How to Study Religion? Notes on Research Methodology in the Context of Latin American Religions

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss on the main methodological procedures used in Anthropology and Sociology and applied in studies of Latin American religions, particularly in the context of diasporic Brazilian Protestantism-Pentecostalism. After introduce the two principal categories (quantitative and qualitative) – which include various types of procedures, such as the case study, interdisciplinary, historical, comparative and cross-cultural—and based on ethnographic experiences of the author in America, Europe and Asia, examine the world scale and ‘glocal’ multi-situated ethnography and the traditional localized participant-observation, including the ‘outsider-insider dichotomy’ and Asia, the article examines. However, today, with new digital technologies and the broad cultural and religious manifestations in the Internet, the researcher can complement the search for information (ethnographic data)—and accompany of the daily life of the group, of the community under study—using the Internet, the various social networks, namely, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. The principal contribution of this work is to present the specificities of the ethnographic field in the studies of religious movements, evangelical churches, in particular, where issues and problems posed to researchers requiring appropriate ethical and methodological procedures for overcoming them.