Happy Houses, Family Troubles, and Diversity Divisions: Lukumi Intra-Religious Social Relations in the United States

• In Event: 052 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Beyond Anglo Christianity

Abstract

As one piece of a larger project focusing on the year in white among cultural newcomers to the Afro-Cuban Lukumi religious tradition in the U.S., this paper draws upon a mix of qualitative data sources – approximately 8 years of autoethnographic observation/participation, 52 in-depth interviews, and an online survey (N = 199) – to examine intra-religious social relations. Examining religious practitioners’ experiences in lineage-based, decentralized structure of “houses” -- referred to with the Yoruba term ile or the Spanish term casa de ocha -- the paper describes participants’ characterizations of their experiences as supportive, neglectful, and discriminatory and seeks to place these experiences into the larger sociological context of religious identification in pluralist postmodernity.

Author

• C. Lynn Carr, Seton Hall University