Roger Marius Cesar Bastide, born in Nimes, France on April 1, 1898, was a distinguished scholar and Titulaire de la Chaire d'Ethnologie Sociale et Religieuse at the Sorbonne. As a young man, he attended Nimes College in France. His main interests were social psychiatry and the anthropology of religion. Like Claude Levi-Strauss, Bastide was a pioneer of structural anthropology. He combined elements of that approach with ethnopsychiatry. Bastide could be considered both a sociologist and an anthropologist, even though he studied theology in college.
Bastide's interests eventually lead him to Brazil in 1937, where he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Sao Paulo. He was very interested in race relations, the sociology of mental illness, the meaning of "structure", and applied anthropology. Because of these interests, he studied the Afro-Brazilian people while he was in Brazil. He also studied Brazilian religion and contributed to Brazil's education system by helping to reform it. Another interest of his was the Candombles of Bahia, which were cults that have African religious elements in them.
Bastide studied religions as systems. He analyzed the origins of religions, theories of the sacred, social elements of religious life, religious change and religious systems. The spiritual aspects of religion were not discounted by him, even though he used a meticulously descriptive approach. His main area of research was in Afro-American studies. He was especially interested in how Africans and Afro-Americans adapted to French culture. He also studied the religious symbolism of the Yoruba.
In the foreword for Mary Baker's translation of Bastide's book, Social Origins of Religion, James L. Peacock said, " Of major importance in its time and in our own, Social Origins of Religion goes beyond historical interest to revive and extend our thinking about religion in a comparative panhuman framework- a framework of critical pertinence in a world reshaped by globalism and fundamentalism."
Bastide received the Legion d'honnuer and also taught at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He founded the Centre de Psychiatric Sociale, which he directed until he died on April 10, 1974. Bastide was the author of more than eight hundred articles and thirty books. Some of his publications include:
Les problemes de la vie mystique (1931)
Elements de sociologie religieuse (1936)
A poesia afro-brasileira (1943)
Sociologie et psychanalyse (1951)
Les Religions africaines au Bresil (1961)
Sociologie des maladies mentales (1965)
Anthropologie applique (1971)
References
Lyons, Andrew P. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol 18, New York, NY, 1979
Winters, Christopher (Editor). International Dictionary of Anthropologists, Garland Publishing, NY & London, 1991
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Oct., 1974) pp. 419
Social Origins of Religion by Roger Bastide, translated by Mary Baker, foreword by James L. Peacock. University of Minnesota Press.
Written By: Lance Barker, 2003
Edited By: Lillian Dolentz, 2008