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Ancestors, Power and History in Madagascar
This collection of essays by regional specialists draws on a wide range of ethnographic and historical data to reassess the significance of the ancestors for changing relations of power and emerging identities in Madagascar.
Communication and Conversion in Northern Cameroon
Was modern Christian mission to Africa primarily a colonial project and a civilizing mission or was it a spiritual revival spreading to new areas? This book tells the tale of the Dii people in northern Cameroon and describes their encounter with Norwegian missionaries. Through archival studies and through fieldwork among the Dii, an intriguing scenario is presented. Whereas the missionaries describe their mission as one of spiritual liberation, and the Dii highligt the social liberation they received through literacy and political independence, the author shows how both spiritual and social changes were results of captivation, miscommunication and constant negotiations between the two parties.
The great diversity
This book brings together scholars from the universities of Bergen and Leeds who explore how we may understand different trajectories of development in Asia, arguably the most dynamic and certainly the most diverse part of our world. It asserts that there is no one singular 'truth' on understanding development, or universal model on prescribing future paths of development. Evidence from Asia reminds us that the importance of locality in shaping development has not diminished despite deepening globalisation in the modern era. Furthermore, by accepting the prevalence of diversity we are able to learn certain lessons of development from each other, both within and across scholarly disciplines. ...
Life in Language
A new anthropology of Protestant feminism, anchored by the language experiments of one Lutheran community. The language of the Bible is a powerful lens through which many Protestants understand themselves and their world, and its prohibitions on women’s speech pose complicated challenges to women. Nevertheless, women frequently serve as vocal leaders in Protestant organizations, including the early twentieth-century Norwegian Mission Society. In Life in Language, Ingie Hovland offers a unique biography of Henny Dons, a leader of the society’s so-called mission feminists, that grapples with ways Protestant women crafted innovative, expansive self-understandings through Christian language. More than their male peers, the mission feminists turned to religious speech to express material, as well as heavenly, desires for paid work, voting rights, and more, and Hovland argues that these experiments in women speaking, reading, writing, and listening paved the way for a new way of being in the world.
New Mana
‘Mana’, a term denoting spiritual power, is found in many Pacific Islands languages. In recent decades, the term has been taken up in New Age movements and online fantasy gaming. In this book, 16 contributors examine mana through ethnographic, linguistic, and historical lenses to understand its transformations in past and present. The authors consider a range of contexts including Indigenous sovereignty movements, Christian missions and Bible translations, the commodification of cultural heritage, and the dynamics of diaspora. Their investigations move across diverse island groups—Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Hawai‘i, and French Polynesia—and into...
The Spiritual in the Secular
David Livingstone's visit to Cambridge in 1857 was seen as much as a scientific event as a religious one. But he was by no means alone among missionaries in integrating mission with science and other fields of research. Rather, many missionaries were remarkable, pioneering polymaths. This collection of essays explores the ways in which late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionaries to Africa contributed to various academic disciplines, such as linguistics, ethnography, social anthropology, zoology, medicine, and many more. This volume includes an introductory chapter by the editors and eleven chapters that analyze missionary research and its impact on knowledge about African contexts. Several themes emerge, including many missionaries' positive views of indigenous discourses and the complicated relationship between missionaries and professional anthropologists. Contributors: John Cinnamon Erika Eichholzer Natasha Erlank Deborah Gaitskell Patrick Harries Walima T. Kalusa John Manton David Maxwell John Stuart Dmitri van den Bersselaar Honor Vinck
Into Africa
Winner of the 2016 Lavinia Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing Awarded first place in the 2016 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in the History and Public Policy category The most dramatic growth of Christianity in the late twentieth century has occurred in Africa, where Catholic missions have played major roles. But these missions did more than simply convert Africans. Catholic sisters became heavily involved in the Church’s health services and eventually in relief and social justice efforts. In Into Africa, Barbra Mann Wall offers a transnational history that reveals how Catholic medical and nursing sisters established relationships betwee...
Christian Missions and Humanitarianism in The Middle East, 1850-1950
From the early phases of modern missions, Christian missionaries supported many humanitarian activities, mostly framed as subservient to the preaching of Christianity. This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context. Contributions focus on ideologies, rhetoric, and practices of missionaries and their apostolates towards humanitarianism, from the mid-19th century Middle East crises, examining different missionaries, their society’s worldview and their networks in various areas of the Middle East. In the early 20th century Christian...
Reassembling the Strange
This book examines how Westerners understood and processed Madagascar and its environment during the nineteenth century. Madagascar’s unique ecosystem crafted its reputation as a strange place full of unusual species. Westerners, however, often minimized Madagascar’s peculiar features to stress the commonality of its fauna and flora with the world. The attempt to understand the island through science led to a domestication of its environment that created the image of a tame and known world capable of being controlled and used by Western powers. At the heart of the exploration of Madagascar and its transformation in Western eyes from a strange world to a cash crop colony were missionaries and naturalists who relied upon global experiences to master the island by normalizing the peculiar qualities of Madagascar’s environment. This book reveals how the environment played a dominant role in understanding the island and its people, and how current environmental debates have evolved from earlier policies and discussions about the environment.
