The aim of this article is to discuss the adaptations of magical-religious practices to the emergence of Brazilian urban society. The magical thought, which is part of Brazilian religious sphere, is put in perspective, taking into consideration how it developed in order to get the necessary features to exist in the urban scenario. These magical-religious practices gained various forms so that they could play specific roles, keeping at the same time the relation with the social transformations that Brazilian urbanization demanded to those who lived in the emerging cities. Special attention is given to the contemporary advent of the market of salvation goods, what gives to the religious sphere the logic of the market. One of the reasons of the contemporary adaptations and reproduction of magical-religious practices, which are so well adapted to the urban scenario, is the peculiarity of the Brazilian modernization experience. Such peculiar experience of modernization is characterized by the dissonance between the process of urbanization and other processes of social change which are part of the rationalization of Western societies, such as the process of secularization that various experiences of modernization passed through. These considerations help to understand Brazilian urbanization as a historical individuality among others within Western modernity.
Urban sociology; Magical-religious practices; Urbanization; Western modernity