Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association
(Philadelphia, PA, United States, 2-6 December 2009)
Beyond the Sacred: Redressing the dominance of religion in
anthropological explorations of Afro-American culture (2009 AAA
meetings)
Anthropologists working with communities of the African Diaspora, in
seeking to reframe Africa as an integral part of a network of Atlantic
interaction, have broadened the scope of scholarship beyond the
excavation of a past rooted in slavery to include the multiplex
'routes' of interaction between Black communities. However, the locus
classicus for exploration and discussion of Africanity in Afro-America—
whether as the product of creolization or African survivals—remains
the sacred spaces of Afro-American religious traditions. From
Candomblé to Santeria, from Vodoun to Black Baptist churches, religion
has been and continues to be the principle ethnographic, historical
and analytical trope through which anthropologists have tried to
understand how Black American communities incorporate the idea of
Africa into their identity processes. This emphasis belies and
diminshes the broad array of techniques, practices and traditions that
attempt to connect Afro-American populations with Africa and Africans—
many of which exist beyond the realm of the sacred. Privileging the
religious arena often serves to confine the study of Africanity in
America to the realm of the still ongoing 'creolization vs. survivals'
debate, as the metaphors of survival and memory are vital to many Afro-
American religious congregations. This panel seeks to bring together
papers that present a broader view of how ideas about Africa and
contemporary connections with Africa inform constructions of Black
identity in the Americas beyond the history of the Middle Passage and
Afro religious phenomena.
The panel organizer invites papers that problematize the place of the
religion as the central trope through which scholars and community
members understand connections with Africa and Africans and that
suggest alternative ways of understanding how Africa can inform Black
identities.
Please send abstracts by e-mail to Allan Dawson (allan.dawson@mac.com)
by Wednesday, 28 March 2009. Session participants will be confirmed
shortly thereafter. Submission Deadline for AAA 2009 Panels is 1 April
2009.
