Dentro do movimento de pluralização confessional ensejado pela secularização (característica da modernidade religiosa brasileira), recorto para fins de estudo um processo mais específico, a saber: o de adensamento institucional do espiritismo kardecista entre as décadas de 1920 e 1960. Por meio do exame de trajetórias de agentes de relevância desse segmento e de sua produção intelectual religiosa, a análise que se pretendeu realizar levou em consideração as disputas materiais e simbólicas entre formas distintas de visões espíritas de mundo. Sob esse enquadramento, o objetivo foi o de compreender e explicar como são articulados os sistemas de crenças espíritas e quais são as fontes de autoridade em jogo. Foram abertas duas frentes de trabalho. A primeira delas consistiu basicamente na reconstituição histórica de algumas coordenadas importantes para a compreensão tanto do cenário quanto do elenco espíritas. Na segunda, foi levado a cabo um trabalho de definição sociológica do que poderia vir a ser um clero espírita, e mais particularmente, quais os contornos que caracterizam os diferentes papéis desempenhados pelos vários atores em cena / Within the movement of confessional pluralization led by secularization (a characteristic of Brazilian religious modernity), I circumscribe, for the purpose of this study, a more specific process, namely, the institutional densification of Kardecist Spiritism between the decades of 1920 and 1960. Through the examination of trajectories of relevant agents in this segment and their religious intellectual production, the analysis took into account the material and symbolic disputes between distinct forms of spiritist worldviews. Through this prism, the objective was to understand and explain how spiritist belief systems are articulated and what are the actual sources of authority. There are two work fronts. The first one basically consists in a historical reconstitution of some important coordinates for the understanding of both the scenery and the spiritist cast. On the second work front, the purpose was to build a sociological definition of what could be a spiritist clergy, and, more particularly, what outlines characterize the different roles played by the various actors on the scene

Dentro do movimento de pluralização confessional ensejado pela secularização (característica da modernidade religiosa brasileira), recorto para fins de estudo um processo mais específico, a saber: o de adensamento institucional do espiritismo kardecista entre as décadas de 1920 e 1960. Por meio do exame de trajetórias de agentes de relevância desse segmento e de sua produção intelectual religiosa, a análise que se pretendeu realizar levou em consideração as disputas materiais e simbólicas entre formas distintas de visões espíritas de mundo. Sob esse enquadramento, o objetivo foi o de compreender e explicar como são articulados os sistemas de crenças espíritas e quais são as fontes de autoridade em jogo. Foram abertas duas frentes de trabalho. A primeira delas consistiu basicamente na reconstituição histórica de algumas coordenadas importantes para a compreensão tanto do cenário quanto do elenco espíritas. Na segunda, foi levado a cabo um trabalho de definição sociológica do que poderia vir a ser um clero espírita, e mais particularmente, quais os contornos que caracterizam os diferentes papéis desempenhados pelos vários atores em cena / Within the movement of confessional pluralization led by secularization (a characteristic of Brazilian religious modernity), I circumscribe, for the purpose of this study, a more specific process, namely, the institutional densification of Kardecist Spiritism between the decades of 1920 and 1960. Through the examination of trajectories of relevant agents in this segment and their religious intellectual production, the analysis took into account the material and symbolic disputes between distinct forms of spiritist worldviews. Through this prism, the objective was to understand and explain how spiritist belief systems are articulated and what are the actual sources of authority. There are two work fronts. The first one basically consists in a historical reconstitution of some important coordinates for the understanding of both the scenery and the spiritist cast. On the second work front, the purpose was to build a sociological definition of what could be a spiritist clergy, and, more particularly, what outlines characterize the different roles played by the various actors on the scene

Après plus de cent ans d’une prise de connaissance de la modernité occidentale et de ses réalisations matérielles et intellectuelles, la question de savoir comment faire face à ce phénomène reste toujours une des questions complexes du débat intellectuel dans la société iranienne. Même après la Révolution islamique 1979, cette question se pose mais autrement.Face à ce défi et face aux militants de la culture occidentale et à ceux qui la niaient ardemment en faveur de la culture indigène, certains penseurs s’est mis à chercher une solution conciliante ces deux. Une partie considérable de ces efforts a été réalisée par un cercle de penseur, connu sous le titre des intellectuels religieux. Moins d’une décennie après l’installation du gouvernement islamique, ces penseurs musulmans et partisans de la Révolution islamique ont présenté leurs points de vus basées sur une interprétation de la religion (islam) et de la question de l’identité, permettant à réconcilier de la modernité occidentale et l’islam (en tant qu’un des éléments le plus important de la culture indigène).Les idées des intellectuels religieux, semblent-elles pouvoir être reconnues comme un ensemble intellectuel et comme un discours religio-politique. Ce discours a progressivement commencé à viser le discours idéologique de l’islam, au pouvoir depuis le chut d’anciens régime. / After more than a hundred years of obtaining an understanding of Western modernity and its material and intellectual achievements, the question of how to deal with this phenomenon remains a complex question of intellectual debate in Iranian society. Even after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the question arises at its different forms. Faced with this challenge, as well as by facing with the militants of Western culture and those who ardently denied the indigenous culture, some intellectuals began to seek a conciliatory solution to the coexistence of both modernity and the indigenous culture. A considerable part of these efforts was conducted by a thinker circle, known as the religious scholars. Less than a decade after the installation of the Islamic government, the Muslim thinkers and supporters of the Islamic Revolution presented their points of views based on an interpretation of the religion (Islam) and the question of identity, to reconcile of Western modernity and Islam (as one of the most important elements of the indigenous culture).The ideas of religious intellectuals seem to be recognized as an intellectual religious-political discourse as a whole, since the falling down of the former regime.

This thesis delineates the transformation of Iran’s so-called post-revolutionary ‘religious intellectuals’ (rowshanfekran-e dini) from ideological legitimators within the political class of the newly-established theocratic-populist regime to internal critics whose revised vision for the politico-religious order coalesced and converged with the growing disillusionment and frustration of the ‘Islamic left’, a constellation of political forces within the governing elite of the Islamic Republic, that following the death of Ayatollah Khomeini increasingly felt itself marginalised and on the outskirts of power. The historical evolution of this complex, quasi-institutionalised and routinized network, encompassing theologians, jurists, political strategists and journalists, which rose to prominence in the course of the 1990s, and its critical engagement with the ruling political theology of the ‘guardianship of the jurist’, the supremacy of Islamic jurisprudence, political Islamism and all forms of ‘revolutionary’ and ‘utopian’ political and social transformation, are scrutinised in detail. In this vein, the thesis examines the various issues provoked by the rowshanfekran-e dini’s strategic deployment and translation of the concepts and ideas of a number of Western thinkers, several of which played a pivotal role in the assault on the ideological foundations of Soviet-style communism in the 1950s and 1960s. It then moves to show how this network of intellectuals and politicos following the election of Mohammad Khatami to the presidency in May 1997 sought to disseminate their ideas at the popular level by means of the press and numerous party and political periodicals, and thereby achieve ideological and political hegemony. The thesis proceeds to demonstrate the intimate connection between the project of ‘religious intellectualism’ and elite-defined notions of ‘democracy’, ‘electoral participation’, ‘reform’ and ‘political development’ as part of an effort to accumulate symbolic capital and assert their intellectual and moral leadership of the polity.