Abstract:
This work seeks to reflect on how “things” are made in the universe of Candomblé. It is based on an ethnographic research done in the workshop of José Adário dos Santos, better known as Zé Diabo, about the so called ferramentas de orixás (orixás tools), metal artifacts that become (or are prepared for) entities of African-based Religions in Brazil (Orixás, Exus, Voduns, Inquices, Caboclos etc.). Following the different makings of these artifacts, I intend to explore the way Candomblé offers a notion of making that is less an “agency” than a process of canalization and composition of different forces that permeate people, gods and things. In Candomblé, the forms of the artifacts cannot be separated from the forces that compose them. And these forces require a careful and continuous ritual work to stay “alive”, proposing an ecology of practices where everything is alive but, at the same time, must be constantly made.
Keywords:
Candomblé; Materiality; Techniques; Making; Ecology of practices