Passages and Afterworlds

Passages and Afterworlds PDF Author: Maarit Forde
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002131
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and its rituals across the Caribbean, drawing on ethnographic theories shaped by a deep understanding of the region's long history of violent encounters, exploitation, and cultural diversity. Examining the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, the contributors investigate the changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death in relation to political developments, state violence, legislation, policing, and identity politics. Contributors address topics that range from the ever-evolving role of divinized spirits in Haiti and the contemporary mortuary practice of Indo-Trinidadians to funerary ceremonies in rural Jamaica and ancestor cults in Maroon culture in Suriname. Questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy underlie these discussions of how racial, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean. Contributors. Donald Cosentino, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Keith E. McNeal, George Mentore, Richard Price, Karen Richman, Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering, Bonno (H.U.E.) Thoden van Velzen

Passages and Afterworlds

Passages and Afterworlds PDF Author: Maarit Forde
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002131
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and its rituals across the Caribbean, drawing on ethnographic theories shaped by a deep understanding of the region's long history of violent encounters, exploitation, and cultural diversity. Examining the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, the contributors investigate the changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death in relation to political developments, state violence, legislation, policing, and identity politics. Contributors address topics that range from the ever-evolving role of divinized spirits in Haiti and the contemporary mortuary practice of Indo-Trinidadians to funerary ceremonies in rural Jamaica and ancestor cults in Maroon culture in Suriname. Questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy underlie these discussions of how racial, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean. Contributors. Donald Cosentino, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Keith E. McNeal, George Mentore, Richard Price, Karen Richman, Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering, Bonno (H.U.E.) Thoden van Velzen

The Silver Women

The Silver Women PDF Author: Joan Flores-Villalobos
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512823643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The construction of the Panama Canal is typically viewed as a marvel of American ingenuity. What is less visible, and less understood, is the project’s dependence on the labor of Black migrant women. The Silver Women shifts the focus of this monumental endeavor to the West Indian women who travelled to Panama, inviting readers to place women’s intimate lives, choices, grief, and ambition at the center of the economic and geopolitical transformation created by the construction of the Panama Canal and U.S. imperial expansion. Joan Flores-Villalobos argues that Black West Indian women made the canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. West Indian women built a provisioning economy that fed, housed, and cared for the segregated Black West Indian labor force, in effect subsidizing the construction effort and the racial calculus that separated pay in silver for Black workers and gold for white Americans. But while also subject to racial discrimination and segregation, West Indian women mostly worked outside the umbrella of U.S. canal authorities. They did not hold contracts, had little access to official services and wages, and received pay in both silver and gold. From this position, they found ways to skirt, and at times subvert, the legal, moral, and economic parameters imperial authorities sought to impose on the migrant workforce. West Indian women developed important strategies of claims-making, kinship, community building, and market adaptation that helped them navigate the contradictions and violence of U.S. empire. In the meantime, these strategies of social reproduction nurtured further West Indian migrations, linking Panama to places like Harlem and Santiago de Cuba. The Silver Women is thus a history of Black women’s labor of social reproduction as integral to U.S. imperial infrastructure, the global Caribbean diaspora, and women’s own survival.

Evangelicals, Catholics, and Vodouyizan in Haiti

Evangelicals, Catholics, and Vodouyizan in Haiti PDF Author: Celucien L. Joseph
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350351717
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Exploring the subject through many different theoretical frameworks and epistemological traditions, this book confronts the history of Haiti's three major practicing religious faiths: Vodou, Roman Catholicism, and Protestant Evangelicalism. Scholars, researchers, and faith practitioners have often depicted relations between these traditions as antagonistic, conflicting, unproductive, and lacking in mutual understanding. With the aim of exploring the possibility of nation building in Haiti and the benefits of interreligious collaboration, contributors to this book consider topics such as the obstacles to interfaith dialogue, religious conflict, interreligious dialogue in schools, race and identity, and religious pluralism. This book will be beneficial to scholars, practitioners, historians, and sociologists of religion, as well as the religious communities themselves in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora.

Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname (deel 2)

Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname (deel 2) PDF Author: Wilhelmina van Velzen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004255494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
In 2011 verscheen Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname; De Okaanse samenleving in de 18e eeuw. Het vertelt de geschiedenis van slaven die in de achttiende eeuw de plantages ontvluchtten om diep in het regenwoud, in het zuidoosten van Suriname, een nieuwe samenleving op te bouwen. Deze Marrons, zoals de ontsnapte slaven werden genoemd, sloten in 1760 een vredesverdrag met de planters. Zij noemden zich Okanisi. Hier, in dit tweede deel van deze historie, wordt verslag gedaan van de gebeurtenissen zoals die zich na 1800 afspeelden in de onafhankelijke gemeenschappen van Okaanse Marrons. Het is een bewogen geschiedenis van profetische bewegingen, heksenvervolgingen, en de opkomst van een eigen, inheemse, kerk. Al deze voor buitenstaanders exotische gebeurtenissen speelden zich af in een samenleving die hecht was geïntegreerd in het economische leven van de Guiana’s. In de twintigste eeuw vinden de eerste grote botsingen plaats tussen de Okanisi en het koloniale en postkoloniale bestuur van Suriname. Soms ging het om een staking die het economische leven van de kolonie dreigde te verlammen; later, eind jaren tachtig, toen Suriname onafhankelijk was, zorgde de opstand van enkele honderden Okaanse jongeren, en de gedoogsteun van de bevolking, voor een kritieke situatie in de jonge republiek. In deze eeuw zijn het voornamelijk conflicten over het behoud van het oude grondgebied, en zijn natuurlijke hulpbronnen, die de oude vrijstaat bedreigen. In Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname, deel 2, Van Wetering and Thoden van Velzen relate the history of the Okanisi after their successful escape into the South American rainforest and the signing of a peace treaty with Dutch planters in 1760. Following Part 1, which deals with their struggle for freedom, this volume describes the emergence of an autonomous Okanisi Maroon state; its integration into the economic life of the Guiana’s, but also its internal development, as it manifested itself through prophetic movements, anti-witchcraft purges and the rise of a native church. Predominantly based on oral sources, this book charts a previously undocumented history and provides a unique insight into a culture emerging from the roots of slavery.

The Deepest Dye

The Deepest Dye PDF Author: Aisha Khan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674259297
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
How colonial categories of race and religion together created identities and hierarchies that today are vehicles for multicultural nationalism and social critique in the Caribbean and its diasporas. When the British Empire abolished slavery, Caribbean sugar plantation owners faced a labor shortage. To solve the problem, they imported indentured “coolie” laborers, Hindus and a minority Muslim population from the Indian subcontinent. Indentureship continued from 1838 until its official end in 1917. The Deepest Dye begins on post-emancipation plantations in the West Indies—where Europeans, Indians, and Africans intermingled for work and worship—and ranges to present-day England, North America, and Trinidad, where colonial-era legacies endure in identities and hierarchies that still shape the post-independence Caribbean and its contemporary diasporas. Aisha Khan focuses on the contested religious practices of obeah and Hosay, which are racialized as “African” and “Indian” despite the diversity of their participants. Obeah, a catch-all Caribbean term for sub-Saharan healing and divination traditions, was associated in colonial society with magic, slave insurrection, and fraud. This led to anti-obeah laws, some of which still remain in place. Hosay developed in the West Indies from Indian commemorations of the Islamic mourning ritual of Muharram. Although it received certain legal protections, Hosay’s mass gatherings, processions, and mock battles provoked fears of economic disruption and labor unrest that led to criminalization by colonial powers. The proper observance of Hosay was debated among some historical Muslim communities and continues to be debated now. In a nuanced study of these two practices, Aisha Khan sheds light on power dynamics through religious and racial identities formed in the context of colonialism in the Atlantic world, and shows how today these identities reiterate inequalities as well as reinforce demands for justice and recognition.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality PDF Author: Vasudha Narayanan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118660080
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 717

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Book Description
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality provides a thoughtfully organized, inclusive, and vibrant project of the multiple ways in which religion and materiality intersect. The contributions explore the way that religion is shaped by, and has shaped, the material world, embedding beliefs, doctrines, and texts into social and cultural contexts of production, circulation, and consumption. The Companion not only contains scholarly essays but has an accompanying website to demonstrate the work of performers, architects, and expressive artists, ranging from musicians and dancers to religious practitioners. These examples offer specific illustrations of the interplay of religion and materiality in everyday life. The project is organized from a comparative perspective, highlighting examples and case studies from traditions originating in both East and West. To summarize, the volume: Brings together the leading figures, theories and ideas in the field in a systematic and comprehensive way Offers an interdisciplinary approach drawing together religious studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, geography, the cognitive sciences, ecology, and media studies Takes a comparative perspective, covering all the major faith traditions

Water Graves

Water Graves PDF Author: Valérie Loichot
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813943809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Water Graves considers representations of lives lost to water in contemporary poetry, fiction, theory, mixed-media art, video production, and underwater sculptures. From sunken slave ships to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Valérie Loichot investigates the lack of official funeral rites in the Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, waters that constitute both early and contemporary sites of loss for the enslaved, the migrant, the refugee, and the destitute. Unritual, or the privation of ritual, Loichot argues, is a state more absolute than desecration. Desecration implies a previous sacred observance--a temple, a grave, a ceremony. Unritual, by contrast, denies the sacred from the beginning. In coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Miami, Haiti, Martinique, Cancun, and Trinidad and Tobago, the artists and writers featured in Water Graves—an eclectic cast that includes Beyoncé, Radcliffe Bailey, Edwidge Danticat, Édouard Glissant, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jason deCaires Taylor, Édouard Duval-Carrié, Natasha Trethewey, and Kara Walker, among others—are an archipelago connected by a history of the slave trade and environmental vulnerability. In addition to figuring death by drowning in the unritual—whether in the context of the aftermath of slavery or of ecological and human-made catastrophes—their aesthetic creations serve as memorials, dirges, tombstones, and even material supports for the regrowth of life underwater.

Prophets of Doom

Prophets of Doom PDF Author: H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004516379
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Once the Maroons escaped from slavery and established their communities in the remote interior of Suriname, attention shifted from military threat to internal danger. As they faced these dangers in an unknown rainforest, they sought refuge in prophetic movements directed by charismatic religious leaders. This book charts the history of Okanisi religious movements from their escape to the present day. It is based on sixty years of fieldwork by the late Bonno Thoden van Velzen and Ineke van Wetering, archival research and oral histories. Prophets of Doom is a tribute to Okanisi society and reflects decades of research and dedication.

Religious Responses to Pandemics and Crises

Religious Responses to Pandemics and Crises PDF Author: Sravana Borkataky-Varma
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000921654
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Religious Responses to Pandemics and Crises explores various dimensions of the interrelations between the individual, community, and religion. With their global scope, the contributions to this volume represent reflections on the rich and multifaceted spectrum of human responses in a variety of different religions and cultures to the current SARS-2-COVID-19 pandemic and similar crises in the past. The contributions are organized in three thematic parts focusing on strategies, rituals, and past and present responses to pandemics and crises. They reflect on the intersection of personal or communal responses and state-mandated policies relative to SARS-2-COVID-19 while outlining different strategies to cope with the pandemic crisis. Timely questions explored include: How do individuals connect with or disconnect from religious and spiritual communities during times of personal and collective crises, including pandemics? How do religious practices such as rituals bridge individuals and communities? How do religious texts from past and present highlight and represent crises and pandemics? Dynamic and multidisciplinary in its inquiry, this volume is an outstanding resource for scholars of religion, theology, anthropology, social sciences, ritual theory, sex and gender studies, and contemporary medical science.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health PDF Author: Dorothea Lüddeckens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000464326
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 692

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Book Description
The relationships between religion, spirituality, health, biomedical institutions, complementary, and alternative healing systems are widely discussed today. While many of these debates revolve around the biomedical legitimacy of religious modes of healing, the market for them continues to grow. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into five parts: Healing practices with religious roots and frames Religious actors in and around the medical field Organizing infrastructures of religion and medicine: pluralism and competition Boundary-making between religion and medicine Religion and epidemics Within these sections, central issues, debates and problems are examined, including health and healing, religiosity, spirituality, biomedicine, medicalization, complementary medicine, medical therapy, efficacy, agency, and the nexus of body, mind, and spirit. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as sociology, anthropology, and medicine.