Nagô Grandma and White Papa: Candomblé and the Creation of Afro-Brazilian IdentityPosted in Anthropology, Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Monographs, Religion, Social Science on 2009-12-04 18:12Z by Steven |
Nagô Grandma and White Papa: Candomblé and the Creation of Afro-Brazilian Identity
University of North Carolina Press
September 2009
208 pages
6.125 x 9.25, 2 figs., 4 tables, notes, bibl., index
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8078-3177-9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8078-5975-9
Beatriz Góis Dantas, Professor Emerita of Anthropology
Universidade Federal de Sergipe in Brazil
Translated by Stephen Berg
Nagô Grandma and White Papa is a signal work in Brazilian anthropology and African diaspora studies originally published in Brazil in 1988. This edition makes Beatriz Góis Dantas’s historioethnographic study available to English-speaking audiences for the first time.
Dantas compares the formation of Yoruba (Nagô) religious traditions and ethnic identities in the Brazilian states of Sergipe and Bahia, revealing how they diverged from each other due to their different social and political contexts and needs. By tracking how markers of supposedly “pure” ethnic identity and religious practice differed radically from one place to another, Dantas shows the social construction of identity within a network of class-related demands and alliances. She demonstrates how the shape and meaning of “purity” have been affected by prolonged and complex social and cultural mixing, compromise, and struggle over time. Ethnic identity, as well as social identity in general, is formed in the crucible of political relations between social groups that purposefully mobilize and manipulate cultural markers to define their respective boundaries–a process, Dantas argues, that must be applied to understanding the experience of African-descended people in Brazil.