Habitus and hybridity: an interpretation of the syncretism in the Afro-Catholic religion according to Boudieu

The meeting of traditional African religion and Catholicism it? the Americas has produced some of the most significant and most analyzed examples of syncretism in the history of religions. Much scholarly discussion of this phenomenon, however, tends to portray religions such as Candombli in Brazil and Voodoli in Haiti as formalistic conglomerations of Euro-Catholic "items" and African "survivals", thereby blurring the integrative theological creativity of Africans and their New World progeny. Employing Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of ''habitus'' and "capital" to theorize specific historical and contemporary examples of Kongolese influences on Haitian religion, the author aims to help clarify the epistemological role of African agency in Afro-Catholic syncretism.