Full Product Details
Author: Diana Paton ,
Maarit Forde
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.00cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 23.60cm
Weight: 0.662kg
ISBN: 9780822351245
ISBN 10: 0822351242
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 13 April 2012
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Obeah and Other Powers is an excellent and welcome contribution to scholarship on Caribbean religions. Too few works explicitly address the three themes taken up in this collection, the significance of state power in shaping the environment in which Caribbean religions were practiced, the role of practitioners in shaping their religious traditions, and the role of mobility and the permeability of borders in shaping the definition and interpretation of obeah, Vodou, Santeria, and Candomble. This last premise enables the contributors to analyze these religions in conjunction with one another and as overlapping, rather than separate, phenomena. -Aisha Khan, author of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad The contributors to this outstanding collection share the refreshing ambition to historicize local knowledge and to embrace the opacity and persisting mystique of Caribbean spiritual realities-from the colonial occult to enchanted modernities. -Richard Price, author of Travels with Tooy and Rainforest Warriors Each and every chapter of Obeah and Other Powers is a gem in its own right, and yet this splendid collection is also much more than simply the sum of its parts. Indeed, the volume achieves an impressive level of sophistication in Caribbeanist historical anthropology and Black Atlantic religious studies, and its release - along with the publication of Jerome Handler and Kenneth Bilby's Enacting Power - makes 2012 something of a watershed moment in the study of the dynamic and rather unruly set of spiritual beliefs and ritual practices so often glossed as obeah in Afro- Atlantic studies. -- Keith E. McNeal Hispanic American Historical Review A clear introduction and the well-developed, carefully composed chapters redeem the book... [T]he book offers a great deal. Smith's chapter would be a welcome addition to a gender and women's studies classroom. Likewise, Savage's contribution would work well in a history of medicine course. Putnam's essay is required reading for students interested in Atlantic history. Finally, Richman's chapter would fit well in a religious studies course. -- Karol K. Weaver Bulletin of the History of Medicine In bringing together such a strong group of scholars to consider the production and reproduction of Caribbean ritual, spiritual practices, Paton and Forde have made a significant contribution to advancing scholarly understanding of this important subject and indeed to Caribbean history and studies more generally. -- Juanita De Barros Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History Obeah and Other Powers... is likely to stimulate much interest and debate as scholars continue the difficult task of sifting through hostile representations of Caribbean religious beliefs and practices to better understand those beliefs and practices on their own terms. -- Randy M. Browne History: Reviews of New Books
Obeah and Other Powers is an excellent and welcome contribution to scholarship on Caribbean religions. Too few works explicitly address the three themes taken up in this collection, the significance of state power in shaping the environment in which Caribbean religions were practiced, the role of practitioners in shaping their religious traditions, and the role of mobility and the permeability of borders in shaping the definition and interpretation of obeah, Vodou, Santeria, and Candomble. This last premise enables the contributors to analyze these religions in conjunction with one another and as overlapping, rather than separate, phenomena. --Aisha Khan, author of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad
Author Information
Diana Paton is a Reader in Caribbean history at Newcastle University. She is the author of No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780–1870 and editor of A Narrative of Events, since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica and, with Pamela Scully, Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World, all also published by Duke University Press. Maarit Forde is a Lecturer in the Department of Liberal Arts at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
