Hindu gods in West Africa : Ghanaian devotees of Shiva and Krishna.
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In Hindu Gods in West Africa , Wuaku offers an account of the histories, beliefs and practices of the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Radha Govinda Temple, two Hindu Temples in Ghana. Using historical material and data from his field work in southern Ghana, Wuaku shows how these two Hindu Temples build their traditions on popular Ghanaian religious notions about the powerful magicality of India's Hindu gods. He explores how Ghanaian soldiers who served in the colonial armies in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma during World War II, Bollywood films, and local magicians, have contributed to the production and the spreading of these cultural ideas. He argues that while Ghanaian worshippers appropriated and deployed the alien Hindu religious world through their own cultural ideas,as they engage Hindu beliefs and rituals in negotiating challenges their own worldviews would change considerably.
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1 online resource (346 pages) :
9789004255715 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Khōjā of Tanzania : discontinuities of a postcolonial religious identity /
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The Khōjā of Tanzania, Discontinuities of a Postcolonial Religious Identity attempts to reconstruct the development of Khōjā religious identity from their arrival to the Swahili coast in the late 18th century until the turn of the 21st century. This multidisciplinary study incorporates Gujarati, Kacchī, Swahili, and Arabic sources to examine the formation of an Afro-Asian Islamic identity (jamatī) from their initial Indic caste identity (jñāti) towards an emergent Near Eastern imaged Islamic nation (ummatī) through four disciplinary approaches: historiography, politics, linguistics, and ethnology. Over the past two centuries, rapid transitions and discontinuities have produced the profound tensions which have resulted from the willful amnesia of their pre-Islamic Indic civilizational past for an ideological and politicized 'Islamic' present. This study aims to document, theorize, and engage this theological transformation of modern Khōjā religious identities as expressed through dimensions of power, language, space, and the body.
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1 online resource (xvii, 226 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004292888 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
An ethnography of a Vodu shrine in southern Togo : of spirit, slave, and sea /
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In this book, Eric Montgomery and Christian Vannier provide an ethnographically informed text on the cultural meanings and practices surrounding the gods and metaphysics of Vodu, as they relate to daily life in an ethnic Ewe fishing community on the coast of southern Togo. The authors approach this spirit possession and medicinal order through "shrine ethnography," understanding shrines as parts of sacred landscapes that are ecological, economic, political, and social. Giving voice to practitioners and situating shrines and Vodu itself into the history and political economy of the region make this text pertinent to the social changes and global relevance of Millennial Africa.
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1 online resource (ix, 306 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004341258 :
0169-9814 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Locating Politics in Ethiopia's Irreecha Ritual /
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In Locating Politics in Ethiopia's Irreecha Ritual Serawit Bekele Debele gives an account of politics and political processes in contemporary Ethiopia as manifested in the annual ritual performance. Mobilizing various sources such as archives, oral accounts, conversations, videos, newspapers, and personal observations, Debele critically analyses political processes and how they are experienced, made sense of and articulated across generational, educational, religious, gender and ethnic differences as well as political persuasions. Moreover, she engages Irreecha in relation to the hugely contested meaning making processes attached to the Thanksgiving ritual which has now become an integral part of Oromo national identity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-205) and index. :
9789004410145