# Publication of 'Repenser la catégorisation religieuse à partir du Bénin, terre du Vodun'

- **Type:** Publication
- **Date:** 10 March 2026
- **Tags:** Publication, Benin, Religion, West Africa
- **Web page:** https://www.frederickmadore.com/activities/repenser-categorisation-religieuse-benin-publication

*Publication of the edited volume L'Afrique des religions à l'épreuve des chiffres et des catégorisations, featuring a chapter co-authored with Fiacre Anato on the limits of religious categorisations in Beninese censuses and surveys.*

Delighted to see the publication of the edited volume [*L'Afrique des religions à l'épreuve des chiffres et des catégorisations*](https://www.hemisphereseditions.com/l-afrique-des-religions), directed by Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron and Aurélien Dasré, to which I contributed a chapter with Fiacre Anato entitled "[Repenser la catégorisation religieuse à partir du Bénin, terre du Vodun](https://www.frederickmadore.com/publications/repenser-categorisation-religieuse-benin-2026.md)".

Drawing on the Beninese case, our chapter examines the limits of religious categorisations in censuses and demographic surveys. Statistics suggest a steady decline of Vodun since independence in favour of Christianity and Islam, but fieldwork tells a different story: multiple affiliations, circulation between traditions, hybridities that survey categories struggle to capture.

The interdisciplinary dialogue with the other contributors was particularly enriching, notably with Aurélien Dasré, a demographer, whose expertise shed light on how religious categories are constructed in censuses and Demographic and Health Surveys — data that historians like myself often draw on without sufficiently questioning their limitations.