Ethnographic experiments on networks and balconies

religion in pandemic times

Abstract

Focusing on ethnographic experiments related to religion in Covid-19 times, the article shares preliminary reflections on the arrangements and reconciliations that produce the lived religion. There were two contexts for obtaining the material presented: on the one hand, social networking and messaging platforms, both resources previously used in ethnographic research carried out in Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro. On the other, the balconies in a condominium in the Rio de Janeiro suburbs. The research fields of the three authors have in common the multiplication of practices and the intensification of religious celebrations during the pandemic stay-at-home requirements. The experiments thus demonstrate possibilities for continuing anthropological research during the pandemic closures. They also show that lived religion, in addition to providing images and metaphors for warnings about potential health risks caused by Covid-19, has also been frequently mobilized in favor of organizing the collective experience of quarantine, regulating schedules, activating solidarity networks, evoking memories of faith communities, creating licenses to escape the rigidity of isolation and seeking to establish ethics parameters in the name of the common good.