Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean
edited by Maarit Forde and Yanique Hume
Duke University Press, 2018 Cloth: 978-1-4780-0031-0 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-0213-0 | Paper: 978-1-4780-0014-3 Library of Congress Classification GT3223.P37 2018
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and its rituals across the Caribbean, drawing on ethnographic theories shaped by a deep understanding of the region's long history of violent encounters, exploitation, and cultural diversity. Examining the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, the contributors investigate the changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death in relation to political developments, state violence, legislation, policing, and identity politics. Contributors address topics that range from the ever-evolving role of divinized spirits in Haiti and the contemporary mortuary practice of Indo-Trinidadians to funerary ceremonies in rural Jamaica and ancestor cults in Maroon culture in Suriname. Questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy underlie these discussions of how racial, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.
Contributors. Donald Cosentino, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Keith E. McNeal, George Mentore, Richard Price, Karen Richman, Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering, Bonno (H.U.E.) Thoden van Velzen
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Maarit Forde is the Head of the Department of Literary, Cultural, and Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and coeditor of Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing, also published by Duke University Press.
Yanique Hume is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, and coeditor of Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics, and Performance.
REVIEWS
"Passages and Afterworlds embraces a range of religious traditions that includes Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and a variety of Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
-- R. Berleant-Schiller Choice
"In Passages and Afterworlds, editors Yanique Hume and Maarit Forde have assembled a compelling set of essays on Caribbean deathways—mortuary ritual, memorialization, and the colonial and postcolonial management of beings alive and dead in the Greater Caribbean world. Across diverse contexts, the chapters do an excellent job of examining the ways in which communities use separations between those dead and alive to come closer together, making new life from death (including living well with the dead)."
-- Alexander Rocklin Reading Religion
"Passages and Afterworlds deftly examines death, dying, and afterworlds in the Caribbean region. Chapters—written in accessible language and in vivid detail—evidence a deep appreciation of the region's history, a history characterized by violent encounters and exploitation. This is an extraordinary book."
-- Stephen D. Glazier Religion
“Passages and Afterworlds is a hugely important volume to the study of life and death in the circum-Caribbean.... This volume brings together groups from the Caribbean that are rarely placed in the same collection, which provides an innovative approach to Caribbean studies....”
-- Alejandro Escalante Anthropology Book Forum
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction / Maarit Forde 1 I. Relations 1. "The Dead Don't Come Back Like the Migrant Comes Back": Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü / Paul Christopher Johnson 31 2. Of Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities / George Mentore 54 3. The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society / Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen 80 4. Death and the Construction of Social Space: Land, Kinship, and Identity in the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle / Yanique Hume 109 5. Mortuary Rights and Social Dramas in Léogâne, Haiti / Karen Richman 139 II. Transformations 6. From Zonbi to Samdi: Late Transformations in Haitian Eschatology / Donald Cosentino 159 7. Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago / Maarit Forde 176 8. Death and the Problem of Orthopraxy in Caribbean Hinduism: Reconsidering the Politics and Poetics of Indo-Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual / Keith E. McNeal 199 9. Chasing Death's Left Hand: Personal Encounters with Death and Its Rituals in the Caribbean / Richard Price 225 Afterword. Life and Postlife in Caribbean Religious Traditions / Aisha Khan 243 References 261 Contributors 283 Index 287
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Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean
edited by Maarit Forde and Yanique Hume
Duke University Press, 2018 Cloth: 978-1-4780-0031-0 eISBN: 978-1-4780-0213-0 Paper: 978-1-4780-0014-3
The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and its rituals across the Caribbean, drawing on ethnographic theories shaped by a deep understanding of the region's long history of violent encounters, exploitation, and cultural diversity. Examining the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, the contributors investigate the changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death in relation to political developments, state violence, legislation, policing, and identity politics. Contributors address topics that range from the ever-evolving role of divinized spirits in Haiti and the contemporary mortuary practice of Indo-Trinidadians to funerary ceremonies in rural Jamaica and ancestor cults in Maroon culture in Suriname. Questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy underlie these discussions of how racial, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.
Contributors. Donald Cosentino, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Keith E. McNeal, George Mentore, Richard Price, Karen Richman, Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering, Bonno (H.U.E.) Thoden van Velzen
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Maarit Forde is the Head of the Department of Literary, Cultural, and Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and coeditor of Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing, also published by Duke University Press.
Yanique Hume is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, and coeditor of Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics, and Performance.
REVIEWS
"Passages and Afterworlds embraces a range of religious traditions that includes Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and a variety of Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
-- R. Berleant-Schiller Choice
"In Passages and Afterworlds, editors Yanique Hume and Maarit Forde have assembled a compelling set of essays on Caribbean deathways—mortuary ritual, memorialization, and the colonial and postcolonial management of beings alive and dead in the Greater Caribbean world. Across diverse contexts, the chapters do an excellent job of examining the ways in which communities use separations between those dead and alive to come closer together, making new life from death (including living well with the dead)."
-- Alexander Rocklin Reading Religion
"Passages and Afterworlds deftly examines death, dying, and afterworlds in the Caribbean region. Chapters—written in accessible language and in vivid detail—evidence a deep appreciation of the region's history, a history characterized by violent encounters and exploitation. This is an extraordinary book."
-- Stephen D. Glazier Religion
“Passages and Afterworlds is a hugely important volume to the study of life and death in the circum-Caribbean.... This volume brings together groups from the Caribbean that are rarely placed in the same collection, which provides an innovative approach to Caribbean studies....”
-- Alejandro Escalante Anthropology Book Forum
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction / Maarit Forde 1 I. Relations 1. "The Dead Don't Come Back Like the Migrant Comes Back": Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü / Paul Christopher Johnson 31 2. Of Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities / George Mentore 54 3. The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society / Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen 80 4. Death and the Construction of Social Space: Land, Kinship, and Identity in the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle / Yanique Hume 109 5. Mortuary Rights and Social Dramas in Léogâne, Haiti / Karen Richman 139 II. Transformations 6. From Zonbi to Samdi: Late Transformations in Haitian Eschatology / Donald Cosentino 159 7. Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago / Maarit Forde 176 8. Death and the Problem of Orthopraxy in Caribbean Hinduism: Reconsidering the Politics and Poetics of Indo-Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual / Keith E. McNeal 199 9. Chasing Death's Left Hand: Personal Encounters with Death and Its Rituals in the Caribbean / Richard Price 225 Afterword. Life and Postlife in Caribbean Religious Traditions / Aisha Khan 243 References 261 Contributors 283 Index 287
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE