Indigeneity in African Religions: Oza Worldviews, Cosmologies and Religious Cultures
Ebook
Based on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data, Indigeneity in African Religions explores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of “indigeneity” and contributing to its conceptual understanding within socioreligious change in contemporary Africa.
The future of Oza indigeneity in the face of modernity is illuminated against the backlash of encounters, contestations with multiple hegemonies, transmissions of Christianity and Islam and indigenous (re)appropriations. Thus, any theorizations of such encounters must be cognizant of instantiations of indigeneity politics and identity, culture, tradition and power dynamics. Through decolonizing burdens of history, memory and method, Afe Adogame demonstrates a framework of understanding Oza indigenous religious,sociocultural and political imaginaries.
Offers an ethnographic account of the Oza people of south-western Nigeria, showing their relevance to understanding indigeneity and African religion.
The first full-length ethnographic study of the religious cultures of the indigenous Oza people in south-western Nigeria
Offers a much-needed alternative account to broad-brush surveys of African religions and ethnographies on the Yoruba and Igbo religions
Sheds light on the meaning and complexity of 'indigeneity' in the context of modern religious change in contemporary Africa
Image List
Preface
1. Decolonizing History, Memory and Method
2. Historical Origins, Migration Narratives, Relationship with Neighbours
3. Worldviews, Religious Cosmologies, Spiritual Agency
4. Genealogies of Kinship and Sacral Kingship
5. Kingship Myth, Leadership Succession and Legal Imbroglios (1991-2011)
6. Rituals of Passage
7. Gendering Rituals
8. The Future of ?za Indigeneity in the Face of African Modernity
Oral Sources
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Contributes importantly to the study of African and other Indigenous religions.
Afe Adogame's highly readable book has given great meaning to the existence of a small group in a culturally diverse milieu. By paying crucial attention to the complexities of the Oza people's historical, cultural and religious imaginations over the Longue Duree, the author has used an interpretive framework that discusses the present reality of the Oza people in light of their past experiences. This book will for a long time remain a contemporary benchmark for the reconstruction of the story of the Oza people.
This book offers a rich, in-depth account of the religious culture and worldview of the Oza people in Nigeria and their connections to all spheres of life. Mapping religious change from the 19th – early 21st century, Afe Adogame demonstrates how indigenous religions are crucial for understanding not only the past, but also African futures.
Afe Adogame's important and timely book provides an insightful and rich contribution to the indigenous religious tradition of Africa. Drawing on substantial ethnographic archival materials, and analyzed through multidisciplinary approaches, Adogame renews conversations on a whole array of phenomena, including cosmology, mythology, kingship, rites of passage, ritualism and gender dynamics, in ways that reinvigorate modern scholarship in African religious traditions. The work also advances current scholarship on indigeneity and demonstrates valuable paths on how best to conduct deep research on the subject.
Afe Adogame, a historian of religions, writes as a cultural insider and a mother-tongue speaker of the Oza language but who is fully aware of the potential pitfall of bias fraught with writing about one's ethnic group. ... Indigeneity in African Religions is a welcome addition to the growing literature in the historiography of smaller ethnic groups in Africa and elsewhere, whose histories, worldviews, beliefs, and practices have historically not received adequate scholarly attention. ... Even the modern Oza will find that this book fills an important gap in the historiography of their people group.
- Title: Indigeneity in African Religions: Oza Worldviews, Cosmologies and Religious Cultures
- Author: Afe Adogame
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350008274, 9781350274358, 1350274356, 1350008273
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350008274
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T00:56:17Z
Afe Adogame is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society and Chair of the History and Ecumenics Department, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, USA. He is also Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and author of The African Christian Diaspora (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).