Abstract

CREPALDI CARLESSI, Pedro. Avá [online]. 2015, n.27, pp.47-62. ISSN 1851-1694.

This paper discusses about the material dimension of plants and vegetation areas that make up the daily life of a religious group allocated in an umbanda's temple of São Paulo city (Brazil). From an ethnographic fieldwork, the study presents two empirical situations in which it may be seen that plants do not finalize on the surface of their leaves, but they precisely go toward a certain overflow that permeates and extends beyond the plant's universe (or "kingdom"). It is proposed, then, to think about the relations of the plants and the engagements that characterize them, a condition that allows revisiting a certain idea of 'material culture', which keeps plants either prisoners of culture or nature domains.

Keywords : Material Flows; Nature-Culture; Afro-Brazilian religions; Umbanda.

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