Alejandra Aguilar Ros

Embodied Religion: Religion and Identity in a Mexican Town Alejandra Aguilar Ros

This book examines the way religiosity is embodied in ritual performances in Catholic practices,in San Agustín, a town in the State of Jalisco, Mexico. Catholicism is an embodied religion, deeply concerned with representing the body. This work will address this concern by first presenting ethnographic examples on how the leaders of the Church and the inhabitants of this town produce representations of themselves that colide with lived experiences. Rituals such as processions, patronal feasts and a pilgrimage will be followed afterwards, focusing on the body, and the ways they are practiced, to produce a complex identity that cannot be captured only with representational images. It is an identity that uses movement,aesthetics,performance,communication, regimentation and contested senses of community. By pursuing these rituals, issues on community and the making of identity appear to be more intricate than just the fixed categories representation produces. An analysis of the interaction between representation and practice produces a way to approach religion relating it to cultural concerns and the creation of self and community.