Studies on Religion & Society

This research laboratory unites and stimulates studies exploring the contemporary dynamics of the Haitian religious universe. An intense relationship between the domains of religion and politics was central to the constitution of Haiti as an independent nation in 1804. Religion, especially -Vodoun, has since been closely associated with the imagery of Haitian national culture. For some decades, the growing presence of Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, as well as the emergence of new religious movements (Rasta, Muslim Rasta, Charismatic, and others) alongside Afro-American and Catholic religious practices, indicate important transformations in the relations between religion and society in Haiti. 

The studies pursued by the laboratory pay particular attention to transformation in the relations between religion and different domains of contemporary Haitian society, taking into account population movements and the flow of sociocultural forms through the Haitian diaspora, and the transnational processes that traverse the Caribbean and Latin American region and destabilize traditional religious outlooks and practices in Haiti and elsewhere.

The laboratory currently includes four lines of research:

1. New Religious Movements in Haiti and in the Haitian Diaspora
2. Religion, Economics, Politics and National Culture 
3. Religion, Migration and the Environment
4. A Mapping of Religions in Haiti


The Loas and the Orixas, Afro-American ancestors: a comparison of the social meanings of money, property and market in Haitian vodoun and Brazilian candomblé (2007-open)
This dissertation research project is being conducted by a doctoral student at PPGAS/MN st the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in collaboration with the Economy, Money, and Markets Laboratory