Search Results - Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

Roger Bastide

Roger Bastide (Nîmes, 1 April 1898 – Maisons-Laffitte, 10 April 1974) was a French sociologist and anthropologist, specialist in sociology and Brazilian literature.

He was raised as a Protestant and studied philosophy in France, developing at the same time an interest for sociological issues. His first sociological field research, in 1930–31, was about immigrants from Armenia to Valence, France. As scholars later noticed, already in his first works about the Armenians he was interested in how the memory of a different culture survives when a group of people moves to a faraway land, a theme that will become crucial in his studies of African populations in Brazil.

In 1938, the University of São Paulo asked him to succeed Claude Lévi-Strauss in its chair of Sociology. He remained in Brazil until 1957, and in 1958 moved back to France, where he became a professor of Sociology of religion at the Sorbonne University.

In 1958, shortly before starting his course at the Sorbonne, Bastide had made his first research trip to Africa, exploring the traditional religions of Dahomey and Nigeria. Bastide devoted the last part of his career to social psychology. In 1959, he created in Paris the Center for Social Psychiatry. After the death of Georges Gurvitch in 1965, he also became the director of the Paris Center for the Sociology of Knowledge. He retired from his teaching position at the Sorbonne in 1968. In 1973, one year before his death, he visited Brazil for the last time.

Bastide is known for his contributions to the study of Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean religions. Bastide's "The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations" (1960) documented Afro-Brazilian religions such as Catimbo, Xango, Candomblé, Macumba, Umbanda, and Batuques. Bastide also published "Le Candomblé de Bahia" (1958) and "African Civilizations in the New World", translated in 1971.

Bastide came to an “identification” with Candomblé practitioners, both religiously and emotionally, famously claiming “Africanus sum,” “I am an African.” This was criticized by a later generation of scholars as depriving him of the necessary objectivity.

On the other hand, with all his sympathy for Candomblé, Bastide ended up proposing “an historicist model in which candomblé is almost inevitably converted into umbanda or disaggregated into macumba.” Indeed, he regarded as a “privilege” to have been able to witness in Brazil the birth of Umbanda as a new religion.

An unintended effect of Bastide’s work on, and sympathy for, Candomblé is that his books were read by practitioners of Candomblé themselves, contributing to the “codification” if not, as some scholars argue, to a new “invention of candomblé” in the 20th century.

An important, if controversial, sociological contribution of Bastide is his description of syncretism. At the core of his interpretation of syncretism is the “principle of compartmentalization” (''principe de coupure''), which “allows for the alternation or cohabitation, in a single individual or within a single group, of logics or categories that are supposedly otherwise incompatible and irreducible.” For instance, one can be both a Catholic and a practitioner of Candomblé: the two “compartments” live together, without merging, in the same individual, who does not see the coexistence as problematic. Only if he or she reflects about the contradictions, the individual moves to a “formal acculturation,” a second level of syncretism were the two previously separated religious world-views uneasily merge.

The character Agliè in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum bears resemblance to Roger Bastide. Provided by Wikipedia
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  1. 1

    African civilisations in the New World / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1971
    Book
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    Sociologia do folclore brasileiro / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1959
    Book
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    Social origins of religion / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 2003
    Book
  7. 7

    Arte y sociedad / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1948
    Book
  8. 8

    Poetas do Brasil / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1940
    Book
  9. 9

    Anatomie d'André Gide. by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1972
    Book
  10. 10

    Estudos afro-brasileiros. by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1946
    Book
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    Brasil, terra de contrastes / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1973
    Book
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    As Américas negras : as civilizações africanas no Novo Mundo / by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1974
    Book
  16. 16

    A poesia afro-brasileira. by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1943
    Book
  17. 17

    Brésil, terre des contrastes. by Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974

    Published 1957
    Book
  18. 18

    Sens et usages du terme structure dans les sciences humaines er sociales /

    Published 1962
    Other Authors: “…Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974…”
    Conference Proceeding Book
  19. 19

    Anagó : vocabulario lucumí (el yoruba que se habla en Cuba) / by Cabrera, Lydia

    Published 2017
    Other Authors: “…Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974…”
    Full Text (via Digitalia Hispanica)
    eBook
  20. 20

    Usi e significati del termine "struttura" nelle scienze umane e sociali /

    Published 1966
    Other Authors: “…Bastide, Roger, 1898-1974…”
    Conference Proceeding Book
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