The Cooking of History How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion
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Over a lifetime of studying Cuban Santerìa and other religions related to Orisha worship-a practice also found among the Yoruba in West Africa-Stephan Palmié has grown progressively uneasy with the assumptions inherent in the very term Afro-Cuban religion. In The Cooking of History he provides a comprehensive analysis of these assumptions, in the process offering an incisive critique both of the anthropology of religion and of scholarship on the cultural history of the Afro-Atlantic World.
Understood largely through its rituals and ceremonies, Santerìa and related religions have been a challenge for anthropologists to link to a hypothetical African past. But, Palmié argues, precisely by relying on the notion of an aboriginal African past, and by claiming to authenticate these religions via their findings, anthropologists-some of whom have converted to these religions-have exerted considerable influence upon contemporary practices. Critiquing widespread and damaging simplifications that posit religious practices as stable and self-contained, Palmié calls for a drastic new approach that properly situates cultural origins within the complex social environments and scholarly fields in which they are investigated.
Book information
ISBN: | 9780226019420 |
Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
Imprint: | The University of Chicago Press |
Pub date: | 30 Jul 2013 |
DEWEY: | 299.6897291 |
DEWEY edition: | 23 |
Language: | English |
Number of pages: | xii, 360 |
Weight: | 624g |
Height: | 24mm |
Width: | 16mm |
Spine width: | 3mm |