Entre ebós e abraços: expressões da vida social organizada em um terreiro de Umbanda

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how organized social life manifests in an Umbanda terreiro, based on an ethnographic study conducted at Caminho da Flecha, located in Aracaju, Brazil. Grounded in the concept of organized social life, the study challenges traditional views of organization restricted to formal institutions, highlighting everyday, ritual, affective, and mnemonic practices as legitimate forms of collective organization. The research adopts ethnography as its methodological approach, combining participant observation, field notes, and semi-structured interviews with community members, while acknowledging the researcher’s positionality as a participant. The findings show that rituals structure roles, temporalities, and hierarchies; that ordinary forms of management sustain care, belonging, and social bonds; and that memory—ancestral, embodied, and performative—acts as a central organizing force, transmitted through dreams, storytelling, and oral traditions. By situating the terreiro as an analytical locus, the study contributes to organizational studies by expanding the notion of organization, challenging hegemonic epistemologies, and legitimizing Afro-centered knowledges historically marginalized, affirming the terreiro as a social, political, and epistemological space of resistance and life-making.