Abstract: This article, written from the perspective of a history of the anthropology of African-Brazilian religions, focuses on Roger Bastide's thought on syncretism. It emphasizes the mobile and uncertain characteristics of Bastide's thematization of syncretism and seeks to highlight its lines of continuity and discontinuity. While stressing the importance of Bastide's Africanist view of syncretism, the article places particular emphasis on the mutations of Bastide's thematization of the topic, concerning both the conceptual argumentation of syncretism and the evaluative stance that the French anthropologist adopted towards the syncretic scenarios he reviewed. Issues such as the compartmentalization principle, the distinction between syncretism by juxtaposition and by fusion, the counterpoint between religious syncretism and magical syncretism, are addressed throughout the article, which emphasize common points and divergences in the analysis proposed by Bastide.
Roger Bastide; African-Brazilian religions; syncretism; history of anthropology