The Orisha religion in a transnational perspective

This International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) keynote lecture offers a glimpse on 20 years of research on the transnationalization of Orisha religion in the ‘Black Atlantic’. By expanding Gilroy’s analyses to include the South Atlantic, and in particular, Brazil and Nigeria, I focus on the diffusion of these religious practices in a tricontinental space of circulation. The transnational ‘Yoruba’ community is constituted on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to the continuous exchanges between these two territories. If the Yoruba identity in Nigeria needs its American ‘mirror’ to exist, the so-called ‘globalization of the Orisha religion’ is the product of this incessant negotiation between different versions of the Yoruba tradition in Africa as well as in the diaspora. This also includes the persisting role of nation in transnational processes and the issue of religious (im)mobilities, showing that religious transnationalization is not necessarily linked to migration.