Spirit Possession Modernity Power In Africa

Author : Heike Behrend
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 0299166341

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Spirit Possession, Modernity & Power in Africa by Heike Behrend Pdf

In Africa as well as in Europe, many spirits and their mediums are part of local as well as global cultures. Christian spirits named Hitler, Mussolini, or King Bruce (Bruce Lee) flourish in a pantheon of new holy spirits in Uganda waging war against the government. Spirits of airplanes, engines, guitars, and angels are found in Central Africa; and thunder, snakes, and rain as well as playboys and prostitutes inhabit the spirit world in West Africa. Spirit possession cults have continued to proliferate, even in the secular West, and continue to be a subject of intense interest. Despite the continuous expansion of the field, some problems are only now beginning to be explored. The experts in this volume focus on questions of power, the history and inner dynamics of cults, the role of gender and images of the other, based on research conducted during the last fifteen years in Africa. The contributors document changes taking place across the continent as possession beliefs and practices respond to new circumstances and address the shifting local implications of an increasingly global socio-economy. Gender, ethnicity, and class are examined as intersecting forces and features of spirit phenomena. The case studies presented are richly contextualized: history, social organization and upheaval, alternative religious options--all are considered relevant to an understanding of possession forms. Contributors: Leslie Sharp, Heike Behrend, Adeline Masquelier, Mathias Krings, Jean-Paul Colleyn, Alexandra O. de Sousa, Susan Kenyon, Tobias Wendl, Ute Luig, and Linda Giles Co-published with James Currey Publishers, U.K. The Wisconsin edition is not for sale in the United Kingdon, the traditional British Commonwealth (excepting Canada), nor in Europe.

Author : Heike Behrend,Ute Luig
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Cults
ISBN : 0852552599

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Spirit Possession, Modernity & Power in Africa by Heike Behrend,Ute Luig Pdf

Focuses on questions of power, the history and inner dynamics of cults, and images of the other.

Author : Paul Stoller
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781136652660

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Embodying Colonial Memories by Paul Stoller Pdf

A study of the West African Hauka - spirits that grotesquely mimic and mock "Europeans" of the colonial epoch. The author considers spirit possession as a set of embodied practices with serious social and cultural consequences. Embodying Colonial Memories is the first in-depth study of the West African Hauka, spirits in the body of (human) mediums which mimic and mock Europeans of the colonial epoch. Paul Stoller, who was initiated into a spirit possession troupe, recounts an insider's tale of the Hauka with respect and "brotherly" deference. He combines narrative description, historical analysis, and reflections on the importance of embodiment and mimesis to social theory, with particular reference to the Songhay peoples of the Republic of Niger.

Author : Barbara Meier,Arne S. Steinforth
Publisher : Campus Verlag
Page : 269 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783593399157

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Spirits in Politics by Barbara Meier,Arne S. Steinforth Pdf

4e de couv.: This anthropology addresses persisting questions social anthropologist, historians, and political scientists working in African societies have been confronted with: Do spirits enter the scene after political have failed as a relapse into an allegedly non-modern condition? Or do they precede colonial processes of political transformation, as classis theories of modernization try to establish? The volume seeks to extend the reflections on the relationship of religious phenomena in the socio-political sphere in African societies. It presents case studies which focus on the concepts of modernity, power, and violence, adding the notion of healing to this context and investigating their empirical correlations.

Author : John Beattie,John Middleton
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2013-11-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781136527654

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Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa by John Beattie,John Middleton Pdf

Gathering together under a single cover material from a wide range of African societies, this volume allows similarities and differences to be easily perceived and suggests social correlates of these in terms of age, sex, marital status, social grading and wealth. It includes material on both traditional and modern cults.

Author : Sheila S. Walker
Publisher : Brill Archive
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1972-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9004035842

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Ceremonial spirit possession in Africa and Afro-America by Sheila S. Walker Pdf

Author : Irving I. Zaretsky,Cynthia Shambaugh
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2019-06-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781000517521

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Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America by Irving I. Zaretsky,Cynthia Shambaugh Pdf

Originally published in 1978 Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America is an incredibly diverse and comprehensive bibliography on published works containing ethnographic data on, and analysis of, spirit possession and spirit mediumship in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and in some Afro-American communities in the Western Hemisphere. The sources on Western Afro-American communities were chosen to shed light on the African continent and the Americas. The bibliography, while not exhaustive, provides extensive research on the area of research in spiritualism in Africa and Afro-America. The bibliography also provides unique sources on spirit cults, ritual or ethnic groups and will be of especial interest to researchers. Although published in the late 70s, this book will still provide an incredibly useful research tool for academics in the area of religion, with a focus on spiritualism and non-western religions.

Author : Walker
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2023-11-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004671263

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Ceremonial Spirit Possession in Africa and Afro-America by Walker Pdf

Author : Elsio Salvado Macamo
Publisher : Zed Books
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2005-10
Category : History
ISBN : 1842776177

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Negotiating Modernity by Elsio Salvado Macamo Pdf

An examination of Africa's experience of modernity which draws out its wider implications for social theory

Author : Éva Pócs,András Zempléni
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 556 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2022-05-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789633864142

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Spirit Possession by Éva Pócs,András Zempléni Pdf

Possession, a seemingly irrational phenomenon, has posed challenges to generations of scholars rooted in Western notions of body-soul dualism, self and personhood, and a whole set of presuppositions inherited from Christian models of possession that was “good” or “bad.” The authors of the essays in this book present a new and more promising approach. They conceive spirit possession as a form of communication, of expressivity, of culturally defined behavior that should be understood in the context of local, vernacular theories and empiric reflections. With the aim of reformulating the comparative anthropology of spirit possession, the editors have opened corridors between previously separate areas of research. Together, anthropologists and historians working on several historical periods and in different European, African, South American, and Asian cultural areas attempt to redefine the very concept of possession, freeing it from the Western notion of the self and more clearly delineating it from related matters such as witchcraft, devotion, or mysticism. The book also provides an overview of new research directions, including novel methods of participant observation and approaches to spirit possession as indigenous historiography

Author : Paul Christopher Johnson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2014-05-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780226122939

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Spirited Things by Paul Christopher Johnson Pdf

The word “possession” is anything but transparent, especially as it developed in the context of the African Americas. There it referred variously to spirits, material goods, and people. It served as a watershed term marking both transactions in which people were made into things—via slavery—and ritual events by which the thingification of people was revised. In Spirited Things, Paul Christopher Johnson gathers together essays by leading anthropologists in the Americas that reopen the concept of possession on these two fronts in order to examine the relationship between African religions in the Atlantic and the economies that have historically shaped—and continue to shape—the cultures that practice them. Exploring the way spirit possessions were framed both by material things—including plantations, the Catholic church, the sea, and the phonograph—as well as by the legacy of slavery, they offer a powerful new way of understanding the Atlantic world.

Author : Kabiro wa Gatumu
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2009-02-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781606084724

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The Pauline Concept of Supernatural Powers by Kabiro wa Gatumu Pdf

The study of supernatural powers is fraught with vexing hermeneutical challenges, which aggravate further in the African context. While on the one hand Western anthropology tends to discount the idea of supernatural powers by attempting to 'explain them away', on the other Western biblical scholarship has mainly worked from the premise of 'demythologizing' them. But none of these approaches make tangible sense to African scholars for whom supernatural powers constitute an integral component of their spiritual psyche. This book, based on an examination of over a thousand documentary sources (both classic and modern), attempts to address the issue of interpreting supernatural powers from an African worldview. The author analyzes, identifies, and critiques major hermeneutical errors and offers a 'bridging hermeneutic' using the method of reader-response criticism.

Author : Irving Zaretsky,Cynthia Shambaugh
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 443 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : Spiritualism
ISBN : OCLC:164050647

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Spirit possession and spirit mediumship in Africa and Afro-America by Irving Zaretsky,Cynthia Shambaugh Pdf

Author : Stephen Ellis,Gerrie ter Haar
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 0195220161

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Worlds of Power by Stephen Ellis,Gerrie ter Haar Pdf

With Christian revivals (including Evangelicals in the White House), Islamic radicalism and the revitalisation of traditional religions it is clear that the world is not heading towards a community of secular states. Nowhere are religious thought and political practice more closely intertwined than in Africa. African migrants in Europe and America who send home money to build churches and mosques, African politicians who consult diviners, guerrilla fighters who believe that amulets can protect them from bullets, and ordinary people who seek ritual healing: all of these are applying religious ideas to everyday problems of existence, at every level of society. Far from falling off the map of the world, Africa is today a leading centre of Christianity and a growing field of Islamic activism, while African traditional religions are gaining converts in the West. One cannot understand the politics of the present without taking religious thought seriously. Stories about witches, miracles, or people returning from the dead incite political action. In Africa religious belief has a huge impact on politics, from the top of society to the bottom. Religious ideas show what people actually think about the world and how to deal with it. Ellis and Ter Haar maintain that the specific content of religious thought has to be mastered if we are to grasp the political significance of religion in Africa today, but their book also informs our understanding of the relationship between religion and political practice in general.

Author : Gertrud Hüwelmeier,Kristine Krause
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2009-12-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781135224158

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Traveling Spirits by Gertrud Hüwelmeier,Kristine Krause Pdf

Maintaining and forging religious networks across borders have long been part of migrants' activities. However, due to the wide availability of communication technologies and the reduced costs of transportation, transnational social practices, including religious activities, have witnessed an enormous intensification in the last few decades around the world. Traveling Spirits seeks to understand these processes by investigating how religion goes global. How do religious agents create and maintain transborder connections? In what way are religious practices being transformed, reinforced or newly invented when transported to different places around the world? How are power relations negotiated within transnational religious networks? How are processes of coming and going linked to religious practices and discourses? The book’s contributors provide rich ethnographic case studies on mobile evangelists, moving spirit mediums, and traveling believers. They analyze the relationship between global, regional, national, local and individual religious processes by centering on economic activities, media representations, or politics of emplacement. Grounded firmly in cross-cultural comparison, this book contributes significantly to the literature on globalization, migration and transnational religion.