Crisis and the rearrangement of religious habitus in the periphery of the Catholic space

Abstract

Based on a precise empirical selection, the article discusses the idea of institutional crisis as an evidence of broader processes that have affected the Church and Catholicism in different scales from the mid-20th century on. The analysis focused on the Brazilian northern State of Maranhão, and three main aspects were explored: i) the changes in the social composition of the clergy and in its modalities of commitment; ii) the rise of religious demands connected to institutional investments towards new publics; iii) the backflow of power and the rearrangements of the religious authority.