Abstract This text discerning ballasts and crystallization that occur in the landscape of music research, youth and power. In this context we are interested especially discuss the uses of the concept of hegemony its possibilities and limits in the field of sociological analysis of music. From this we discern some of the challenges esrtán present in this field of study.

Resumen Este texto transcurre en el discernimiento de lastres y cristalizaciones que se presentan en el panorama de investigaciones sobre música, juventud y poder. En este contexto nos interesa especialmente discutir los usos del concepto de hegemonía y las posibilidades y límites que adquiere al ser resignificado desde las teorías más recientes en el campo del análisis sociológico de la música. A partir de ello discernimos algunos de los desafíos que están presentes en este campo de estudios.

What we call contemporary spiritual literature -due to its massive acknowledgment and its possible uses (a proposal of personal transformation, religious ideology, narrative genre)-, constitutes a strategic target in the inquiry of the relation between massive consumption and the production of religious ideologies. These books generate communities of interpreters that bring together a heterogeneous series of social, cultural and national origins. That community materializes in individual activity patterns and exchanges -formal and informal, systematic or at random, virtual, printed or oral- in which the sense of a reading that incorporates, in different ways, a religious sensitivity is firmly planted.

Lo que llamamos literatura espiritual contemporánea, por su recepción masiva y por sus usos posibles (propuesta de transformación personal, de ideología religiosa, de género narrativo), constituye un objeto estratégico en la indagación de las relaciones entre consumo masivo y producción de ideologías religiosas. Estos libros generan comunidades de intérpretes que congregan una serie heterogénea de procedencias sociales, culturales y nacionales. Esa comunidad se concreta en patrones de actividad individual y en intercambios -formales e informales, sistemáticos o aleatorios, virtuales, impresos u orales- en los que se afirma el sentido de una lectura que integra, de diversas formas, una sensibilidad religiosa.

Resumo: A partir do caso de lideranças da Nova Era que emergem previamente como lideranças mediáticas, pesquisamos o desenvolvimento de novas lideranças que se apoiam nas dobradiças de novos desenvolvimentos da mídia e redefinem as relações entre cultura e religião.

Abstract: Following the case of New Age leaders, we investigate the development of new leadership religious displays which are mounted on the media and redefine the boundaries between “culture” and “religion”.

The popularity and propagation of the Prosperity Theology or self-help discourses can be better understood by shedding some light on the principles of their reception.The growth of these discourses can be attributed to their ability to activate and articulate a key aspect of the symbolic universe of their recipients: the cosmological conscience. This aspect accounts for their popularity and is the common element underlying the two paradigmatic cases studied in this paper: the Pentecostal faithful of the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area and a reader named Paulo Coehlo, who inhabits a favela of Rio de Janeiro.The paper demonstrates, through a series of analysis, that the dissemination of discourses that praise and ensure material prosperity and subjective wellbeing can be explained by their ability to blend individualized, consumerist and mundane practices with a "cosmological" view of the world (tendencies that appear to be in contradiction but are complementary in the poorest segments of Latin American urban populations). In this sense, we conclude that the Prosperity Theology and self-help literature allow a communication between active elements of an "unfinished secularization" with modern self affirmation and contemporary markets.

El arraigo y difusión de la Teología de la Prosperidad o de los discursos de autoayuda pueden comprenderse mejor si se investigan las premisas de su recepción. La expansión de estos discursos se debe a su capacidad de activación y articulación de un aspecto clave del universo simbólico que los recibe: la conciencia cosmológica que explica su amplia recepción es el elemento común que subyace al análisis de los dos casos paradigmáticos expuestos: el de algunos fieles pentecostales del Gran Buenos Aires y el de un lector de Paulo Coelho en una favela de Río de Janeiro. Por medio del conjunto de los análisis se demuestra que la propagación de los discursos que exaltan y aseguran la prosperidad material y el bienestar subjetivo puede explicarse por su capacidad de compatibilizar tendencias individualizantes, consumistas y terrenales con una visión "cosmológica" del mundo (tendencias contradictorias pero complementarias de la sensibilidad de los sectores populares de las poblaciones urbanas latinoamericanas). En ese sentido, concluiremos con la afirmación de que la Teología de la Prosperidad y la literatura de autoayuda permiten la comunicación de los elementos activos de "una secularización inconclusa" con la moderna afirmación del Yo y el mercado.

Abstract This work describes three different ways of conceiving suffering and cure, and consequently, three different concepts of a personhood. The ethnographic work was done in a peripherical region of Buenos Aires metropolitan area. It focus in the inquire about the therapeutic and religious experiences of these people. Religious agents – pentecostal and catholics –, healers, doctors and psychologists are a set of common resources from wich this population selects and combines terms that are the basis of three different conceptions: the monist conception, based on the close relationship between the physical and the moral categories; the dualist conception, based on the spiritual and material distinction; and the trialist conception, wich includes a psychological element, a reaction against the dualist conception, and it aims a partial recuperation and an original reelaboration of the monist conception.

Resumo O presente trabalho descreve três concepções diferenciadas de doença, de cura e, consequentemente, da noção de pessoa. O trabalho foi feito uma área periférica da cidade de Buenos Aires. Os dados etnográficos centram na questão da trajetória terapêutica religiosa dos habitantes deste subúrbio. Agentes religiosos católicos e pentecostais, curandeiros, médicos e psicólogos fazem parte de um conjunto a partir do qual os sujeitos selecionam e combinam termos que dão consistência às seguintes concepções: a que chamaremos monista, baseada na estreita relação entre as categorias físicas e morais, a dualista que opera sobre a base da separação da ordem espiritual e material e a trinitária que integra uma esfera psicológica e implica uma reação contra a segunda e uma reabilitação parcial e original da primeira.