Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America

Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America Issue #: 208  | Volume #: 43  | Number #: 3 Date: May 2016 Interviewer: Tomas Ocampo Interviewees: Jennifer Scheper Hughes Short Description: This special issue of Latin American Perspectives returns to consider the theme of religion and social inequality and the social movements that seek to address religions’ ambivalent legacy across the continent. The articles take up a materialist approach to the subject of religion—they are concerned with the poor and disenfranchised, and not just with their beliefs and religious practices but also with their bodies and earthly fates. Liberation theology continues to shape the political landscape of Latin America, and numerous religious transformations are taking place which may be understood as the afterlives of liberation theology. Evangelical Christian movements, now no longer identified with particular ideologies, insert themselves into the public sphere. The state is now compelled to account for religions other than Christianity and to respond to the rapid pluralization of religious identities and constituencies across the continent. LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES is a theoretical and scholarly journal for discussion and debate on the political economy of capitalism, imperialism, and socialism in the Americas. For more than forty years, it has published timely, progressive analyses of the social forces shaping contemporary Latin America. http://latinamericanperspectives.com