Nation Dance
Religion, Identity, and Cultural Difference in the
Caribbean
Edited by Patrick Taylor
Addresses the
interplay of diverse spiritual, religious, and cultural traditions across the
Caribbean.
Dealing with the ongoing interaction of rich and
diverse cultural traditions from Cuba and Jamaica to Guyana and Surinam, Nation
Dance addresses some of the major contemporary issues in the study of Caribbean
religion and identity. The book's three sections move from a focus on spirituality
and healing, to theology in social and political context, and on to questions of
identity and diaspora.
The book begins with the voices of female
practitioners and then offers a broad, interdisciplinary examination of Caribbean
religion and culture. Afro-Caribbean religions, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and
Christianity are all addressed, with specific reflections on Santería, Palo Monte,
Vodou, Winti, Obeah, Kali Mai, Orisha work, Spiritual Baptist faith, Spiritualism,
Rastafari, Confucianism, Congregationalism, Pentecostalism, Catholicism, and
liberation theology. Some essays are based on fieldwork, archival research, and
textual or linguistic analysis, while others are concerned with methodological or
theoretical issues. Contributors include practitioners and scholars, some very
established in the field, others with fresh, new approaches; all of them come from
the region or have done extensive fieldwork or research there. In these essays the
poetic vitality of the practitioner's voice meets the attentive commitment of the
postcolonial scholar in a dance of "nations" across the
waters.
Patrick Taylor, Associate Professor in the Division of
Humanities and in the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at York
University, Toronto, is past Deputy Director of the Centre for Research on Latin
America and the Caribbean and Editor-in-Chief of the Caribbean Religions Project. He
is author of The Narrative of Liberation: Perspectives on Afro-Caribbean Literature,
Popular Culture and Politics and co-editor of Forging Identities and Patterns of
Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. His articles have appeared in
Callaloo, Studies in Religion, and other scholarly journals and
books.
May 2001
224 pages, 1 b&w photo, 1 map, 6 1/8
x 9 1/4, bibl., index
cloth 0-253-33835-2 $39.95 L /