“MEU DEUS, ILUMINA ESSE JUIZ!”: CONSTRUÇÃO DE SENTIDO RELIGIOSO NA SUBSEÇÃO JUDICIÁRIA DE TEÓFILO OTONI/MG

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the construction of religious meaning by people who claim to be Social Security insured persons, when they participate in hearings at the Judicial Subsection of Teófilo Otoni, in Minas Gerais. To this end, supported by the Anthropology of Religion and the Sciences of Religion, the social theory of dense description, by Clifford Geertz, was taken as a landmark, allowing the analysis of the religion manifested by the mentioned social group in the public space of the Federal Judiciary. The theoretical framework allows the researcher to develop the concepts of culture and system, for later framing of religious culture as a text of language, which shapes the world view and the subject's own reality. The work was divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, in order to elucidate the theoretical framework, the theory of dense description and the ethnographic implications of its use were developed, starting with the analysis of culture as a text and the cultural dimension of religion. In the second chapter, a brief socioeconomic analysis of the region of the Valleys of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri was sought and comments were made on the Federal Justice in Teófilo Otoni / MG, outlining the researcher's scope of action and the occurrence of religious manifestations carried out by rural workers, who were categorized in their own section, to classify the condition of special insured of Social Security. Finally, in the last chapter, after a brief digression about what had been covered in the theoretical research, we started to interpret the construction of religious meaning by the studied social group, a fact perpetrated in the Federal Court of Teófilo Otoni / MG. It is concluded, through the use of the hermeneutic tool of the dense description, the existence of a constant impulse of religious sense in the referred Judicial Subsection, a space not very suitable for such construction. Still, religion was seen as a model for reality, as a kind of inducer of meanings and symbolic action. In addition, a search for a new meaning of the place and of the unfamiliar world was perceived, this through the use of symbols, rituals, representations, as a true text of possible description.