The Cooking of History
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
- Over a lifetime of studying Cuban Santería and other religions related to Orisha worship--a practice also found among the Yoruba in West Africa--Stephan Palmié has grown progressively uneasy with the assumptions inherent in the very term Afro-Cuban religion. In The Cooking of History he provides a comprehensive analysis of these assumptions, in the process offering an incisive critique both of the anthropology of religion and of scholarship on the cultural history of the Afro-Atlantic World. Understood largely through its rituals and ceremonies, Santería and related religions have been a challenge for anthropologists to link to a hypothetical African past. But, Palmié argues, precisely by relying on the notion of an aboriginal African past, and by claiming to authenticate these religions via their findings, anthropologists--some of whom have converted to these religions--have exerted considerable influence upon contemporary practices. Critiquing widespread and damaging simplifications that posit religious practices as stable and self-contained, Palmié calls for a drastic new approach that properly situates cultural origins within the complex social environments and scholarly fields in which they are investigated.
- Copyright:
- 2013
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226019734
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780226019567, 9780226019420
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- Date of Addition:
- 01/11/16
- Copyrighted By:
- The University of Chicago Press
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Religion and Spirituality, Social Studies
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
Reviews
Other Books
- by Stephan Palmié
- in History
- in Nonfiction
- in Religion and Spirituality
- in Social Studies