ABSTRACT
Personal affliction, politics, and spirituality thus mingle in the motivations of those who frequent the terreiro, which is firmly anchored in modern urban society. By taking these social networks into account and by analyzing their interaction in a single place, it is possible to study the conflicts and divergent interpretations implied by this heterogeneous situation. This approach, which focuses on situations rather than the analysis of unitary structures, is not a pure method; it does, however, define the ethnologist's engagement with the research subjects. Early Afro-Brazilian studies were dominated by a fundamentally racial approach. Shortly after abolition, Raimundo Nina Rodrigues argued that the African race, of which the Yoruba ethnic group was for him the most advanced, had its own spiritual life. Carneiros contemporary, Melville Herskovits, lent theoretical legitimacy to the thesis of an ethnic Candombl. An ethnologist of ancient Dahomey, Herskovits saw African survivals and the reinterpretation of African sacred and secular culture in the New World.
