El Cobre and its socio-religious dynamics

This book stands as an essential contribution to the sociology of religion in Cuba, combining academic rigor with a sensitive perspective on the community environment. It thus constitutes a key reference for understanding the transformations and continuities that characterize the contemporary religious landscape in the region, and demonstrates the value of microsocial studies for projecting interpretations of general scope. This research, which forms part of the author's doctoral dissertation in Sociological Sciences, offers a profound and rigorous analysis of the socio-religious dynamics in the town of El Cobre, in the province of Santiago de Cuba. Through a meticulous case study, Dr. Roberto Hernández Zayas examines the complex configuration of the religious field in this emblematic town, characterized by the coexistence and competition of diverse religious systems, from Catholicism and Protestantism to syncretic expressions such as Santería and Spiritism. With a robust theoretical framework integrating contributions from Pierre Bourdieu, François Houtart, and Joel James, among others, the author explores the processes of transaction and multiple plural concurrence that define the interactions between different religious actors. The work not only describes the structure of the copper mining religious field but also reveals the tensions, conflicts, and strategies of symbolic domination that underlie interreligious relations, all within the context of a community with a deeply rooted cultural and religious identity.