Helena Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520298033
- eISBN:
- 9780520970168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520298033.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
In The Reformation of Machismo (1995), Elizabeth Brusco proposed an intriguing theory to explain the mass conversion of Latin Americans to evangelical Protestantism: Protestantism as gender strategy. ...
More
In The Reformation of Machismo (1995), Elizabeth Brusco proposed an intriguing theory to explain the mass conversion of Latin Americans to evangelical Protestantism: Protestantism as gender strategy. Based on fieldwork in Colombia, Brusco argued that the Protestant Church is a female-dominated institution and that women convert their male partners to domesticate them. Enforcing the clean-living program of evangelists, Colombian women brought men into the domestic sphere as heads of household, and forced men to give up the male subcultural pursuits of alcohol, adultery, and domestic violence. Using Brusco's argument as a point of departure, this chapter describes conversion among addicted men in Puerto Rico as a male-driven—rather than female-driven—gender strategy that changed the relationship male converts had to their families and their work.Less
In The Reformation of Machismo (1995), Elizabeth Brusco proposed an intriguing theory to explain the mass conversion of Latin Americans to evangelical Protestantism: Protestantism as gender strategy. Based on fieldwork in Colombia, Brusco argued that the Protestant Church is a female-dominated institution and that women convert their male partners to domesticate them. Enforcing the clean-living program of evangelists, Colombian women brought men into the domestic sphere as heads of household, and forced men to give up the male subcultural pursuits of alcohol, adultery, and domestic violence. Using Brusco's argument as a point of departure, this chapter describes conversion among addicted men in Puerto Rico as a male-driven—rather than female-driven—gender strategy that changed the relationship male converts had to their families and their work.
