Cristina Rocha

Grafting Cultures: Longing and Belonging in Immigrants’ Gardens and Backyards in Fairfield

This paper explores migration stories and examines the ways migrants use their gardens as sites of cultural practice in the Fairfield municipality of Western Sydney, one of the most ethnically diverse regions in Australia. We argue that many of those from diverse cultural backgrounds use their gardens in ways very different from the stereotypical conceptions of Australian suburbia. Far from being idyllic places of retreat and repose separate from the world of work, our research reveals that many migrant gardens are places in which creative labour is expended to symbolise connections not only to homeland but also to Australia and to other cultures. We concentrate in this paper on two general patterns of backyard activity. The first is intensively horticultural, involving creating a backyard smallholding for growing produce traditional to the homeland. Secondly those, mainly from urban or middle-class backgrounds, who transform their backyards into exhibition spaces, outlets for their creative impulses as artists and amateur curators.

The diaspora of Brazilian religions

The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions explores the global spread of religions originating in Brazil, a country that has emerged as a major pole of religious innovation and production. Through ethnographically-rich case studies throughout the world, ranging from the Americas (Canada, the U.S., Peru, and Argentina) and Europe (the U.K., Portugal, and the Netherlands) to Asia (Japan) and Oceania (Australia), the book examines the conditions, actors, and media that have made possible the worldwide construction, circulation, and consumption of Brazilian religious identities, practices, and lifestyles, including those connected with indigenized forms of Pentecostalism and Catholicism, African-based religions such as Candomble and Umbanda, as well as diverse expressions of New Age Spiritism and Ayahuasca-centered neo-shamanism like Vale do Amanhecer and Santo Daime.

Intimate Multiculturalism: Transnationalism and Belonging amongst Capoeiristas in Australia

Capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian dance-cum-martial art, has acquired a worldwide popularity. In this paper, we explore the relationships established by Australian students and Brazilian masters of Capoeira. We draw on and extend Wise and Velayuthams notion of everyday multiculturalism. This concept points to the need to research informal vernacular intercultural negotiations that happen at an everyday level. However, we wish to drill down beneath the surface of everyday public cultural negotiations to recognise the transactions that take place in relatively intimate settings. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from 2006 to 2010 in Australia, we coin the concept of intimate multiculturalism to argue that it is in very close intercultural encounters that people reinvent themselves, question their belonging to one national imagined community and embody other forms of being. We also show that practices brought by migrants are not only intercultural (such as people from different cultural backgrounds practicing Capoeira) but also transnational. In this sense, this responds to the recent call for scholars to switch the focus from diaspora studies to everyday practices of intercultural encounters and to how we live with difference in intimate ordinary situations.

Imagining Latin America in Australia: Migration, Culture and Multiculturalism

This special issue draws on a workshop organised by the editors in 2011 at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney. Its focus was to explore the increasing flows of people, commodities, ideas and practices between Latin America and Australia. Taken as a whole, the issue considers how Latin America is represented in popular culture, how Latin American communities represent themselves and how these communities interact with each other and with other communities within multicultural Australia. It also addresses the ways in which these migrants keep connections with their home countries and the place of Australia within a network of sites of the Latin America diaspora. It is difficult to provide an exact number of Latin Americans in Australia. Available 2011 Australian Census data identify them under regional aggregates (South America, Central America and the Caribbean), and when by country, they only mention those with a high number of migrants. Similarly, it is difficult to get

Introduction: Brazil in the New Global Cartography of Religion

In this chapter the author sketches the economic, political, cultural, and religious contexts that have contributed to the recent rise of Brazil as a key center of religious creativity and innovation within an emerging, polycentric global religious cartography. The chapter overviews the conditions that mediate the diaspora of Brazilian religions with an account of economic and political factors, including most prominently immigration, moving on to the cultural dimensions such as spiritual tourism and exoticism. It explores the dynamics of the Brazilian religious field and their interplay with globalization. The chapter provides a brief overview of Brazilian migration to the US, Europe and Japan, where the large communities are located. Keywords:Brazil; Brazilian migration; exoticism; globalization; religious cartography; spiritual tourism

Triangular Circulation: Japanese Brazilians on the Move between Japan, Australia and Brazil

This article considers the place of Australia within the network of sites through which Japanese Brazilian migrants move. In doing so, it aims to demonstrate the importance of moving beyond a bi-focal analysis of transnationalism to one which encompasses a multiplicity of sites and migrants’ diverse strategies to cross these national borders. Here I analyse the triangular circulation of young middle-class Japanese Brazilians and the establishment of transnational social fields among Brazil, Japan and Australia. I argue that in order to negotiate these multiple borders, Japanese Brazilians mobilise economic, social and cultural capitals and by doing so undergo changes in subjectivity in all three nodes of this triangular circulation. Moreover, I contend that their middle-class status makes for a very specific migration pattern in which acquiring cultural capital (which will later be converted into economic capital) is more important than migrating in search of economic capital alone.

Building a transnational spiritual community : the John of God movement in Australia

In this chapter the author analyzes the transnationalization of the John of God movement. The author argues that the intense flows of people, sacred objects, ideas, practices and ‘spirits’ between the Casa de Dom Inacio and Australia create a transnational spiritual community comprised of healers, the ill, those who seek spiritual growth, and tour guides. The chapter calls for the expansion of its scope to encompass other transnational communities, such as those of transnational spiritual adherents. This transnational spiritual community is created and supported not only by concrete flows of people and material culture, but by flows of energy and spirits who, according to followers, are present and heal in Australia as well. The author shows that when people connect to them, such as during current sessions, they are able to be in Brazil and in Australia simultaneously. Keywords:Australia; John of God; transnational spiritual community; transnationalization

A globalização do espiritismo: fluxos do movimento religioso de João de Deus entre a Austrália e o Brasil

Joao de Deus e um medium-curador espirita brasileiro que vem atraindo um numero grande de discipulos estrangeiros. Desde o inicio de 2000, Joao de Deus tem sido convidado a conduzir eventos de cura em paises tao diversos como Alemanha, EUA, Nova Zelândia, Grecia e Peru, entre outros, tendo estado em alguns destes paises mais de uma vez. Neste artigo analiso o processo de globalizacao desse novo movimento religioso, focalizando em particular na Australia. Demonstro que ha uma crescente comunidade transnacional composta de discipulos vivendo entre os dois paises, a qual teria intensificado o processo de globalizacao do espiritismo, ate entao promovido somente por imigrantes brasileiros. Por fim, analiso o estabelecimento de uma filial do centro de Joao de Deus na Australia.

“The come to Brazil effect” : young Brazilians’ fascination with Hillsong

This chapter investigates young middle-class Brazilians’ fascination with Hillsong. It draws on participant observation and open-ended interviews to analyze the role Hillsong plays in the constitution of a transnational religious field between Australia and Brazil. This concept accounts for how global religious institutions affect the everyday lives of temporary residents and migrants, those who stay behind, and those who return. In particular, it investigates ways in which Brazilians imagine Hillsong and Australia before they travel, and how this imaginary is transformed in their everyday life serving and studying at the church.

O Brasil na nova cartografia global da religião

This article analyses the social, economic, cultural and religious changes that have made Brazil a key node in the production of religion and spirituality in an emergent global cartography. This cartography is polycentric and cut across by multidirectional transnational networks which facilitate the flows of people, ideas, images, capital and commodities. In this article, we investigate flows of Brazilian migrants who take religious beliefs, practices, and identities to host countries; missionaries and other religions entrepreneurs; foreign spiritual tourists who go to Brazil seeking healing and spiritual development; and culture industries, mass media, and the Internet that spread globally an imaginary of Brazil as an exotic land, where the sacred is an intrinsic part of its culture and nature.