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Thinking with Ngangas
What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa
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Thinking with Ngangas
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book appeals to readers interested in anthropology, philosophy, ritual studies, cultural critique, and the intersections between science and spirituality. Scholars and students exploring Afro-Cuban religion, ethnography, and the challenge of Western epistemologies will find it particularly insightful.
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Description
Thinking with Ngangas offers a comparative investigation of Afro-Cuban ritual and Western science that aims to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices.
Inspired by the exercises of Father Lafitau, an eighteenth-century Jesuit priest and proto-ethnographer who compared the lives of the Iroquois to those of the ancient Greeks, Stephan Palmié embarks on a series of unusual comparative investigations of Afro-Cuban ritual and Western science.
What do organ transplants have to do with ngangas, a complex assemblage of mineral, animal, and vegetal materials, including human remains, that serve as the embodiment of the spirits of the dead? How do genomics and "ancestry projects" converge with divination and oracular systems? What does it mean that Black Cubans in the United States took advantage of Edisonian technology to project the disembodied voice of a mystical entity named ecué onto the streets of Philadelphia? Can we consider Afro-Cuban spirit possession as a form of historical knowledge production?
By writing about Afro-Cuban ritual in relation to Western scientific practice, and vice versa, Palmié hopes to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices, revealing the logic that brings together enchantment and experiment.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
"Thinking with Ngangas is a major intellectual contribution delivered with flair, humour, and unfailing erudition," praises Janice Boddy of the University of Toronto, noting Palmié's method of "reciprocal illumination" offers rich essays on diverse issues including the rationality debate and anthropology's future. Kristina Wirtz of Western Michigan University calls the book "highly original and thought-provoking," commending its playful yet earnest approach to anthropology's foundational questions through the lens of Afro-Cuban religion.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780226825946
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 10 October 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Illustration: 9 halftones
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 33.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 426g
Pages: 288
About the Author
Stephan Palmié is the Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and the author of Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition and The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.
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