Abstract
This paper is based on a case study done in the Southern part of Brazil
on Soka Gakkai International (‘International Value-Creation Society’, also SGI), a lay Buddhist movement founded in Japan in 1930, which now has over 12 million members in 190 countries. With an analysis based on anthropological fieldwork, this essay aims to understand how the ‘Brazil Soka Gakkai International Association’ (BSGI), creates innovative strategies of insertion into a specific religious
field, presenting themselves in Brazil as an NGO and not as a religious group. The contradictory way in which BSGI uses the image and practice of an NGO responds to their own need: the recruitment and maintenance of members. I suggest that the insertion of this specific religious group in the third sector may bear more complexities than simply supplying services or resources to fill a gap
left by the State. This article will show the ambiguities of a group that answers to the necessities of a country laid in immense social inequalities but which, at the same time, uses this process as a marketing strategy and a plan of action to recruit new members.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2020 Suzana R. C. Bornholdt
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