"Dominican culture and society can be characterized as a hybrid whose nature is expressed in various domains. For example, folk or popular Catholicism, the religion of some 90 percent of the national population, is in summary a cultural amalgamation. But deconstructed, it can be seen to retain elements of the various contributors to its eclectic configuration: Spanish of different regions, classes, Catholic religious orders, and even religions with regard to Judaic and Islamic features retained in Spanish folk Catholicism; West and Central African of various ethnic origins; continuities of native Taíno beliefs and practices; and other origins, such as the possible East Indian origin of the vodú deity of the “black” Guedé family, Santa Marta la Dominadora." -The Author
Greenfield,Sidney M. (Author) and Droogers,A. F. (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
232 p, Contents: Recovering and reconstructing syncretism / André Droogers, Sidney M. Greenfield -- A Yoruba healer as syncretic specialist: herbalism, rosicrucianism and the Babalawo / Frank A. Salamon -- Population growth, industrialization and the proliferation of syncretized religions in Brazil / Sidney M. Greenfield -- Ethnicity, purity, the market and syncretism in Afro-Brazilian cults / Roberto Motta -- Religious syncretism in an Afro-Brazilian cult house / Sergio F. Ferretti -- The presence of non-African spirits in an Afro-Brazilian religion: a case of Afro-Amerindian syncretism? / Mundicarmo M.R. Ferretti -- The reinterpretation of Africa: convergence and syncretism in Brazilian Candomblé / Sidney M. Greenfield -- Possession and syncretism: spirits as mediators in modernity / Inger Sjørslev -- Joana's story: syncretism at the actor's level / André Droogers -- Ragga cowboys: country and western themes in Rastafarian-inspired Reggae music / Werner Zips -- Polyvocality and constructions of syncretism in Winti / Ineke van Wetering -- Seeking syncretism: the case of Sathya Sai Baba / Morton Klass
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
309 p., Examines how African religions display themselves in the contemporary world, particularly in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. It studies their continued dynamism and relationship with other religious traditions, and contributes to the ongoing debate on syncretism. Includes Stephen D. Glazier's "Contested rituals of the African diaspora," pp. 105-119.
About a unique case of assimilation: the entry of descendants of nineteenth‐ and early‐twentieth‐century European immigrants to southern Brazil into Afro‐Brazilian religious groups, some as heads of their own centres. The discussion is placed within the framework of the contemporary multiculturalist debate over assimilation. The emigration of Europeans to rural southern Brazil is summarized. African slaves are shown to have been established ‐ with their syncretized Afro‐Catholic religions ‐ in the incipient urban centres. T
