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,
Assistant
Professor, Anthropology, Drew University) by Wednesday, 28 March 2009. Session
participants will be confirmed shortly thereafter. Submission Deadline
for AAA 2009
Panels is 1 April 2009.
