A religião e o exercício do cuidado de si: relato de mulheres sobre a atuação do Rhema prisional

Abstract

This study focuses its discussion on the triad woman-prison-religion. Based on the theoretical and methodological basis of the Social Sciences and the reports of women who served in the Regional Women's Penitentiary of Campina Grande - PB and attended the Bible course of Rhema Prisional. We intend to establish a debate about the construction of the enunciates of the biblical course, that is, the regimes of enunciation (LATOUR, 2012), which is "Word of God" based, to address the discursive practices and their effects on women's lives, and if it occurs an exercise of "self-care"(FOUCAULT, 2010). Methodologically, we have focused our studies on the contribution that Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (2012), also known as the Sociology of Associations, that points us during the work to understand the issues related to how religious acting in the lives of incarcerated women. We question the prison environment's effects on the female prisoners' lives and how are established freedoms and individualities within a hostile environment, and if the integration of religious practices in the prison routine establishes an ethical relationship or does not, leading to personal transformation. Our goal is to trace how are nurtured the actions of these women in the face of the beliefs and values passed on to them through the Bible course and by a whole connected network of human and non-human actors (LATOUR, 2012) in the place (prison). With empirical and qualitative research, and using interviews and participant observation in the Verbo da vida Church, we seek to understand if it occurs from the Bible course, the development of self-promoting, reflective, and corporal activities in these women's lives. How the exercises, techniques, and discourses of the Christian way of being is present to them? Is there an emancipatory relationship or one of subjection?