Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic

Author/Contributor(s):	Ogundiran, Akinwumi ; Saunders, Paula ; Laroche, Cheryl Janifer ; Blouet, Helen ; Richey, Staci ; Matternes, Hugh B ; Fennell, Christopher C ; Gunaker, Grey ; Knauf, Jocelyn E ; Tang, Amanda ; Leone, Mark P ; Reeves, Matthew B ; Boaz, Danielle N ; Gomez, Pablo F ; Goucher, Candice ; Agorsah, E Kofi ; Norman, Neil ; Kankpeyeng, Benjamin
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Date:	10/03/2014
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African-descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.