85 p., This thesis examines the practice of Obeah--an Afro-Caribbean system of healing, harming, and divination through the use of spiritual powers--within two slave communities in Berbice and Demerara (British Guiana). This study is based primarily on legal documents--including testimony from more than a dozen slaves--generated during the criminal trials of two men accused of practicing Obeah in 1819 and 1821-22. In contrast to most previous studies of Obeah, which have been based largely on descriptions provided by British observers, this project takes advantage of this complex, overlapping body of evidence to explore the social dynamics of Obeah as experienced by enslaved men and women themselves, including Obeah practitioners, their clients, and other witnesses. This study reveals that Obeah rituals could be extremely violent, that Obeah practitioners were feared as well as respected among their contemporaries, that the authority of Obeah practitioners was based on demonstrable success, and that slave communities in general were complex social worlds characterized by conflict and division as well as by support and unity--conclusions that combine to produce a fresh, humane vision of Afro-diasporan culture and community under slavery.
164 p., Traces the journey of blacks from the Middle Passage through urban migration northward in black fiction. Argues that the historical use of religious rhetoric is transcended in black writing of the 20th century in order to recast black victimization during slavery, counter the progress of turn-of-the-century white supremacy, and chronicle the rise of economic racism which created the 20th century black ghetto. The religious doctrines discussed in this study include Puritan missionizing and heretical purges in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem , the social work of the Catholic church in Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South , and the cultural intensity of the Pentecostal/Apostolic church in Go Tell It on the Mountain.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
191 p., Comparing Cuban American and African American religiosity, this book argues that Afro-Cuban religiosity and culture are central to understanding the Cuban and Cuban American condition. It interprets this saturation of the Afro-Cuban as transcending race and affecting Cubans and Cuban Americans in spite of their pigmentation or self-identification.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
267 p., Draws on in-depth interviews to reveal the personal experiences of those who adopted the religion in the 1950s to 1970s, one generation past the movement's emergence . By talking with these Rastafari elders, he seeks to understand why and how Jamaicans became Rastafari in spite of rampant discrimination, and what sustains them in their faith and identity.
301 p., Throughout the 20th century, various Cuban regimes have tried to eliminate the practice of religions of African origin by combining repressive legislation and coercive social practices that stigmatized practitioners as culturally backward, socially deviant, and mentally deficient. Religious practitioners, however, used the state apparatus to continue worshipping their African deities, sometimes challenging government officials' excessive application of the law or devising ways to evade their scrutiny. Through an analysis of archival documents, newspapers, works produced by practitioners, oral history interviews and published ethnographies, this dissertation examines the strategies practitioners of Ocha-Ifá - also known as Santería - employed as they continued practicing the religion of their ancestors and participating in the national projects of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period after the 1959 revolution, this dissertation argues that revolutionary policies that were designed to discourage the practice of religions of African origin actually facilitated its continued practice and development in unintended ways.
Writer Zora Neale Hurston notes the identity and culture of the Africans in the U.S., in which there is struggle in resisting with violence against the slave societies and racial discrimination to maintain the culture. Mentions the association of black ritual practices on Hurston's writings, "Mules and Men" and "Moses, Man of the Mountain," where slavery is considered as factor of spreading the folk arts.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
359 p., Examines informal economies in Ghana, Jamaica, Kenya, and South Africa, looking at their ideological roots, social organization, and vulnerability to global capital. Includes Lewin L. Williams' "A theological perspective on the effects of globalization on poverty in Pan-African Contexts" and Noel Leo Erskine's "Caribbean issues : the Caribbean and African American Churches' response."
Tishken,Joel E. (Editor), Falola,Toyin (Editor), and Akínyẹmí,Akíntúndé (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
365 p., Explores Sango religious traditions in West Africa and beyond. It considers the spread of polytheistic religious traditions from West Africa, the mythic Sango, the historical Sango, and syncretic traditions of Sango worship. Includes Stephen D. Glazier's article "Wither Sàngó? : an inquiry into Sàngó's "authenticity" and prominence in the Caribbean."
Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
248 p., Presents contemporary readings that contest in the areas of Caribbean religion, education, language, music, race, sexual behavior in a time of the AIDS pandemic, and the economy.
West African powers in the Caribbean have often been studied as important cultural and religious formations. This article treats them as ontological formations by collapsing the modern opposition between reason/knowledge and power/force. The distinction between the "knowing" West anchored in a unified scientific reason and the "believing" Rest who trust in many cultures is therefore refused. With the above prerequisite in mind, a new approach to creolization, termed "tukontology," is deployed to reveal a Kuhnian type paradigm shift in the war-medicine of blacks on British West Indian plantations between 1645 and emancipation in 1838.
