Maroon Cosmopolitics

Maroon Cosmopolitics
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2018-12-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004388060

Maroon Cosmopolitics: Personhood, Creativity and Incorporation sheds further light on the contemporary modes of Maroon circulation and presence in Suriname and in the French Guiana. The contributors assembled in the volume look to describe Maroon ways of inhabiting, transforming and circulating through different localities in the Guianas, as well as their modes of creating and incorporating knowledge and artefacts into their social relations and spaces. By bringing together authors with diverse perspectives on the situation of the Guianese Maroon at the twenty-first century, the volume contributes to the anthropological literature on Maroon societies, providing ethnographic, and historical depth and legitimacy to the contemporary lives of the descendants of those who fled from slavery in the Americas.

The Cultural Work

The Cultural Work
Author: Corinna Campbell
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020-06-02
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0819579564

How do people in an intensely multicultural city live alongside one another while maintaining clear boundaries? This question is at the core of The Cultural Work, which illustrates how the Maroons (descendants of escaped slaves) of Suriname and French Guiana, on the northern coast of South America, have used culture-representational performance to sustain their communities within Paramaribo, the capital. Focusing on three collectives known locally as "cultural groups," which specialize in the music and dance traditions of the Maroons, it marks a vital contribution to knowledge about the cultural map of the African diaspora in South America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Locating Guyane

Locating Guyane
Author: Catriona MacLeod
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786948664

This collection of essays explores historical and conceptual locations of Guyane, as a relational space characterised by dynamics of interaction and conflict. Does Guyane have, or has it had, its own place in the world, or is it a borderland which can only make sense in relation to elsewhere?

Prophets of Doom

Prophets of Doom
Author: H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2022-11-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004516379

Once the Maroons escaped from slavery and established their communities in the remote interior of Suriname, attention shifted from military threat to internal danger. As they faced these dangers in an unknown rainforest, they sought refuge in prophetic movements directed by charismatic religious leaders. This book charts the history of Okanisi religious movements from their escape to the present day. It is based on sixty years of fieldwork by the late Bonno Thoden van Velzen and Ineke van Wetering, archival research and oral histories. Prophets of Doom is a tribute to Okanisi society and reflects decades of research and dedication.

Fugitive, Where Are You Running?

Fugitive, Where Are You Running?
Author: Dénètem Touam Bona
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2022-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1509551867

Hunting stories will usually glorify the hunters, since it is the hunters who write the stories. In this book, Dénètem Touam Bona takes up the perspective of the hunted, using the concept of marronage to highlight the lives and creativity of colonized and subjugated peoples. In a format that blends travel diary, anthropological inquiry, and philosophical and literary reflection, he narrates the hidden history of fugues – those of the runaway slave, the deserting soldier, the clandestine migrant, and all those who challenged norms and forms of control. In the space of the fugue, in the folds and retreats of dense and muggy woods, runaway countercultures appeared and spread out, cultures whose organization and values were diametrically opposed to those of colonial societies. Marronage, the art of disappearance, has never been a more timely topic: thwarting surveillance, profiling, and tracking by the police and by corporations; disappearing from databases; extending the forest’s shadow by the click of a key. In our cyberconnected world, where control of individuals in real time is increasingly becoming the norm, we need to reinvent marronage and recognize the maroon as a universal figure of resistance. Beyond its critical dimension, this book calls for a cosmo-poetics of refuge and aims at rehabilitating the power of dreams and poetry to ward off the confinement of minds and bodies.

Suspect Others

Suspect Others
Author: Stuart Earle Strange
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2021-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1487509723

Suspect Others explores how ideas of self-knowledge and identity arise from a unique set of rituals in Suriname, a postcolonial Caribbean nation rife with racial and religious suspicion. Amid competition for belonging, political power, and control over natural resources, Surinamese Ndyuka Maroons and Hindus look to spirit mediums to understand the causes of their successes and sufferings and to know the hidden minds of relatives and rivals alike. But although mediumship promises knowledge of others, interactions between mediums and their devotees also fundamentally challenge what devotees know about themselves, thereby turning interpersonal suspicion into doubts about the self. Through a rich ethnographic comparison of the different ways in which Ndyuka and Hindu spirit mediums and their devotees navigate suspicion, Suspect Others shows how present-day Caribbean peoples come to experience selves that defy concepts of personhood inflicted by the colonial past. Stuart Earle Strange investigates key questions about the nature of self-knowledge, religious revelation, and racial discourse in a hyper-diverse society. At a moment when exclusionary suspicions dominate global politics, Suspect Others elucidates self-identity as a social process that emerges from the paradoxical ways in which people must look to others to know themselves.

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia
Author: Riamsara Kuyakanon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2021-11-25
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1000482308

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia offers a unique insight into the non-human and spiritual dimensions of environmental management in a changing world. This volume presents a comparative, place-based exploration of landscapes across Asia and the entities, practices and knowledges that inhabit them. Rather than treating sacred mountains, terrains and water sources as self-contained, esoteric religious phenomena, the authors consider them within critical 'cosmopolitical ecologies' framings in which non-human entities are engaged as actors in the socio-political arena. The chapters include case studies of healing springs recognized by governments, and sacred mountains that are addressed by heads of states and Communist Party cadres, or that speak to the faithful through spirit mediums in a politics of re-enchantment. Contributors explore the diverse ways in which non-human entities such as forest spirits, reindeer, mountains and Buddhist Masters of the Land are engaged by humans to navigate environmental change and address a range of ecological threats from large-scale mining to climate change. Cosmopolitical ecologies approaches encompass the healing power of topography as well as transformative intimacies with other-than-human beings such as sparrows within an Islamic eco-theological poetic setting. In this light the book observes dynamic and creative processes of cosmological innovation including the repurposing of ritual to address challenges such as the Covid-19 epidemic. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment and society across disciplinary perspectives in general, and to anthropologists, human geographers, political ecologists, indigenous studies, area studies, environmental sciences and environmental humanities scholars in particular. The Introduction to this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Comprendiendo/Understanding América

Comprendiendo/Understanding América
Author: Fernando Palacios Mateos
Publisher: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador
Total Pages: 717
Release: 2022-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9978776133

La presente obra establece una aproximación hacia la comprensión del significado del continente americano desde los contextos sociales y culturales a través de las manifestaciones musicales afrodescendientes, destacando el aporte imprescindible que estas prácticas sonoras suponen a la configuración del territorio. Además, aborda algunos de los procesos sincréticos ocurridos en diversas regiones de África originados con la llegada de las músicas e instrumentos musicales afroamericanos a sus tierras originarias.

Cosmopolitan Archaeologies

Cosmopolitan Archaeologies
Author: Lynn Meskell
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2009-04-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822392429

An important collection, Cosmopolitan Archaeologies delves into the politics of contemporary archaeology in an increasingly complex international environment. The contributors explore the implications of applying the cosmopolitan ideals of obligation to others and respect for cultural difference to archaeological practice, showing that those ethics increasingly demand the rethinking of research agendas. While cosmopolitan archaeologies must be practiced in contextually specific ways, what unites and defines them is archaeologists’ acceptance of responsibility for the repercussions of their projects, as well as their undertaking of heritage practices attentive to the concerns of the living communities with whom they work. These concerns may require archaeologists to address the impact of war, the political and economic depredations of past regimes, the livelihoods of those living near archaeological sites, or the incursions of transnational companies and institutions. The contributors describe various forms of cosmopolitan engagement involving sites that span the globe. They take up the links between conservation, natural heritage and ecology movements, and the ways that local heritage politics are constructed through international discourses and regulations. They are attentive to how communities near heritage sites are affected by archaeological fieldwork and findings, and to the complex interactions that local communities and national bodies have with international sponsors and universities, conservation agencies, development organizations, and NGOs. Whether discussing the toll of efforts to preserve biodiversity on South Africans living near Kruger National Park, the ways that UNESCO’s global heritage project universalizes the ethic of preservation, or the Open Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk that the Archaeological Institute of America sent to the U.S. government before the Iraq invasion, the contributors provide nuanced assessments of the ethical implications of the discursive production, consumption, and governing of other people’s pasts. Contributors. O. Hugo Benavides, Lisa Breglia, Denis Byrne, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Alfredo González-Ruibal, Ian Hodder, Ian Lilley, Jane Lydon, Lynn Meskell, Sandra Arnold Scham