Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.
Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of socialaction and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities haveexpressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors tracethe impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglementwith commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, andself-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth,death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what thematerials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and thedynamics of the human condition.
