Spirited Things
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€39.99
afroamerican
anthropology
attachment
belief
belonging
black
brazil
caribbean
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catholic church
commerce
community
corporeality
cuba
cults
demons
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ethiopia
folklore
heritage
history
land rights
latin america
material culture
materiality
middle passage
nonfiction
ocean
ownership
paranormal
pentecostalism
phonograph
plantations
possession
religion
rite
ritual
sea
slavery
spirits
spiritual agency
spirituality
supernatural
thingification
transactions
Product details
- ISBN 9780226122762
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 07 May 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The word "possession" is trickier than we often think, especially in the context of the Black Atlantic and its religions and economy. Here possession can refer to spirits, material goods, and, indeed, people. In Spirited Things, Paul Christopher Johnson gathers together essays by leading anthropologists in the Americas to explore the fascinating nexus found at the heart of the idea of being possessed. The result is a book that marries one of anthropology's foundational concerns - spirit possession - with one of its most salient contemporary ones: materiality. The contributors reopen the concept of possession in order to examine the relationship between African religions in the Atlantic and the economies that have historically shaped-and continue to shape-the cultures that practice them. They explore the way spirit mediation is framed both by material things-including plantations, the Catholic church, the sea, and the telegraph-as well as the legacy of slavery. In doing so, they offer a powerful new concept for understanding the Atlantic world and its history, creation, and deeply complex religious and political economy.
Paul Christopher Johnson is professor of history and Afroamerican and African studies and director of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomble and Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa.
