Pastoralism in Latin America: An Ensemble of Religious Governmental Technologies in Colonial Costa Rica
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 7
Abstract
Based on a critical empirical application of Foucault’s concept of pastoralism and a genealogical research approach, this article suggests that the Catholic regime that operated in Costa Rica during the Spanish colonial period (16th to 19th centuries), developed an ensemble of distinctive ‘technologies of government’—charity, ceremonial strictness, bio-political control, geo-political rule, and administrative efficiency. Drawing on documentary and archival material, the analysis highlights both the governmental ‘logics’ and the governmental ‘techniques’ of the above technologies, as well as their complex centuries-long operation. The conclusions remark how such a complex ensemble of religious governmental technologies problematizes the synchronicistic and reductionist analyses of religion and politics; historical–institutionalist studies of colonial Catholicism in Latin America; and the compartmentalization of sovereignty, discipline, and apparatuses of security that Foucault originally proposed to account for the historical development of governmentality.
Authors and Affiliations
Edgar Zavala-Pelayo
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26064
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9070203
- Views 371
- Downloads 13
Icons of Just Is: Justice, Suffering, and the Artwork of Samuel Bak
This paper examines select paintings by Holocaust survivor and painter Samuel Bak from his recent Just Is series. The essay explores ways Bak’s art bears witness to suffering. He creatively interrogates and reanimates...
“The Necessary Result of Piety”: Slavery and Religious Establishments in South Carolina Presbyterianism, 1800–1840
Historians have argued that disestablishment liberated American religion and allowed for the proliferation of religious practice and religious freedom, especially individualistic Evangelicalism in the South. This propo...
Messianic Time and Monetary Value
In this essay we return to Walter Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as outlined in his Theses on the Philosophy of History. Messianic time is read with Benjamin’s Sonnette as a “divestment” from historical time. That...
Between Toleration and Emancipation: The Self-Empowerment of Jewish Intellectuals in the Habsburg Monarchy
Analyzing a sample of prominent Jewish intellectuals from the Bohemian lands, this article explores Jewish networks as well as cultural and political activism in the Vormärz period and during the 1848 revolution. It se...
An Analysis of Foreign Diplomatic Aid to the Catholic Clergy during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
During the European crisis of the thirties of the twentieth century, the most significant persecution of the Catholic Church in the history of Spain was generated. With the ultimate goal of saving lives, the Foreign Di...