The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226019567)

Over a lifetime of studying Cuban Santería and other religions related to Orisha worship--a practice also found among the Yoruba in West Africa--Stephan Palmié has grown progressively uneasy with the assumptions inherent in the very term Afro-Cuban religion. In The Cooking of History he provides a comprehensive analysis of these assumptions, in the process offering an incisive critique both of the anthropology of religion and of scholarship on the cultural history of the Afro-Atlantic World. Understood largely through its rituals and ceremonies, Santería and related religions have been a challenge for anthropologists to link to a hypothetical African past. But, Palmié argues, precisely by relying on the notion of an aboriginal African past, and by claiming to authenticate these religions via their findings, anthropologists--some of whom have converted to these religions--have exerted considerable influence upon contemporary practices. Critiquing widespread and damaging simplifications that posit religious practices as stable and self-contained, Palmié calls for a drastic new approach that properly situates cultural origins within the complex social environments and scholarly fields in which they are investigated.

Author: Stephan Palmié
ISBN-10: 022601956X
ISBN-13: 9780226019567
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 06/14/2013
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d