Tongnaab : the history of a West African god / Jean Allman and John Parker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Allman, Jean Marie.

Contributor:

Parker, John, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tallensi (African people)--Religion.

Tallensi (African people).

Tongnaab (African deity)--Cult--History--20th century.

Tongnaab (African deity).

Witchcraft--Africa, West--History--20th century.

Witchcraft.

Witchcraft--Africa, West--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 pages)

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Tongnaab, Jean Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine, Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade to the tourist trade.

Contents:

Tongnaab and the Talensi in the history of the Middle Volta savanna

Gods and guns, rituals and rule, 1911-1928

"Watch over me" : witchcraft and anti-witchcraft movements in Ghanaian history, 1870s-1920s

From savanna to forest : Nana Tongo and ritual commerce in the world of cash and cocoa

Tongnaab, Meyer Fortes, and the making of colonial Taleland, 1928-1945

Tongnaab and the dynamics of history among the Talensi.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-292) and index.

ISBN:

9786612072741

1-282-07274-9

0-253-11183-8

OCLC:

476022184