Searching for Africa in Brazil: Power and Tradition in Candomble: Power and Tradition in Candomblé - Hardcover

Stefania Capone

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822346257 ISBN 13: 9780822346258

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2010

Synopsis

"Searching for Africa in Brazil" is a learned exploration of tradition and change in Afro-Brazilian religions. Focusing on the convergence of anthropologists' and religious leaders' exegeses, Stefania Capone argues that twentieth-century anthropological research contributed to the construction of an ideal Afro-Brazilian religious orthodoxy identified with the Nago (Yoruba) cult in the northeastern state of Bahia. In contrast to other researchers, Capone foregrounds the agency of Candomble leaders. She demonstrates that they successfully imposed their vision of Candomble on anthropologists, reshaping in their own interest narratives of Afro-Brazilian religious practice. The anthropological narratives were then taken as official accounts of religious orthodoxy by many practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions in Brazil. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Capone demonstrates that there is no pure or orthodox Afro-Brazilian religion. Challenging the usual interpretations of Afro-Brazilian religions as fixed entities, completely independent one from the other, Capone reveals these practices as parts of a unique religious continuum. She does so through an analysis of ritual variations as well as discursive practices. To illuminate the continuum of Afro-Brazilian religious practice and the tensions between exegetic discourses and ritual practices, Capone focuses on the figure of Exu, the sacred African trickster who allows communication between gods and men. Following Exu and his avatars, she discloses the centrality of notions of prestige and power - mystical and religious - in Afro-Brazilian religions. Explaining how religious identity is constantly negotiated among social actors, Capone emphasizes the agency of practitioners and their political agendas in the 'return to roots' or re-Africanization movement, an attempt to recover the original purity of a mythical and legitimizing Africa.

About this title

Review:

"Searching for Africa in Brazil is a major piece of scholarship. Through careful historical research and vivid ethnographic detail, Stefania Capone demonstrates that conceptual pairs such as pure/impure, religious/magical, traditional/modernized, and communal/individualistic have long played a major role in highly self-conscious and overtly politicized representations of Afro-Brazilian religion. This is so both in regards to practitioners' discourses aimed at legitimizing their forms of practice at the expense of their rivals' and in regards to the changing views of anthropologists who sought a definitional monopoly over what could count as 'African,' 'traditional,' and so forth." --Stephan Palmie, author of Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition

"The translation of this outstanding work into English is a real service to scholars. Searching for Africa in Brazil is a well researched and carefully argued examination of the ongoing disputations about the origins and transformations in Candomble. Stefania Capone is particularly insightful regarding the role that outsiders have played in shaping disputes about authenticity, sources, and their relation to African origins."-- --Anani Dzidzienyo, co-editor of Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos

About the Author:

Stefania Capone is a Professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre (France). She is the author of Les Yoruba du Nouveau Monde: Religion, ethnicite et nationalisme noir aux Etats-Unis.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0822346257
• ISBN 13: 9780822346258
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320