The peoples of Madagascar are renowned for the prominence they give to the dead. In this edited volume, regional specialists reassess the significance of ancestors for changing relations of power, emerging identities, and local historical consciousness. Case-studies include The Royal Bath of 1817 (Pier Larson), Succession in an Urbanized Sakalava Kingdom (Lesley Sharp), The Antankaraia Ritual Cycle (Michael Lambek, Andrew Walsh), Nineteenth-Century Norwegian Missionary Culture (Karina Hestad Skeie), Sacrifice on the East Coast (Jennifer Cole), Violence among the Zafimaniry (Maurice Bloch),...
The peoples of Madagascar are renowned for the prominence they give to the dead. In this edited volume, regional specialists reassess the significance...
For a long time, Tanzania under its charismatic President Nyerere was considered to be a model. The concept of an African form of socialism and also the cooperation between church and state seemed to be exemplary. But in the early 1990s, in a time of political re-orientation, conflicts began to emerge. This volume examines the different periods in the relationship between church and state from independence to 1994. New tendencies, as for instance the impact of the charismatic movement and the increasing tensions between Christians and Muslims, are also analysed. The research is based on...
For a long time, Tanzania under its charismatic President Nyerere was considered to be a model. The concept of an African form of socialism and also t...
During the twentieth-century, Christendom shifted its centre of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere, Africa becoming the most significant area of church growth. This volume explores Christianity's advance across the continent, and its capturing of the African imagination. From the medieval Catholic Kingdom of Kongo to a transnational Pentecostal movement in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the chapters explore how African agents - priests and prophets, martyrs and missionaries, evangelists and catechists - have seized Christianity and made it theirs. Emphasizing popular religion, the book shows how the...
During the twentieth-century, Christendom shifted its centre of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere, Africa becoming the most significant area of churc...
In Africa religion is very much embedded in the social structure and the organisation of the peoples of that continent. That is why we will obtain a clear starting point for the eventual articulation of an 'African spirituality of religious life' by examining closely how religious life is evolving on the ground in the everyday experience of religious women. After considering how the political and Church culture fostered the 'inculturation' of Catholic institutions, this ethnographic work documents the unfolding African expression of the Sisterhood among women religious in the...
In Africa religion is very much embedded in the social structure and the organisation of the peoples of that continent. That is why we will obtain a c...
The cumulative implications for Africans of the neoliberal processes (market speculation, shifts in sites of production, new modes of consumption, redefinition of the relation between states and their citizenry) cannot be reduced to single parameters. Three themes are central: the neoliberal production of personhood, the crises of youth and the moral panic in which so many of the wider reforms are registered in experience. With contributions on marriage payments, Muslim saints, popular theatre, homosexuality, ritual haunts, domestic reproduction, masculine fantasy, poetic justice, spirit...
The cumulative implications for Africans of the neoliberal processes (market speculation, shifts in sites of production, new modes of consumption, red...
This volume examines Pentecostal/charismatic renewal in an African context. Ghanaian Pentecostalism in its modern charismatic form has become the most visible expression of renewal within indigenous Christianity. The book first articulates the contribution of the older African initiated churches (AICs) to local Christianity arguing that, in spite of a present decline, the AICs have left an enduring theological imprint on indigenous Christian expression. Furthermore, it accounts for the rise of the new independent churches, the charismatic ministries. These have been proliferating across the...
This volume examines Pentecostal/charismatic renewal in an African context. Ghanaian Pentecostalism in its modern charismatic form has become the most...
This comparative and historical study focuses on religious aspects of disease etiologies among five, systematically selected, African peoples: the San, Maasai, Sukuma, Kongo and Yoruba. Unlike the homogenizing tendencies of many earlier comparative works by scholars of religion, this book highlights the differences between and the plurality within the religions and cultures of the selected peoples, as well as processes of change. The work covers a period of about 100 years, from the late 19th to the late 20th century, and much of the material used comes from European mission archives. To...
This comparative and historical study focuses on religious aspects of disease etiologies among five, systematically selected, African peoples: the San...
This book affords a unique insight into the encounter between an African indigenous religious tradition and Islam. It explores how the Boni community of Kenya draw on their pre-Islamic religion to fashion resistance in the face of external efforts at control and manipulation.
This book affords a unique insight into the encounter between an African indigenous religious tradition and Islam. It explores how the Boni community ...
This book, divided into two broad sections, examines the state in the Republic of Benin and the socio-political role of the Christian churches. The first looks at the remarkable pre-colonial kingdom of Danxomέ and its place in the imagining of the modern contrat social beninois. The second section looks at both the historical role of the mainline churches and the more recent development of a Christianisme beninois. The study concludes that the churches are above all a commentary upon the society in which they find themselves. Rather than an overt challenge to the state,...
This book, divided into two broad sections, examines the state in the Republic of Benin and the socio-political role of the Christian churches. The fi...
Against a backdrop of debate concerning the role of Pentecostalism as a mediator of 'modernity', this book examines the interaction between charismatic Christianity, spiritual power and gendered social change in contemporary Ghana.
Against a backdrop of debate concerning the role of Pentecostalism as a mediator of 'modernity', this book examines the interaction between charismati...