TOWARDS AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE NEXT

RELIGIOSITY AND IMAGINARY AMONG BRAZILIAN AVIATION WORKERS

Abstract

This article deal the contributions of the Imaginary theory, by Gilbert Durand, to the understanding of the plurality and multiplicity of forms and logics of religiosity and the sacred in the specific context of aviation. First, for sharing the appreciation of the Imaginary and the symbolic as a source of knowledge for anthropological research. Second, I understand that an anthropology of work and workers must go beyond utilitarian analyzes of culture and aspects considered by the literature as 'purely' socioeconomic and practical. It must also avoid the alleged determination of the ties of world capitalism (global and developmental, liberal, neoliberal programs) as explanatory models for human enterprise. To this end, the article will focus on the image dimensions of objects and the interaction of people immersed in the dynamics of aviation. By qualifying the symbolic or significant reason of the human enterprise, I aim to show that in the capitalist and contemporary universe of Brazilian aviation, the meanings of the sacred and the religious sense are present and incorporated in the work routine. It is a long-term ethnography in which I use myth criticism as an analytical methodology. The thesis I defend here is that historical agents perform, through the pragmatics of their interaction at work, the theophanic function of symbolic imagination, that is, the “epiphany of a mystery” (Durand, 1988).