Leisure, Youth and the Feast of the Divine

Social Practices in a Riverside Community

Abstract

We present and understand the Divino Espírito Santo’s party in Barra do Guaicuí/MG as a leisure experience and identity constitution of young riverside people. We discuss the terms: Leisure, Youth, party and Identity and embrace ethnography as a method, conducting a field research with observations, questionnaires and interviews. The Divino’s party says about the construction of identities made possible through the articulation of religious phenomena and leisure, along the access to tradition sociocultural goods and participation in the contemporary context.  Young people immersed in religion activities, at the same time that they pray, dance with catopês, listen to sertanejo and forró music, post photos on social networks, among other experiences. This whole scenario and actors are a way of understanding the culture and identities of these young people, who mix tradition and contemporaneity not in opposition, but in dialogue.