Media Appropriations of Lived Religiosity in the Digital Society
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18800/anthropologica.202601.006Keywords:
Media consumption, Lived religion, Digital society, Religious mediatizationAbstract
This essay proposes an approach to lived religiosity as it relates to practices of media consumption, based on an analysis of religious discourse and practice among believers in Lima, a city marked by an intense process of religious pluralization and re-signification of what it means to belong to traditional communities of faith. Our analysis emphasizes how the consumption of mediatized religious goods shapes or re-signifies the beliefs and practices of believers in everyday life. We analyze the implications and impact of the appropriation of technology by religious actors in the processes of interaction between the secular and the sacred, as well as in the modes of belonging to a religious community. This essay will focus on the findings of the Peruvian case study, posing the following questions: How does the consumption of symbolic goods that portray the sacred produced by cultural industries impact the re-signification of religious beliefs, symbols, and practices in everyday life? How does the experience of consuming mediatized cultural goods shape or re-signify both the interactions that are built between the secular and the religious, as well as the sense of belonging to institutionalized religion?
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