Recreating Africa

by Sweet, James H.

• ISBN13: 9780807828083
• ISBN10: 0807828084
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Africa and the transformation of culture in Brazil's slave society. Exploring the cultural lives of African slaves in the early colonial Portuguese world, with an emphasis on the more than one million Central Africans who survived the journey to Brazil, James Sweet lifts a curtain on their lives as Africans rather than as incipient Brazilians. Focusing first on the cultures of Central Africa from which the slaves came--Ndembu, Imbangala, Kongo, and others--Sweet identifies specific cultural rites and beliefs that survived their transplantation to the African-Portuguese diaspora, arguing that they did not give way to immediate creolization in the New World but remained distinctly African for some time. Slaves transferred many cultural practices from their homelands to Brazil, including kinship structures, divination rituals, judicial ordeals, ritual burials, dietary restrictions, and secret societies. Sweet demonstrates that the structures of many of these practices remained constant during this early period, although the meanings of the rituals were often transformed as slaves coped with their new environment and status. Religious rituals in particular became potent forms of protest against the institution of slavery and its hardships. In addition, Sweet examines how certain African beliefs and customs challenged and ultimately influenced Brazilian Catholicism. Sweet's analysis sheds new light on African culture in Brazil's slave society while also enriching our understanding of the complex process of creolization and cultural survival.

Author Biography

James H. Sweet is assistant professor of history at Florida International University in Miami.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
PART ONE: LIVING AND DYING IN THE AFRICAN-PORTUGUESE DIASPORA
1 Demography, Distribution, and Diasporic Streams	13	(18)
2 Kinship, Family, and Household Formation	31	(28)
3 Disease, Mortality, and Master Power	59	(28)
PART TWO: AFRICAN RELIGIOUS RESPONSES
4 Catholic vs. "Other" in the World of Believers	87	(16)
5 Theory and Praxis in the Study of African Religions	103	(16)
6 African Divination in the Diaspora	119	(20)
7 Calundús, Curing, and Medicine in the Colonial World	139	(22)
8 Witchcraft, Ritual, and Resistance in the African-Portuguese Diaspora	161	(30)
PART THREE: AFRICANS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
9 African Catholicism in the Portuguese World	191	(26)
10 The Impacts of African Religious Beliefs on Brazilian Catholicism	217	(10)
Conclusion	227	(4)
Notes	231	(34)
Bibliography	265	(22)
Index	287