The book delves into the concept of "transculturation," coined by Fernando Ortiz, emphasizing its relevance in understanding cultural emergence from a peripheral viewpoint. It fosters a dialogue between Mediterranean and Caribbean scholars, addressing contemporary issues such as migration, territorial sovereignty, and cultural diversity. By revisiting Ortiz's mid-twentieth-century theories, the contributors aim to develop innovative analytical frameworks for both regions, while critically assessing the implications of Ortiz's ideas for modern anthropological research and theory.
"Inspired by the exercises of Father Lafitau, a Jesuit priest and proto-ethnographer of the "New World" who compared the lives of the Iroquois to the ancient Greeks, Stephan Palmié embarks on a series of unusual comparative investigations. 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 spirits of the dead? Where do genomics and "ancestry projects" converge with divination and oracular systems? What does it mean that Black Cubans in the US 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 an extreme 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 logics that bring together enchantment and experiment. Throughout, Palmié is also levelling a specific anthropological challenge: he takes issue with the much-discussed "ontological turn," especially with those thinkers who promote notions of radical alterity and utter incommensurability. Instead, Palmié suggests that radical comparison with "boundary objects" can offer something new to the ethnographic enterprise"--
Im Zuge des Anschlusses Kubas an den atlantischen Sklavenhandel kam es zur Transplantation afrikanischer religiöser Kulturelemente, welche sich dort zu neuen kreolischen Konfigurationen, den afrokubanischen Religionen fügten. Mit dem seit 1959 andauernden Exodus aus dem revolutionären Kuba haben diese Religionen nun auch in den USA Fuß gefaßt. Die vorliegende Arbeit verfolgt das Ziel, den Werdegang der auch als «Santería» bekannten regla ocha mittels ethnohistorischer Methoden zu beleuchten und anhand von in Miami erhobenen ethnographischen Daten ein Bild der Vorstellungswelt dieser Religion zu entwerfen.
