"Anthropophagic Branding: feeding off the Other"

Abstract

In a cluttered religious marketplace, the Temple of Solomon, the fastest growing neo-Pentecostal mega-church in Brazil, has managed to stand out from the crowd. Using anthropophagy as a postcolonial theoretical lens, our ethnographic study demonstrates two ways in which, by feasting off other seemingly incompatible (religious) brands, the Temple positions itself at the top of the food chain. Firstly, ‘absorption branding’ mimics religious iconography and symbols from a more established tradition, Judaism, in an effort to confer historical credibility onto the young church.  Secondly, ‘predation branding’ appropriates the cosmology of spirit possession from local Afro-Brazilian polytheistic faiths, whilst demonizing this very practice as the church drives out the ‘evil’ spirits of its religious rival.  The symbolic ingestion of the Other is a clear display of power, whereby cultural difference is commodified and reproduced. Our case study of the Temple lends itself to the problematisation of the cultural pick-and-mix approach which is prevalent in our globalised society and much of our own marketing theorisations, as we locate the anthropophage within previous conceptualisations of appropriating the Other.

Victoria Rodner

University of Edinburgh