El poder sobre el cuerpo y el poder del cuerpo religioso: dos casos para la comparación

Abstract

Through a comparative analysis of two religious systems —the Hare Krishna movement doctrinally linked to the Vaishnava school of devotional Hinduism, and Pentecostalism as a charismatic variation of the great tradition of Protestant Christianity— this article focuses on two basic theoretical concepts: the political body and techniques of the body in the context of religious practice. It is argued that a useful approach to both religious systems is a structural and constructivist analytic framework that privileges the role of material-rational control of subjective experience on three levels —ideological, symbolic and normative— in relation to the body and bodily expression.