Funerals In Africa

Author : Michael Jindra,Joël Noret
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2011-09-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780857452061

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Funerals in Africa by Michael Jindra,Joël Noret Pdf

Across Africa, funerals and events remembering the dead have become larger and even more numerous over the years. Whereas in the West death is normally a private and family affair, in Africa funerals are often the central life cycle event, unparalleled in cost and importance, for which families harness vast amounts of resources to host lavish events for multitudes of people with ramifications well beyond the event. Though officials may try to regulate them, the popularity of these events often makes such efforts fruitless, and the elites themselves spend tremendously on funerals. This volume brings together scholars who have conducted research on funerary events across sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions offer an in-depth understanding of the broad changes and underlying causes in African societies over the years, such as changes in religious beliefs, social structure, urbanization, and technological changes and health.

Author : Casey Golomski
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2018-06-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780253036483

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Funeral Culture by Casey Golomski Pdf

Contemporary forms of living and dying in Swaziland cannot be understood apart from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to anthropologist Casey Golomski. In Africa's last absolute monarchy, the story of 15 years of global collaboration in treatment and intervention is also one of ordinary people facing the work of caring for the sick and dying and burying the dead. Golomski's ethnography shows how AIDS posed challenging questions about the value of life, culture, and materiality to drive new forms and practices for funerals. Many of these forms and practicesnewly catered funeral feasts, an expanded market for life insurance, and the kingdom's first crematoriumare now conspicuous across the landscape and culturally disruptive in a highly traditionalist setting. This powerful and original account details how these new matters of death, dying, and funerals have become entrenched in peoples' everyday lives and become part of a quest to create dignity in the wake of a devastating epidemic.

Author : John Mack
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Art
ISBN : 1789141230

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The Artfulness of Death in Africa by John Mack Pdf

If weddings are the most lavish events in many parts of the world, in Sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, it is funerals. Funeral celebrations can be flamboyant occasions, particularly those honoring prominent people. Artworks of many kinds are created to commemorate the dead from mortuary sculptures and extravagant coffins to elaborate headstones, memorials, monuments, and cenotaphs. This book is a unique survey of the artful nature of funerals in Africa. Drawing on a wide range of historical, anthropological, archaeological, art historical, and literary sources, John Mack charts the full range of African funereal art, highlighting examples from across the continent and from ancient times to today. Featuring abundant illustrations--some of which have never been published before--The Artfulness of Death in Africa is essential reading for those interested in African art, culture, society, and history.

Author : Johnson Nganga Mbugua
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2016-06-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781498290906

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Funeral Rites Reformation for Any African Ethnic Community Based on the Proposed New Funeral Practices for the Agikuyu by Johnson Nganga Mbugua Pdf

This book has been written on the premise that the mode of coping with death of virtually all African ethnic communities has taken proportions and turns that are neither cultural, scriptural, nor necessary. Current rites are complicated, time-consuming, expensive, and are leaving most families and their neighbors impoverished. They have been extremely commercialized and a large number of Africans do not have resources to bury their dead the "modern" way. Were the Agikuyu (read: Africans) to curb numerous funeral demands which they deem necessary and "customary," when in actual fact they are not, funerals for them would become cheaper, faster, and simpler; would be decent enough for the dead; would take care of those left behind; and would be environmentally friendly. How Africans in the Diaspora, away from their ancestral homeland, should cope with death is also addressed. Also addressed is the issue of cremation. It is shown that at the resurrection, God will accord us new spiritual bodies which will have no bearing with the material substance of our earthly (mortal) bodies.

Author : John Parker
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2021-03-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691214900

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In My Time of Dying by John Parker Pdf

An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuries In My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a four-hundred-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Parker considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time. From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, Parker shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world’s most vibrant cultures of death. He explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. Parker reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, from the era of the slave trade to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation. With an array of written and oral sources, In My Time of Dying richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living.

Author : Unity Dow,Myron Essex
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2010-05-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0674050770

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Saturday Is for Funerals by Unity Dow,Myron Essex Pdf

Dow and Essex tell the true story of lives in Botswana ravaged by AIDS. Witness the actions of community leaders, medical professionals, research scientists, and educators of all types to see how an unprecedented epidemic of death and destruction is being stopped in its tracks.

Author : Doris H. Gray,Nadia Sonneveld
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2018-01-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108419505

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Women and Social Change in North Africa by Doris H. Gray,Nadia Sonneveld Pdf

A wide-ranging analysis of grass-roots activism, migration, legal, political and religious changes as basis for social transformation.

Author : Karla FC Holloway
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2003-09-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0822332450

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Passed On by Karla FC Holloway Pdf

A personal and historical account of the particular place of death and funerals in African American life.

Author : Suzanne E. Smith
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2010-02-25
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0674036212

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To Serve the Living by Suzanne E. Smith Pdf

From antebellum slavery to the twenty-first century, African American funeral directors have orchestrated funerals or “homegoing” ceremonies with dignity and pageantry. As entrepreneurs in a largely segregated trade, they were among the few black individuals in any community who were economically independent and not beholden to the local white power structure. Most important, their financial freedom gave them the ability to support the struggle for civil rights and, indeed, to serve the living as well as bury the dead. During the Jim Crow era, black funeral directors relied on racial segregation to secure their foothold in America’s capitalist marketplace. With the dawning of the civil rights age, these entrepreneurs were drawn into the movement to integrate American society, but were also uncertain how racial integration would affect their business success. From the beginning, this tension between personal gain and community service shaped the history of African American funeral directing. For African Americans, death was never simply the end of life, and funerals were not just places to mourn. In the “hush harbors” of the slave quarters, African Americans first used funerals to bury their dead and to plan a path to freedom. Similarly, throughout the long—and often violent—struggle for racial equality in the twentieth century, funeral directors aided the cause by honoring the dead while supporting the living. To Serve the Living offers a fascinating history of how African American funeral directors have been integral to the fight for freedom.

Author : Canisius Mwandayi
Publisher : University of Bamberg Press
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Shona (African people)
ISBN : 9783863090296

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Death and After-life Rituals in the Eyes of the Shona by Canisius Mwandayi Pdf

Author : Jack Goody
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2013-11-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781136528842

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Death and the Ancestors by Jack Goody Pdf

Deliberately considering relevant theories put forward by earlier writers and examining them in the light of the research for this particular book, the author spent over 100 days attending funeral ceremonies and he attended 25 burial services. First published in 1962.

Author : Austin Echema
Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
Page : 103 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Igbo (African people)
ISBN : 9783643104199

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Igbo Funeral Rites Today by Austin Echema Pdf

Igbo Funeral Rites is about the rigorous and complex nature of death and burial obsequies in Igboland. Analytical as it is descriptive and anthropological as it is theological, the book is an attempt to provide new insights for handling some of the pastoral challenges of Igbo funeral rites. It exhibits admirable maturity by acknowledging the need for flexibility along with harmonization.

Author : Gail Rubin
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2010-11
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 0984596208

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A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don't Plan to Die by Gail Rubin Pdf

Rubin provides the information, inspiration, and tools to plan and implement creative, meaningful, and memorable end-of-life rituals for people and pets.

Author : Helaine Selin,Robert M. Rakoff
Publisher : Springer
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2019-07-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783030188269

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Death Across Cultures by Helaine Selin,Robert M. Rakoff Pdf

Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures, explores death practices and beliefs, before and after death, around the non-Western world. It includes chapters on countries in Africa, Asia, South America, as well as indigenous people in Australia and North America. These chapters address changes in death rituals and beliefs, medicalization and the industry of death, and the different ways cultures mediate the impacts of modernity. Comparative studies with the west and among countries are included. This book brings together global research conducted by anthropologists, social scientists and scholars who work closely with individuals from the cultures they are writing about.

Author : Ute Röschenthaler,Dorothea Schulz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2015-11-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317529613

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Cultural Entrepreneurship in Africa by Ute Röschenthaler,Dorothea Schulz Pdf

This book seeks to widen perspectives on entrepreneurship by drawing attention to the diverse and partly new forms of entrepreneurial practice in Africa since the 1990s. Contrary to widespread assertions, figures of success have been regularly observed in Africa since pre-colonial times. The contributions account for these historical continuities in entrepreneurship, and identify the specifically new political and economic context within which individuals currently probe and invent novel forms of enterprise. Based on ethnographically contextualized life stories and case studies of female and male entrepreneurs, the volume offers a vivid and multi-perspectival account of their strategies, visions and ventures in domains as varied as religious proselytism, politics, tourism, media, music, prostitution, funeral organization, and education. African cultural entrepreneurs have a significant economic impact, attract the attention of large groups of people, serve as role models for many youths, and contribute to the formation of new popular cultures.