Creole Religions of the Caribbean
Creole Religions of the Caribbean

Author: Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2011-07-11

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0814762573

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A comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions developed in the Caribbean region Creolization—the coming together of diverse beliefs and practices to form new beliefs and practices—is one of the most significant phenomena in Caribbean religious history. Brought together in the crucible of the sugar plantation, Caribbean peoples drew on the variants of Christianity brought by European colonizers, as well as on African religious and healing traditions and the remnants of Amerindian practices, to fashion new systems of belief. Creole Religions of the Caribbean offers a comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions that have developed in the region. From Vodou, Santería, Regla de Palo, the Abakuá Secret Society, and Obeah to Quimbois and Espiritismo, the volume traces the historical–cultural origins of the major Creole religions, as well as the newer traditions such as Pocomania and Rastafarianism. This second edition updates the scholarship on the religions themselves and also expands the regional considerations of the Diaspora to the U. S. Latino community who are influenced by Creole spiritual practices. Fernández Olmos and Paravisini–Gebert also take into account the increased significance of material culture—art, music, literature—and healing practices influenced by Creole religions.

Religion, Culture, and Tradition in the Caribbean
Religion, Culture, and Tradition in the Caribbean

Author: Hemchand Gossai

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780312232429

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The Bible is the most widely read and influential book in the Caribbean. It seems to be everywhere and in every thing. The Bible has been used to name, claim, oppress, and exploit natives and the diaspora populations in the Caribbean, and it continues to define Caribbean reality and morality in the 21st century. In this anthology, scholars analyze the most fundamental assumptions and practices derived from different readings of the Bible at different epochs in Caribbean history. It tells a gripping tale of the struggle of ethnic peoples to find meaning, existence, and reality in a world they did not create.

Afro-Caribbean Religions
Afro-Caribbean Religions

Author: Nathaniel Samuel Murrell

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2010-01-25

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1439901759

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Religion is one of the most important elements of Afro-Caribbean culture linking its people to their African past, from Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santeria—popular religions that have often been demonized in popular culture—to Rastafari in Jamaica and Orisha-Shango of Trinidad and Tobago. In Afro-Caribbean Religions, Nathaniel Samuel Murrell provides a comprehensive study that respectfully traces the social, historical, and political contexts of these religions. And, because Brazil has the largest African population in the world outside of Africa, and has historic ties to the Caribbean, Murrell includes a section on Candomble, Umbanda, Xango, and Batique. This accessibly written introduction to Afro-Caribbean religions examines the cultural traditions and transformations of all of the African-derived religions of the Caribbean along with their cosmology, beliefs, cultic structures, and ritual practices. Ideal for classroom use, Afro-Caribbean Religions also includes a glossary defining unfamiliar terms and identifying key figures.

Obeah and Other Powers
Obeah and Other Powers

Author: Diana Paton

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2012-04-13

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0822351331

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This collection looks at Caribbean religious history from the late 18th century to the present including obeah, vodou, santeria, candomble, and brujeria. The contributors examine how these religions have been affected by many forces including colonialism, law, race, gender, class, state power, media represenation, and the academy.

African Beliefs in the New World
African Beliefs in the New World

Author: Lucie Pradel

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780865437036

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Like a kaleidoscope, the Caribbean world displays the vibrant colors of its diversity. Ethnic groups from four continents brought their customs and beliefs to this New World. The sheer number of African people brought to the Caribbean islands perpetuated through their spiritual vitality, the central role played by traditional religions in African life. Though they hadn't brought along the material support of their worship, they had buried in their memory other essential supports: memories of gods, of myths, rites, rhythms, tales, legends, proverbs, songs, dances, sculptures, all the fundamental vectors of their religious thought. Through a process of secularization, continuity, adaptation, creation, syncretism and synthesis, these elements helped vitalize the artistic, profane and sacred domains of Caribbean cultures.

Caribbean Healing Traditions
Caribbean Healing Traditions

Author: Patsy Sutherland

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-24

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1136920579

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As Caribbean communities become more international, clinicians and scholars must develop new paradigms for understanding treatment preferences and perceptions of illness. Despite evidence supporting the need for culturally appropriate care and the integration of traditional healing practices into conventional health and mental health care systems, it is unclear how such integration would function since little is known about the therapeutic interventions of Caribbean healing traditions. Caribbean Healing Traditions: Implications for Health and Mental Health fills this gap. Drawing on the knowledge of prominent clinicians, scholars, and researchers of the Caribbean and the diaspora, these healing traditions are explored in the context of health and mental health for the first time, making Caribbean Healing Traditions an invaluable resource for students, researchers, faculty, and practitioners in the fields of nursing, counseling, psychotherapy, psychiatry, social work, youth and community development, and medicine.

Island Gospel
Island Gospel

Author: Melvin L. Butler

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2019-10-30

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0252051769

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Pentecostals throughout Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora use music to declare what they believe and where they stand in relation to religious and cultural outsiders. Yet the inclusion of secular music forms like ska, reggae, and dancehall complicated music's place in social and ritual practice, challenging Jamaican Pentecostals to reconcile their religious and cultural identities. Melvin Butler journeys into this crossing of boundaries and its impact on Jamaican congregations and the music they make. Using the concept of flow, Butler's ethnography evokes both the experience of Spirit-influenced performance and the transmigrations that fuel the controversial sharing of musical and ritual resources between Jamaica and the United States. Highlighting constructions of religious and cultural identity, Butler illuminates music's vital place in how the devout regulate spiritual and cultural flow while striving to maintain both the sanctity and fluidity of their evolving tradition.Insightful and original, Island Gospel tells the many stories of how music and religious experience unite to create a sense of belonging among Jamaican people of faith.

Religion in the Kitchen
Religion in the Kitchen

Author: Elizabeth Pérez

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2016-02-16

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1479839558

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Honorable Mention, 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association Winner, 2017 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion section of the American Anthropological Association Finalist, 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions An examination of the religious importance of food among Caribbean and Latin American communities Before honey can be offered to the Afro-Cuban deity Ochún, it must be tasted, to prove to her that it is good. In African-inspired religions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, such gestures instill the attitudes that turn participants into practitioners. Acquiring deep knowledge of the diets of the gods and ancestors constructs adherents’ identities; to learn to fix the gods’ favorite dishes is to be “seasoned” into their service. In this innovative work, Elizabeth Pérez reveals how seemingly trivial "micropractices" such as the preparation of sacred foods, are complex rituals in their own right. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in Chicago among practitioners of Lucumí, the transnational tradition popularly known as Santería, Pérez focuses on the behind-the-scenes work of the primarily women and gay men responsible for feeding the gods. She reveals how cooking and talking around the kitchen table have played vital socializing roles in Black Atlantic religions. Entering the world of divine desires and the varied flavors that speak to them, this volume takes a fresh approach to the anthropology of religion. Its richly textured portrait of a predominantly African-American Lucumí community reconceptualizes race, gender, sexuality, and affect in the formation of religious identity, proposing that every religion coalesces and sustains itself through its own secret recipe of micropractices.