Migration and Vodou (review)

Karen Richman's Migration and Vodou is a remarkably broad and deep ethnography that engages with several bodies of literature at once, including: the literatures on migration, transnationalism, and diasporas; the anthropology of religion; performance and media studies; and ethnographies of global capitalism. In locating her analysis at the intersection of such divergent fields, Richman engages in what she calls "bilateral ethnographic research" (p. 31), or what is commonly known as multi-sited fieldwork. Her research, conducted over two decades, involved sustained interactions with a mobile community of workers from the village of Ti Rivyè, many of whom live and work in South Florida.

Located in the Léogane Plain, in the south of Haiti, Ti Rivyè is a coastal fishing village. Between 1979 and 1982 (and certainly before and well after), many residents took part in the wave of overseas migration known as kanntè — ironically named for motorized boats or Canters, despite the fact that the so-called "boat people" attempted the 700-mile crossing in 15-foot canoes. As Richman notes, "nearly every family in Ti Rivyè has at least one member Over There" (p. 65), making the village itself the geographical and moral anchor of a community that is truly transnational. Most of those who made it to US shores are agricultural workers in South Florida, though during the off-season many migrate north to work in state-licensed labor camps in Virginia.

Richman begins with a detailed discussion of the production of an audio cassette-tape letter sent from Se Byen Dioguy, a priest and healer in Ti Rivyè, to his younger brother Pierre, known by the nickname Ti Chini, who lives and works in South Florida. (This letter and others are included on the accompanying CD.) The cassette-tape — a common form of transnational communication between migrants and "home" communities — contained both a spoken letter and a ritual song. In the former, Se Byen chastised Ti Chini for "forgetting" his family and his home, and for not sending enough money back to the community. In the latter, however, Se Byen offered a quite different message about the strength and permanence of both his own health and status and that of the ritual house over which he presides. In the final chapter and epilogue, Richman returns to this letter and song, confronting Se Byen about the intended content and implicit message of both after Ti Chini rejects his brother's ritual authority by converting to Protestantism, and dies suddenly and painfully of sorcery or "sent sickness."

The story of this ritual contest between members of the home community and their migratory relatives, alongside the story of the conversion and death of Ti Chini, show how the history of labor migration, transnationalism, and global capitalism are located in the intimate space of social relations and personal lives, especially in the life histories of those caught up in such global processes. The dramatic story of Ti Chini's contest with his family, his defense of his conversion to Protestantism, and his own interpretation of his sickness and impending death provide an effective rhetorical device for framing Richman's argument. Ti Chini's story, and Richman's attempt to make sense of his life and death, provides a clear and succinct entry into a complex analysis of wide-ranging social, political, and economic processes and their effects.

The intervening chapters are a tour-de-force. Throughout chapters 2-9, Richman provides an insightful analysis of Haitian material and symbolic life, bringing together a dizzying array of literature and evidence to craft an incredibly rich account of displacement and dependency. For example, in chapters 2-4, she offers one of the best accounts yet of the transformation of land and labor relations among the Haitian peasantry in the 20th century, tracking how Haiti became a producer and exporter of migrant labor and how Haitians became structurally dependent on food imports and remittances from migrant wage-labor.

In...