Jean Rouch and the Question of Mobility Notes on Petit à petit and the globalization of Afro-American religions

Abstract

“Movement” and “mobility” are two key concepts of contemporary social and cultural anthropology. The main idea of this article is that the question of mobility is, in a more explicit or implicit way, present in the majority of Jean Rouch’s work and constitutes one of its most current and innovative aspects. I suggest exploring the relation between Rouch and movement from three closely interlinked angles: movement as a research object; movement as a research method; and movement as a kind of “existential condition” inherent to the work of the anthropologist. In the last part of the article, I reveal how Rouch’s legacy can be used as a source of inspiration for carrying out visual anthropology research on mobility in the contemporary world and, more specifically, on the globalization of “Afro-American religions”.