UC San Diego

My dissertation, The Cultural Politics of Evangelical Christianity in the Dominican Republic, is broadly concerned with questions of religion, identity and culture. Through ethnography, I explore the dynamic intersections of religious identity, culture and morality as they are lived in the context of urban poverty. Based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Villa Altagracia, Dominican Republic, my dissertation examines the lives of Pentecostal community members and the ways in which they negotiate identity, status and power in the context of religious heterodoxy and Catholic cultural supremacy. My dissertation contributes new insight into the dynamics of religious heterodoxy and pluralism, religion as strategic identity, and Pentecostalism as an important social and cultural institution at the local level. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious denomination in the Dominican Republic. This dissertation is concerned with the social and cultural effects of this growth at the local level and the ways in which Dominicans put their faith to work in their everyday lives. Pentecostalism in the Dominican Republic, because it is an entrenched feature of barrio life, features prominently in everyday negotiations of identity, status, and power. As such, Pentecostalism is an important vector in identity politics at the local level as well as social process and communion throughout the country. In the first chapter of this dissertation I explore exchange in the religious field and the relationship between Catholicism, Dominican vodú, and Pentecostal Christianity in the barrio and show how meaning is both shared and contested at the local level. In the second chapter I outline a politics of distinction at the center of local Pentecostal practice and show how Evangelical identity enables converts to transcend hierarchies of stigmatizing difference. In the third chapter I explore the relationship between the church and youth gangs. I explain the simultaneous popularity of both institutions for young men and conclude that both offer residents popular alternative spaces for critical agency and oppositional culture. In the last chapter I locate Pentecostalism within the context of Dominican ideas about masculinity, fidelity, and morality and explain how believers use Christian identity to claim respect in their communities