Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions - Elizabeth Prez

Descriere Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions - Elizabeth Prez

\nHonorable Mention, 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association \n \nWinner, 2017 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion section of the American Anthropological Association \n \nFinalist, 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions \n \nAn examination of the religious importance of food among Caribbean and Latin American communities \n \nBefore honey can be offered to the Afro-Cuban deity Ochún, it must be tasted, to prove to her that it is good. In African-inspired religions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, such gestures instill the attitudes that turn participants into practitioners. Acquiring deep knowledge of the diets of the gods and ancestors constructs adherents' identities; to learn to fix the gods' favorite dishes is to be seasoned into their service. \n \nIn this innovative work, Elizabeth Pérez reveals how seemingly trivial micropractices such as the preparation of sacred foods, are complex rituals in their own right. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in Chicago among practitioners of Lucumí, the transnational tradition popularly known as Santería, Pérez focuses on the behind-the-scenes work of the primarily women and gay men responsible for feeding the gods. She reveals how cooking and talking around the kitchen table have played vital socializing roles in Black Atlantic religions. \n \nEntering the world of divine desires and the varied flavors that speak to them, this volume takes a fresh approach to the anthropology of religion. Its richly textured portrait of a predominantly African-American Lucumí community reconceptualizes race, gender, sexuality, and affect in the formation of religious identity, proposing that every religion coalesces and sustains itself through its own secret recipe of micropractices.\n

Detalii

Brand

New York University Press

Categorie

ENSTK

EAN / GTIN

9781479839551

Magazine

1

Disponibilitate

in stock