The Cultural Politics of Obeah

The Cultural Politics of Obeah

Author: Diana Paton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-08-10

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1107025656

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A study of the importance of debates about obeah, and state suppression of it, for Caribbean struggles about freedom and citizenship.


Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic

Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic

Author: Akinwumi Ogundiran

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2014-10-03

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 0253013917

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Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.


Caribbean Migrations

Caribbean Migrations

Author: Anke Birkenmaier

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2020-12-18

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1978814518

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2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title With mass migration changing the configuration of societies worldwide, we can look to the Caribbean to reflect on the long-standing, entangled relations between countries and areas as uneven in size and influence as the United States, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. More so than other world regions, the Caribbean has been characterized as an always already colonial region. It has long been a key area for empires warring over influence spheres in the new world, and where migration waves from Africa, Europe, and Asia accompanied every political transformation over the last five centuries. In Caribbean Migrations, an interdisciplinary group of humanities and social science scholars study migration from a long-term perspective, analyzing the Caribbean's "unincorporated subjects" from a legal, historical, and cultural standpoint, and exploring how despite often fractured public spheres, Caribbean intellectuals, artists, filmmakers, and writers have been resourceful at showcasing migration as the hallmark of our modern age.


Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution

Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution

Author: Crystal Nicole Eddins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-10-28

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1108843727

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A new analysis of the origins of the Haitian Revolution, revealing the consciousness, solidarity, and resistance that helped it succeed.


Women and the Ancestors

Women and the Ancestors

Author: Virginia Kerns

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780252066658

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This classic study of Black Carib culture and its preservation through ancestral rituals organized by older women now includes a foreword by Constance R. Sutton and an afterword by the author. "One of the outstanding studies of this genre. . . . Refreshingly, the book has good photographs, as well as strong endnotes and bibliography, and very useful tables, figures, maps, and index." -- Choice "An outstanding contribution to the literature on female-centered bilateral kinship and residence." -- Grant D. Jones, American Ethnologist "A richly detailed account of a contemporary culture in which older women are important, valued, and self-respecting." -- Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly "A combination of competent research, interwoven themes, and an easily readable, sometimes beautifully evocative, prose style." -- Heather Strange, The Gerontologist


The Experiential Caribbean

The Experiential Caribbean

Author: Pablo F. Gómez

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1469630885

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Opening a window on a dynamic realm far beyond imperial courts, anatomical theaters, and learned societies, Pablo F. Gomez examines the strategies that Caribbean people used to create authoritative, experientially based knowledge about the human body and the natural world during the long seventeenth century. Gomez treats the early modern intellectual culture of these mostly black and free Caribbean communities on its own merits and not only as it relates to well-known frameworks for the study of science and medicine. Drawing on an array of governmental and ecclesiastical sources—notably Inquisition records—Gomez highlights more than one hundred black ritual practitioners regarded as masters of healing practices and as social and spiritual leaders. He shows how they developed evidence-based healing principles based on sensorial experience rather than on dogma. He elucidates how they nourished ideas about the universality of human bodies, which contributed to the rise of empirical testing of disease origins and cures. Both colonial authorities and Caribbean people of all conditions viewed this experiential knowledge as powerful and competitive. In some ways, it served to respond to the ills of slavery. Even more crucial, however, it demonstrates how the black Atlantic helped creatively to fashion the early modern world.


Understanding Rituals

Understanding Rituals

Author: Daniel de Coppet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11-01

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1134926634

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Understanding Rituals explores how ritual can be understood within the framework of contemporary social anthropology, and shows that ritual is now one of the most fertile fields of anthropological research. The contributors demonstrate how rituals create and maintain - or transform - a society's cultural identity and social relations. By examining specific rituals from various theoretical viewpoints, they reveal the ultimate and contradictory values to which each society as a whole is attached.


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.


The Rituals of Dinner

The Rituals of Dinner

Author: Margaret Visser

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-06-23

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1504011694

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A New York Times Notable Book: A renowned scholar explores the way we eat across cultures and throughout history. From the wild parties of ancient Greece to the strictures of an Upper East Side meal to the ritualistic feasts of cannibals, Margaret Visser takes us on a fascinating journey through the diverse practices, customs, and taboos that define how and why we prepare and consume food the way we do. With keen insights into small details we take for granted, such as the origins of forks and chopsticks or why tablecloths exist, and examinations of broader issues like the economic implications of dining etiquette, Visser scrutinizes table manners across eras and oceans, offering an intimate new understanding of eating both as a biological necessity and a cultural phenomenon. Witty and impeccably researched, The Rituals of Dinner is a captivating blend of folklore, sociology, history, and humor. In the words of the New York Times Book Review, “Read it, because you’ll never look at a table knife the same way again.”


Cult and Ritual Abuse

Cult and Ritual Abuse

Author: James Randall Noblitt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-07-15

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1440831491

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This personal yet scholarly journey into the confusing and clandestine world of ritual abuse survivors sheds light on their catastrophic experiences and their efforts to heal afterward. Revised, updated, and expanded, this third edition of a classic study is one of the most authoritative and evenhanded volumes to tackle its hotly debated subject matter. Incorporating the authors' firsthand observations, the book provides historical, anthropological, and psychological context for contemporary reports of both ritual abuse and ritual crime. In addition to sharing patient vignettes and a history of cult and ritual abuse in society, the authors explore fascinating topics related to these practices, among them what triggers personality shifts for victims even many years after the abuse has stopped. Importantly, the book shows how ritual abuse affects society as a whole, influencing civil and criminal law, politics, legislation, social movements, social welfare, and psychological theory. It provides unique insights into the scientific study, forensic investigation, and implementation of social services for survivors of cult and ritual abuse, discusses new research and treatment strategies, and establishes the foundation for a psychological diagnosis to be called Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder.