Iconography of Religions
Author: Arthur P. Bourgeois
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 90
ISBN-13: 9789004070950
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Author: Arthur P. Bourgeois
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 90
ISBN-13: 9789004070950
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Bourgeois
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2023-09-20
Total Pages: 84
ISBN-13: 9004666362
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Claude Brodeur
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-07
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 1134414218
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAfrican societies are gifted with a rich creativity, often expressed in intimate corporeal terms. For the Yaka people of southwestern Congo, such manifestations can have individual, social, or even cosmic significance. The Law of the Lifegivers investigates the importance among the Yaka of body and space in their daily life, exercise of power, and initiatic traditions. Through this analysis, Devisch and Brodeur show that body, desire, and symbol are intertwined, so that bodily expression can act as sensuous and powerful symbol. The domestication of passion and the institutionalizing of a subject are all expressed in bodily terms, particularly during initiations; the ethical order of law rests on many bodily symbols, including the importance of maternal and paternal lifegivers. The authors vividly describe the different life-giving or life-threatening roles which function in this society, such as sorcerer, diviner, therapist, and chief, as well as the funeral drama which shapes the passage to the afterlife with the ancestors, as experienced by the dying subject and his community. Through their dialogue and correspondence, Devisch and Brodeur (an anthropologist and a psychoanalyst, respectively) bring together two, sometimes conflicting, intellectual approaches. They aim to unravel a truth which is freed, as much as possible, from the presumption that only the West possesses the knowledge of objective discourse and science. Through the interaction, the authors reveal the semantic threads, located at the very heart of the most vital, life-giving processes, which weave the fabric of the practice and thought of a riveting, passionate Africa.
Author: Renaat Devisch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1993-11
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780226143620
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor the Yaka of Southwestern Zaire, infertility is a tear in the fabric of life, and the Khita fertility ritual is a trusted way of reweaving the damaged strands. In Weaving the Threads of Life Rene Devisch offers an extended analysis of the Khita cult, which leads to an original account of the workings of ritual healing. Drawing on many years among urban and rural Yaka, Devisch analyzes their understanding of existence as a fabric of firmly but delicately interwoven threads of nature, body, and society. The fertility healing ritual calls forth forces, feelings, and meanings that allow women to rejoin themselves to the complex pattern of social and cosmic life. These elaborate rites—whether simulating mortal agony and rebirth, gestation and delivery, or flowering and decay; using music and dance, steambath or massage, dream messages or scarification—are not based on symbols of traditional beliefs. Rather, Devisch shows, the rites themselves generate forces and meaning, creating and shaping the cosmic, physical, and social world of their participants. In contrast to current theoretical methods such as postmodern or symbolical interpretation, Devisch's praxiological approach is unique in also using phenomenological insights into the intent and results of anthropological fieldwork. This innovative work will have ramifications beyond African studies, reaching into the anthropology of medicine and the body, comparative religious history, and women's studies.
Author: Lola Romanucci-Ross
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 406
ISBN-13: 9780761991113
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDisscusses ethnic identity in contemporary subjects
Author: George A. De Vos
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Published: 2006-06-22
Total Pages: 444
ISBN-13: 0759114226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this thoroughly revised fourth edition, with ten new chapters, the editors provide thought-provoking discussions on the importance of ethnicity in different cultural and social contexts. The authors focus especially on changing ethnic and national identities, on migration and ethnic minorities, on ethnic ascription versus self-definitions, and on shifting ethnic identities and political control. The international group of scholars examines ethnic identities, conflicts and accommodations around the globe, in Africa (including Zaire and South Africa), Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand, and the former Yugoslavia. It will serve as an excellent text for courses in race & ethnic relations, and anthropology and ethnic studies.
Author: Arthur Paul Bourgeois
Publisher: Leiden : E.J. Brill
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 88
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Robert F. Gray
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 1136529128
DOWNLOAD EBOOKToo often accounts of African family life have tended to describe the family in purely static terms. The contributors to this book emphasize the developmental or time dimension of the family, analysing it as a process. In the seven different societies described in East Africa, the Congo and the Transvaal the changing nature of the distribution of rights in the family property and resources is directly linked with the growth and change of the family itself. First published in 1964.
Author: Allison Butler Herrick
Publisher:
Published: 1967
Total Pages: 460
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGeneral survey of history, economics, politics and culture of Angola, formerly Portuguese West Africa.
Author: Hans-Joachim Koloss
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Published: 1990
Total Pages: 89
ISBN-13: 0870995901
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