"Connecting with the great mother, regenerating us": Environmental activism, gender relations and power dynamics in contemporary paganism in Portugal
Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In the context of the contemporary socio-ecological crisis and uncertainty, several religious and spiritual groups engage in environmental and gender questions in the Portuguese public space. Contemporary Paganism, a movement that holds nature as sacred and gender equality as central principles, is one of the religious and spiritual movements that most engage in these questions. Based on presential and online ethnography with Portuguese Ecocentric Pagans, this thesis aims to show how they participate in the public space by negotiating power dynamics related to gender relations and ecological revindication and worries, while living their religious and spiritual experiences. It analyses the Portuguese sociohistorical and religious context, the history of the movement, and its relationship with the international Pagan movement, particularly the influences of the United Kingdom. Then it is analysed how through ritual and activism, they negotiate, contest, and explore their gender roles and their ecological worries. It approaches how internal and external power dynamics influence these relationships and mobilisations. Lastly, it analyses the COVID-19 restrictions impacts. Therefore, it is argued that through the mobilisation of care, healing and regeneration narratives while engaging individually and collectively with their spiritual, religious, and political ways of being in the world, Portuguese Ecocentric Pagans look for meaning and solutions for the crises they face. In sum, this thesis demonstrates how Portuguese Ecocentric Pagans engage in the public space implicitly and explicitly combining political and religious and spiritual questions, being part of a general mobilisation in contemporary societies for re-enchantment; contributing to the reduced scholarship about these movements in Portugal.
Source: Repositório do ISCTE-IUL
Author: Martins, Joana Rita Rosa
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7008722159