A fé visível: religiosidade popular e cotidiano caiçara no Litoral Norte

Abstract

The research project entitled “The Visible Faith: popular religiosity and caiçara daily life on the north coast of São Paulo”, aims to reflect on the visibility of faith and the links between popular religiosity and caiçara daily life on the north coast of the State of São Paulo. Our main objective is to analyze how the configuration of being a caiçara modeled religious practices, or was shaped by it. Thus, in the Search for material elements to express caiçara religious beliefs, questions arose, such as the guiding questiono f the proposal: how does this oceanic-inspired approach to caiçara religion shape popular religious beliefs? Our hypothesis is to unveil how the geographical configuration, the barriers imposed by nature, restrictions of the Serra do Mar and the ocean, combined with the practices of popular religious beliefs, shaped the caiçaras’ way of life. We search for sources by Reading authors who are references in the area of the Science of Religion and Other studies in Sociology, Anthropology and History, using a qualitative methodology, as well as documentaru, photographic and oral records that can support the suggested theme. This religious “doing”, which is the manifestation of devotion and the feeling of identity, has a lot to say about aspects of its culture, memory, feelings, place and tradition. The interest of the research is to investigate how the transformations in the caiçaras' ways of living incorporate and reconstruct elements of the religious tradition, understanding that religion happens materially, and making an analysis of the caiçara culture is fundamental so that we can move towards understanding how past experiences intervene in the reconstruction of current practices