Relgion Matters: Notions of the Future

Notions of the Future: Religious Elements that Survive in Aspirations

Presenter: Leonel Hernandez Polo
Language: English

Abstract

Aspirations for the future are formed mainly by perceptions, emotions and sensations. Given this, the notion of future acquires a very personal and subjective meaning with an infinite number of forms, which it is preferable to call it: temporalities of the future. We generally assume that aspirations are always addressed to the future. But sometimes the imagined future tends to the past, as in the stories of children of Mexican immigrants in the United States who participated in this study. Eventhough many of them openly declare themselves atheists, their actions and future projections are also marked by strongly internalized religious elements, as part of the inheritance of their parents. Values, symbols, beliefs, practices, memories and sacred things are recovered and rebuilt in a special kind of religion what is a syncretism between Pre-Hispanic Mexican elements and Catholicism as opposition to “lo gringo”. Mexican immigrants and their children (Chicanos) have created this syncretism as part of their cultural identity combining the past and the present which, ultimately, also influence in their aspirations for the future.

Short bio

Leonel Hernandez Polo is a PhD Candidate under join supervision of UG and UNAM, Mexico. He studied a bachelor in education and has a master in educational research. His fields of expertise are social inequalities in education and migration. Currently, he is proposing an integrated theoretical model to explain how children of Mexican immigrants in USA construct their capabilities to aspire under disadvantaged social contexts.