the guerillas put me at the verge of the Seventies. For my Ph.D. dissertation, I focused on the Catholic Church and its actions facing state terror in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’. Most authors take for granted the fact that the Church was a collaborator with the Argentine military in the government mass killings. But a careful analysis of the sources (other researches, documents, and testimonies) shows there were many different attitudes among Catholics towards state terrorism. Some of them were accomplices; others remained silent, while still others were champions of human rights. However, the Argentinean church was not an impediment to human rights violations as it was in Chile or Brazil. The situation was much more complex than a fight between conservative and progressive Catholics, though it was a clash of different religious conceptions. I explored how ordinary Catholics faced state terror - how they defined their positions for or against it, and how faith played a role in that decision. I conducted a case study, which allowed me to analyze in depth different Catholic positions in the very same case. I analyzed the kidnapping of 5 seminarians and an American priest (all members of the La Salette congregation) in the city of Córdoba, who were tortured by soldiers who believe they were engaging in a “catholic mission” fighting communism. I conducted open-ended qualitative interviews with four of them as well as 19 other interviews in Córdoba, Buenos Aires, La Habana and Boston. I worked with archives in Córdoba, Buenos Aries, and Boston College. 

Books

  • 2015 The Catholic Church and Argentina's Dirty War, Oxford University Press, NY.
  • 2014 Dónde estaba Dios? Los católicos y el terrorismo de estado, Ediciones B, Buenos Aires.Book Chapters2022 ‘Catholicism and State Terror in Argentina’ in Sara Brown and Stephen Smith, The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Genocide, and Mass Atrocity, Routledge, London.
  • 2016 ‘Transformations in Catholicism under Political Violence: Córdoba, Argentina, 1960-1980’ in Alex Wilde (Ed.) Religion and Violence in Latin America, Notre Dame.
  • 2015 ‘Las transformaciones del catolicismo en situaciones de violencia política: Córdoba, Argentina, 1960-1980’ in Alexander Wilde (Ed.) Las Iglesias ante la violencia en América Latina. Los derechos humanos en el pasado y el presente, FLACSO Mexico.
  • 2013 ‘Violencia política y terrorismo de Estado en cifras. Argentina, 1969-1983’ in Silvia Romero (ed.) Historias recientes de Córdoba. Política y derechos humanos en la segunda
mitad del siglo XX, Córdoba, Editorial Filosofía y Humanidades- UNC, 2013. Argentina.
  • 2010 ‘Los católicos cordobeses frente a la represión: El Caso La Salette’ en Catolicismo y política en Córdoba. Siglos XIX y XX Coordinadoras Gardenia Vidal y Jessica Blanco, Ferreyra Editores, Córdoba, Argentina.

 

Articles

  • 2018 “Catholic legitimization up for grabs: The political pluralization of Argentinean Catholicism in the 1960s” (First author with Fortunato Mallimaci) Journal of Contemporary Religion, v. 33, i. 3, p. 427-445.
  • 2014 Violencia política y catolicismo en Argentina. El secuestro de los Misioneros de La Salette, Revista Sendas, Guatemala. Año 2, Vol. 2.
  • 2012 ‘Secularización y derechos humanos: Actores católicos entre la dictadura argentina (1976) y la administración Carter (1977-1979)’, Latin American Research Review, Vol., 47; n.3, p. 62-82.
  • 2012 ‘Catholicism(s), State Terrorism and Secularization in Argentina’, Bulletin of Latin American Research Review, Vol. 31, n.3, pp. 366-380.
  • 2011 ‘El terrorismo de estado y el catolicismo en Argentina: el caso de los Misioneros de La Salette’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas/Anuario de Historia de América Latina, vol. 48

Due to the findings in my research on religion and political violence in Argentina, I decided to focus my attention on the reactions of religious institutions and persons towards secularization in the wider context of modernity, that is the phenomenon of ‘secularization’. This was part of the theoretical outcome of my investigation: Catholics react toward political violence according to the way in which they cope with the secularization process in a historical context.I want to pose some questions to the secularization theories to shed light on Latin-American processes. To build up those questions, I privileged the qualitative paradigm of research. The critical analysis allows me to shed light on the state-of-art; the historical approximation is fundamental to contextualize the social schemes and elucidate the hegemonic disputes where actors are inserted; and the in-depth interviews allow me to hear the voice of the regular believers and to learn about the way in which they deal with the sacred and the secular in their daily lives.

 

Publications

  • 2019 “Cambios religiosos y dinámicas demográficas: más allá de la Teoría de la Secularización. El caso del catolicismo en la ciudad de Córdoba, Argentina”. First author with Hugo H. Rabbia. Revista de Estudios Sociales 69: 14-27.  ‘Catolicismo y modernidad latinoamericana. Una lectura desde Bolívar Echeverría’ in Horacio Crespo, Andrés Kozel, Alexander Betancourt (eds.) ¿Tienen las américas una historia común? Herbert E. Bolton, las fronteras y la “Gran América” Cuernavaca, México: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. p. 531-579
  • 2018 ‘Argentina’, in Henri Gooren (ed.), Encyclopedia on Latin American Religion, Springer, Cham.
  • 2017 ‘Transformation in Argentinean Catholicism, from the Second half of the Twentieth Century to Pope Francis, Jose Mapril, Ruy Blanes, Emerson Giumbelli, Erin Wilson (Ed.), Secularisms in a Postsecular Age? Religiosities and subjectivities in comparative perspective, Palgrave. 231-251
  • 2017 ‘It takes two to Tango’: The religious and the secular in Argentinean political dance. 1860-1960. Juan Vaggione (Ed.) Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies, Springer. 51-71
  • 2012 ‘Secularización social y formación del clero en la Córdoba de los años setenta’, en Gabriela Caretta - Isabel Zacca (compiladoras) Derroteros en la construcción de religiosidades. Sujetos, instituciones y poder en Sudamérica, siglos XVII al XX. CEPIHA-UNSTA-CONICET, Salta (Argentina), pp. 235-252.
  • 2010 ‘Ciudadanos católicos en la ciudad postsecular’ en Los jesuitas formadores de ciudadanos. La educación dentro y fuera de sus colegios, siglos XVI-XXI, Coordinada por Perla Chinchilla, Departamento de Publicaciones, Universidad Iberamericana, México, p. 245-260.
  • 2010 ‘Charles Taylor’s modernity in a Latin American Catholicism’ in Politics and the Religious Imagination, Editors: John Dyck, Paul Rowe, and Jens Zimmermann, Routledge, Routledge Studies in Religion and Politics, London and New York, p.143-159.
  • 2009 ‘El barroco y la modernidad latinoamericana. Una lectura a la obra de Bolívar Echeverría’ en Sociedad, cultura y literatura, compilado por Carlos Arcos Cabrera, Flacso, Serie 50 años, (2009) Ecuador, p.421-436. ISBN 978-9978-67-207-5.
  • 2008 ‘Los jesuitas, el barroco y la modernidad latinoamericana en el pensamiento de Bolívar Echeverría’ en Ilustración y emancipación en América Latina. Materiales para la reflexión ético-política en el segundo centenario, Editores: Gustavo Ortiz y Nelson Specchia, Educc, Córdoba, Argentina, p.107-157. ISBN 978-987-626-023-7.
  • 2008 ‘El catolicismo latinoamericano y la crisis de la modernidad occidental’, Temas (Cuba), 54, abril-junio: 105-113.
  • 2007 ‘Charles Taylor’s “Imaginary” and “Best Account” in Latin America’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, (Los Angeles – London) 33: 617-639.
  • 2006 ‘La teología jesuítica y el espíritu del Barroco. Una lectura de La modernidad de lo Barroco, de Bolívar Echeverría’, Studia Politicae, Córdoba (Argentina) (Latindex 15167), 08 otoño, pp. 67-101.

Once dominated by Catholicism, today Latin Americans are migrating from one religion to another as they look for meaning beyond the empirical world. Yet, their quest is not taking place in the ways scholars and religious leaders expected. To explore religious practices in Latin America, I directed the research project ‘The Transformation of Lived-Religion in Urban Latin America: A Study of Contemporary Latin Americans’ Experience of the Transcendent’, that was founded by the John Templeton Foundation ($511,000). The focus, unlike other studies on secularization in the region, is on ordinary individuals’ relation to transcendence (not on institutions). Secularization concepts, with their North Atlantic bias, have failed to grasp ways, other than membership and affiliation, to explain changes and are not applicable to other cultural contexts. Using qualitative techniques – semi-structured interviews about life-story events, object elicitation triggered by photographs and meaningful objects – researchers from Boston College, and universities in Lima, Peru; Cordoba, Argentina; and Montevideo, Uruguay created spiritual narratives from a sample of 240 individuals from 4 religious groups (Catholic, Evangelical Pentecostal, Other Traditions, ‘nones’) and 2 different socio-economic strata (lower and upper-middle class) in 3 cities (Lima, Córdoba and Montevideo). We conducted one interview with each subject, and a meeting for ‘object elicitation’ 3-6 weeks apart. The comparative nature of the project is pioneering, since it will be one of the first comparative qualitative studies on religiosity in Latin America.

 

Books 

  • 2021 Lived Religion in Latin America: An Enchanted Modernity, by Oxford University Press.
  • 2020 Una Modernidad Encantada. Religión vivida en Latinoamérica, Editorial de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Córdoba – Argentina.
  • 2019 La religión como experiencia cotidiana: creencias, prácticas y narrativas espirituales en Sudamérica Co-Editor: Hugo Rabbia, Gustavo Morello, Néstor Da Costa and Catalina Romero. EDUCC, Fondo Editorial de la PUC, UCU. 

 

Articles

  • 2023 "Beyond words. A denotative analysis of participant-produced photos of sacred objects in the context of a study on lived religion in Latin America." Second co-author, with Gaëlle Bargain-Darrigues. The Sociological Review, Vol 71, Issue 5, p. 1037-1057
  • 2023 "The construction of the sacred through photographs displayed in Latin American homes." Social Compass, v70 n1, p 127-148, 
  • 2022 “Entre el opio del pueblo y la búsqueda de la salvación. Aproximaciones a la “religiosidad vivida” desde América Latina”, second co-author with Valentina Pereira Arenas, Revista de Estudios Sociales, 82 Octubre-Diciembre, p. 3-21
  • 2021 "Catholicism in Context: Religious Practice in Latin America," Journal of Global Catholicism: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 3. p.46-63. DOI: 10.32436/2475-6423.1104 
  • 2021 “Nobody prays alone. The practice of prayer among Latin American Catholics”, International Journal of Latin American Religions.
  • 2021 “Exploring the Non-Affiliated in South America.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Second author. Da Costa, Néstor; Morello, Gustavo; Rabbia, Hugo; Romero, Catalina. June 2021, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 562–587  
  • 2021 The Pope, the Poor, and the Location of Religion in Argentina's Public Sphere. Latin American Perspectives, Issue 241, Vol. 48 No. 6, November 2021, 179–193 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19879410 
  • 2019 "Why Study Religion from a Latin American Sociological Perspective? An Introduction to Religions Issue, “Religion in Latin America, and among Latinos Abroad”." Religions 10, no. 6: 399.
  • 2019 “The Symbolic Efficacy of Pope Francis’ Religious Capital and the Agency of the Poor”. Sociology, v53 (6), p. 1077-1993, Doi: 10.1177/0038038519853109
  • 2018 ‘Lived Religion in Latin America’ in Miriam Diez Bosch, Alberto Melloni, Josep Lluís Micó Sanz, Perplexed Religions Barcelona, Blanquerna Observatory, p. 149-158.
  • 2018 “Latin America’s Contemporary Religious Imaginary”. Social Imaginaries v4. n2 p. 87-106
  • 2017 “Introduction. Lived religion in Latin America and Europe. Roman Catholics and their practices” in Visioni LatinoAmericane, y. IX, n. 17, Luglio
  • 2017. P. 13-23.2017 "An Enchanted Modernity: Making sense of Latin America’s religious landscape" (First author with Catalina Romero, Hugo Rabbia and Nestor Da Costa) Critical Research on Religion, Vol 5, Issue 3, pp. 308 – 326.

Tattoos have been a very interesting area of research, in part due to the popularity of tattoos among younger generations. First, tattoos exemplify my point that we cannot keep looking at contemporary religion as we have done so far. New generations have different ways of sacralizing realities and manifesting their inner life.  Secondly, tattoos allow me to explore religion outside the mainstream practices (although not against religious traditions) and also to pay attention to a practice that academia has neglected (considering it as non-Western, marginal) even when there have been tattoos in the Western Christian tradition since the first century. Studying tattoos from a sociology of religion perspective is a way to explore religious practices as the outcome of a struggle, a negotiation among traditions, practitioners, and scholars. Tattoos allow me to explore the question “Who has the power to define religion?”

 

Publications

2021 “Women, Tattoos, and Religion. An exploration into women’s inner life.” Fist author with Mikayla Sanchez, Diego Moreno, Jack Engelman, and Alexis Evangel; Religions 12: 517. 

2021 "I’ve got you under my skin. Tattoos and religion in three Latin American cities." Social Compass. February, Vol 68, n 1, p. 61-80. 

Jonatal Carducci

Daniel Fernández

Málaga

Loreto

In order to highlight, preserve and discuss Latin American scholars’ contributions to sociology of religion, together with Hugo José Suárez, colleague from the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales of Universidad Autónoma de Mexico, we launched a series of “Sociological Conversations” where we interview for about an hour, one colleague from Latin America who has been working on religion, inquiring about the “conditions of production of their knowledge” in the area. The seminar intends to explore the different contributions of sociologists of religion, particularly thinking about the conditions of the production of their knowledge, the trajectories, the influences, the main axes developed. The general question is what have researchers on the sociology of religion produced and under what conditions? Based on academic trajectories, we seek to explore associations and training centers, methodological and theoretical innovations, dialogues between regions; and disciplinary intersections, agendas undertaken and future perspectives.

The seminar format is an hour-long virtual interview. The invitation to participants contains the following guiding topics:

1. "Conditions...":

    A. Training, mentors B. Networks, jobs, colleagues. C. Why is this area of interest?

2. "...of production..."

    A. What has been your main intellectual pursuit? B. Research projects C. Main books, works.

3. “… of knowledge”

    A. What are your main ideas about Latin American religiosity? B. What have you learned?

 

Publications

2021

2022

2023

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