Download or read book If Divination Knowledge Power and Performance written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark volume compiled by Jacob K. Olupona and Rowland O. Abiodun brings readers into the diverse world of Ifá—its discourse, ways of thinking, and artistic expression as manifested throughout the Afro-Atlantic. Firmly rooting Ifá within African religious traditions, the essays consider Ifá and Ifá divination from the perspectives of philosophy, performance studies, and cultural studies. They also examine the sacred context, verbal art, and the interpretation of Ifá texts and philosophy. With essays from the most respected scholars in the field, the book makes a substantial contribution toward understanding Ifá and its role in contemporary Yoruba and diaspora cultures.
Download or read book Deep Knowledge written by Oludamini Ogunnaike and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-11-11 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an in-depth, comparative study of two of the most popular and influential intellectual and spiritual traditions of West Africa: Tijani Sufism and Ifa. Employing a unique methodological approach that thinks with and from—rather than merely about—these traditions, Oludamini Ogunnaike argues that they contain sophisticated epistemologies that provide practitioners with a comprehensive worldview and a way of crafting a meaningful life. Using theories belonging to the traditions themselves as well as contemporary oral and textual sources, Ogunnaike examines how both Sufism and Ifa answer the questions of what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and how it is verified. Or, more simply: What do you know? How did you come to know it? How do you know that you know? After analyzing Ifa and Sufism separately and on their own terms, the book compares them to each other and to certain features of academic theories of knowledge. By analyzing Sufism from the perspective of Ifa, Ifa from the perspective of Sufism, and the contemporary academy from the perspective of both, this book invites scholars to inhabit these seemingly “foreign” intellectual traditions as valid and viable perspectives on knowledge, metaphysics, psychology, and ritual practice. Unprecedented and innovative, Deep Knowledge makes a significant contribution to cross-cultural philosophy, African philosophy, religious studies, and Islamic studies. Its singular approach advances our understanding of the philosophical bases underlying these two African traditions and lays the groundwork for future study.
Download or read book ASH written by Paul Carter Harrison and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-04-28 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘ASHÉ: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic Expressivity' is a collection of interdisciplinary essays contributed by international scholars and practitioners. Having distinguished themselves across such disciplines as Anthropology, Art, Music, Literature, Dance, Philosophy, Religion, and Theology and conjoined to construct a defining approach to the study of Aesthetics throughout the African Diaspora with the Humanities at the core, this collection of essays will break new ground in the study of Black Aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to scholars, practitioners, and students interested in tracing African heritage identities throughout the African Diaspora through close examination of a variety of discourses directly connected to expressive elements of cultural production and religious rituals.
Download or read book Disasters written by Olivier Servais and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-06-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By bringing together contributions from several disciplines, this book promotes a comparative perspective and a collaborative approach to disasters in Southeast Asia. Hazards affect all aspects of human life, having impacts on the environmental, social, economic, political and biological systems. In order to better understand the effects produced by these disastrous events – including the mechanisms of resilience – it is necessary to understand in depth the issues involved. They are embedded in multiple dimensions – affective, psychosocial, cultural, architectural... Disasters pose the challenge of questioning the consequences and determining factors that contribute to their occurrence, but also to their experience. Through the multiple perspectives it offers, this book aims to lead to a better problematisation of the notions of risk, resilience and adaptation. Olivier Servais (PhD, 2003) is a historian and anthropologist. He is full professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He teaches the anthropology of symbolic systems and their relationship to the so-called «natural» or «artificial» environment. He has conducted fieldwork and documentary research in Canada, the Philippines, Mauritius, France, Belgium and in digital worlds. In his current research, he studies the imaginaries of virtual worlds, online et off line sociability, including rituals, resistance and resilience through or to digital, and the organization of groups at the margins, including indigenous people. Lionel Simon (PhD, 2017) is an anthropologist. He is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Louvain in Belgium. His work focuses on ontologies, local knowledge and human-environment relations. He has been conducting research with the Wayuu of Colombia (Guajira Peninsula, since 2006) and the Mentawai of Indonesia (Siberut Island, since 2017).
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions written by Michelle A. Gonzalez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions offers a comprehensive overview of Caribbean religions. The Caribbean is a microcosm of the world's religions, but the small geographic space resulted in the encounter of global religions and indigenous religious practices. The racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of this region makes brief introductions to Caribbean religions incapable of truly addressing its complex and diverse religious landscape. The Handbook also elaborates on the diversity of the religious traditions and the national particularity of the region while also considering multiple geographic settings. It mentions how often Caribbean religion is studied through the perspective of a discrete religious tradition or geographic setting"--
Download or read book Divining the Self written by Velma E. Love and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divining the Self weaves elements of personal narrative, myth, history, and interpretive analysis into a vibrant tapestry that reflects the textured, embodied, and performative nature of scripture and scripturalizing practices. Velma Love examines the Odu—the Yoruba sacred scriptures—along with the accompanying mythology, philosophy, and ritual technologies engaged by African Americans. Drawing from the personal narratives of African American Ifa practitioners along with additional ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oyotunji African Village, South Carolina, and New York City, Love’s work explores the ways in which an ancient worldview survives in modern times. Divining the Self also takes up the challenge of determining what it means for the scholar of religion to study scripture as both text and performance. This work provides an excellent case study of the sociocultural phenomenon of scripturalizing practices.
Download or read book Afro Latin American Studies written by Alejandro de la Fuente and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews offer the first systematic, book-length survey of humanities and social science scholarship on the exciting field of Afro-Latin American studies. Organized by topic, these essays synthesize and present the current state of knowledge on a broad variety of topics, including Afro-Latin American music, religions, literature, art history, political thought, social movements, legal history, environmental history, and ideologies of racial inclusion. This volume connects the region's long history of slavery to the major political, social, cultural, and economic developments of the last two centuries. Written by leading scholars in each of those topics, the volume provides an introduction to the field of Afro-Latin American studies that is not available from any other source and reflects the disciplinary and thematic richness of this emerging field.
Download or read book Africa Must Be Modern written by Olúfémi Táíwò and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a forthright and uncompromising manner, Olúfémi Táíwò explores Africa's hostility toward modernity and how that hostility has impeded economic development and social and political transformation. What has to change for Africa to be able to respond to the challenges of modernity and globalization? Táíwò insists that Africa can renew itself only by fully engaging with democracy and capitalism and by mining its untapped intellectual resources. While many may not agree with Táíwò's positions, they will be unable to ignore what he says. This is a bold exhortation for Africa to come into the 21st century.
Download or read book Critical Terms for the Study of Africa written by Gaurav Desai and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For far too long, the Western world viewed Africa as unmappable terrain—a repository for outsiders’ wildest imaginings. This problematic notion has had lingering effects not only on popular impressions of the region but also on the development of the academic study of Africa. Critical Terms for the Study of Africa considers the legacies that have shaped our understanding of the continent and its place within the conceptual grammar of contemporary world affairs. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, the essays compiled in this volume take stock of African studies today and look toward a future beyond its fraught intellectual and political past. Each essay discusses one of our most critical terms for talking about Africa, exploring the trajectory of its development while pushing its boundaries. Editors Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier balance the choice of twenty-five terms between the expected and the unexpected, calling for nothing short of a new mapping of the scholarly field. The result is an essential reference that will challenge assumptions, stimulate lively debate, and make the past, present, and future of African Studies accessible to students and teachers alike.
Download or read book Philosophy and National Development in Nigeria written by Adeshina Afolayan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it imply for Nigerian philosophers to conscientiously and engagingly reflect on Nigeria as a place of philosophy and as a dynamic plural context of socioeconomic, political, cultural and ethnic problems? Any answer to this question automatically constitutes the opening salvo to the reflection on the evolution of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy and philosophizing. This book represents such an initial salvo in in its attempt to hammer out the conditions for the possibility of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy by placing that endeavor in between the triadic challenges of the Nigerian political economy, the African philosophical theorizing and the global epistemological hegemony. How do these three dynamics condition the evolution and functional relevance of the philosophical enterprise in Nigeria? How have Nigerian philosophers responded to them? What is Nigerian philosophy? How can there be a "Nigerian" philosophy when there are no Nigerians? This book is also an attempt to contribute to the trajectory of philosophy education in Nigeria within the context of a postcolonial educational system and university dynamics that stultifies the role of the intellectuals in development. From Plato to Wiredu, from Bodunrin to Bourdieu, and from Heidegger and Nietzsche to Fanon, Mignolo and Santos, the book traces a trajectory of dynamics rethinking of existing paradigms and epistemological assumptions that could enable a robust evolution of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy that possesses sufficient clout to confront its historicity and its place in Nigeria’s development impasse.
Download or read book The Yoruba written by Akinwumi Ogundiran and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yoruba: A New History is the first transdisciplinary study of the two-thousand-year journey of the Yoruba people, from their origins in a small corner of the Niger-Benue Confluence in present-day Nigeria to becoming one of the most populous cultural groups on the African continent. Weaving together archaeology with linguistics, environmental science with oral traditions, and material culture with mythology, Ogundiran examines the local, regional, and even global dimensions of Yoruba history. The Yoruba: A New History offers an intriguing cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and social history from ca. 300 BC to 1840. It accounts for the events, peoples, and practices, as well as the theories of knowledge, ways of being, and social valuations that shaped the Yoruba experience at different junctures of time. The result is a new framework for understanding the Yoruba past and present.
Download or read book Ecology Spirituality and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat written by Joyce White and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-10-28 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat: Crossroads as Ritual employs nature, literary tradition, and the cosmogram to examine Danticat's fiction as textual sites imbued with ritual and conducive for healing and clarifying Africana diasporic consciousness.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of African Oral Traditions and Folklore written by Akintunde Akinyemi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-05 with total page 1041 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.
Download or read book Gender Epistemologies in Africa written by O. Oyewumi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-01-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a variety of studies that are engaged with notions of gender in different African localities, institutions and historical time periods. The objective is to expand empirical and theoretical studies that take seriously the idea that in order to understand gender and gender relations in Africa, we must start with Africa.
Download or read book Efficacy of Sound written by Ruthie Meadows and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length ethnographic study on music and Ifá divination in Cuba and Nigeria. Hailing from Cuba, Nigeria, and various sites across Latin America and the Caribbean, Ifá missionary-practitioners are transforming the landscape of Ifá divination and deity (òrìṣà/oricha) worship through transatlantic travel and reconnection. In Cuba, where Ifá and Santería emerged as an interrelated, Yorùbá-inspired ritual complex, worshippers are driven to "African traditionalism" by its promise of efficacy: they find Yorùbá approaches more powerful, potent, and efficacious. In the first book-length study on music and Ifá, Ruthie Meadows draws on extensive, multisited fieldwork in Cuba and Yorùbáland, Nigeria, to examine the controversial "Nigerian-style" ritual movement in Cuban Ifá divination. Meadows uses feminist and queer of color theory along with critical studies of Africanity to excavate the relation between utility and affect within translocal ritual music circulations. Meadows traces how translocal Ifá priestesses (ìyánífá), female batá drummers (bataleras), and priests (babaláwo) harness Yorùbá-centric approaches to ritual music and sound to heighten efficacy, achieve desired ritual outcomes, and reshape the conditions of their lives. Within a contentious religious landscape marked by the idiosyncrasies of revolutionary state policy, Nigerian-style Ifá-Òrìṣà is leveraged to transform femininity and masculinity, state religious policy, and transatlantic ritual authority on the island.
Download or read book Fashioning the Afropolis written by Kerstin Pinther and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Fashioning the Afropolis provides a range of innovative perspectives on global fashion, design, dress, photography, and the body in some of the major cities, with a focus on Lagos, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Douala. It contributes to the ongoing debates around the globalization of fashion and fashion theory by exploring fashion as a genuine urban phenomenon on the continent and among its diasporas. To date, “fashion” and “city” have not been systematically related to each other in the African context and, for too long, a western-centric gaze has dominated scholarship, resulting in the perception of Africa as provincial and its visual arts and textile cultures as static and folkloristic. This perspective is all the more distorted, given Africa's rich sartorial past. With a huge number of tailors ready to adapt and renew clothing, reshaping garments into contemporary styles, and many cities in Africa becoming hot-spots for a steadily growing and well-connected scene of fashion designers in the past 20 years, the time is ripe for a reevaluation and reconsideration of the fashionscapes of Africa. Leading scholars offer an updated empirical and theoretical foundation on which to base new and exciting research on sub-Saharan fashion, challenging perceptions and offering new insights.
Download or read book The Race for America written by R. J. Boutelle and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Manifest Destiny took hold in the national consciousness, what did it mean for African Americans who were excluded from its ambitions for an expanding American empire that would shepherd the Western Hemisphere into a new era of civilization and prosperity? R. J. Boutelle explores how Black intellectuals like Daniel Peterson, James McCune Smith, Mary Ann Shadd, Henry Bibb, and Martin Delany engaged this cultural mythology to theorize and practice Black internationalism. He uncovers how their strategies for challenging Manifest Destiny's white nationalist ideology and expansionist political agenda constituted a form of disidentification—a deconstructing and reassembling of this discourse that marshals Black experiences as racialized subjects to imagine novel geopolitical mythologies and projects to compete with Manifest Destiny. Employing Black internationalist, hemispheric, and diasporic frameworks to examine the emigrationist and solidarity projects that African Americans proposed as alternatives to Manifest Destiny, Boutelle attends to sites integral to US aspirations of hemispheric dominion: Liberia, Nicaragua, Canada, and Cuba. In doing so, Boutelle offers a searing history of how internalized fantasies of American exceptionalism burdened the Black geopolitical imagination that encouraged settler-colonial and imperialist projects in the Americas and West Africa.
