Neighbors, Strangers, Witches, and Culture-Heroes - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Neighbors, Strangers, Witches, and Culture-Heroes write by Susan Rasmussen. This book was released on 2013-09-24. Neighbors, Strangers, Witches, and Culture-Heroes available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book examines alleged “superhuman” powers predominantly associated with smith/artisans in five African societies. It discusses their ritual and social roles, mythico-histories, symbols surrounding their art, and changing relationships between these specialists and their patrons. Needed but also feared, these smith/artisans work in traditionally hereditary occupations and in stratified but negotiable relationships with their rural patron families. Many of them now also work for new customers in an expanding market economy, which is still characterized by personal, face-to-face interactions. Rasmussen maintains that a framework integrating anthropological theories of witchcraft, alterity, symbolism, and power is fundamental to understanding local accusations and tensions in these relationships. She also argues that it is critical to deconstruct and disentangle guilt, blame, and envy—concepts that are often conflated in anthropology at the expense of falsely accused “witch” figures. The first portion of this book is an ethnographic analysis of smith/artisans in Tuareg society, and draws on primary source data from this author’s long-term social/cultural anthropological field research in Tuareg (Kel Tamajaq) communities of northern Niger and Mali. The latter portion of the book is a cross-cultural comparison, and it re-analyzes the Tuareg case, drawing on secondary data on ritual powers and smith/artisans in four other African societies: the Amhara of Ethiopia, the Bidan (Moors) of Mauritania, the Kapsiki of Cameroon, and the Mande of southern Mali. In the concluding analysis, there is discussion of similarities and differences between these cases, the social consequences of ritual knowledge and power in each community, and their wider implications for anthropology of religion, human rights, and African studies.
Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God
Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God write by Robert D. Miller II. This book was released on 2021-03-08. Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Recognizing the absence of a God named Yahweh outside of ancient Israel, this study addresses the related questions of Yahweh's origins and the biblical claim that there were Yahweh-worshipers other than the Israelite people. Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, with an exhaustive survey of ancient Near Eastern literature and inscriptions discovered by archaeology, and using anthropology to reconstruct religious practices and beliefs of ancient Edom and Midian, this study proposes an answer. Yahweh-worshiping Midianites of the Early Iron Age brought their deity along with metallurgy into ancient Palestine and the Israelite people.
Evil in Africa
Evil in Africa - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Evil in Africa write by William C. Olsen. This book was released on 2015-08-30. Evil in Africa available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.
Re-centering Cultural Performance and Orange Economy in Post-colonial Africa
Re-centering Cultural Performance and Orange Economy in Post-colonial Africa - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Re-centering Cultural Performance and Orange Economy in Post-colonial Africa write by Taiwo Afolabi. This book was released on 2022-09-29. Re-centering Cultural Performance and Orange Economy in Post-colonial Africa available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book explores the role of national theatres, national cultural centres, cultural policy, festivals, and the film industry as creative and cultural performances hubs for exercising soft power and cultural diplomacy. It shows how can existing cultural and non-cultural infrastructures, sometimes referred to as the Orange Economy, open opportunities for diplomacy and soft power; ways by which cultural performance and creative practice can be re-centered in post-colonial Africa and in post-global pandemic era; and existing structures that cultural performers, diplomats, administrators, cultural entrepreneurs, and managers can leverage to re-enact cultural performance and creative practice on the continent. This volume is positioned within postcolonial discourse to amplify narratives, experiences and realities that are anti-oppressive especially within critical discourse.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Anthropology
The Ashgate Research Companion to Anthropology - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Ashgate Research Companion to Anthropology write by Andrew J. Strathern. This book was released on 2016-03-03. The Ashgate Research Companion to Anthropology available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This companion provides an indispensable overview of contemporary and classical issues in social and cultural anthropology. Although anthropology has expanded greatly over time in terms of the diversity of topics in which its practitioners engage, many of the broad themes and topics at the heart of anthropological thought remain perennially vital, such as understanding order and change, diversity and continuity, and conflict and co-operation in the reproduction of social life. Bringing together leading scholars in the field, the contributors to this volume provide us with thoughtful and fruitful ways of thinking about a number of contemporary and long-standing arenas of work where both established and more recent researchers are engaged. The companion begins by exploring classic topics such as Religion; Rituals; Language and Culture; Violence; and Gender. This is followed by a focus on current developments within the discipline including Human Rights; Globalization; and Diasporas and Cosmopolitanism. It provides an interesting and challenging look at the state of current thinking in anthropology, serving as a rich resource for scholars and students alike.
