Indigeneity in African religions : Oza worldviews, cosmologies and religious cultures / Afe Adogame.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adogame, Afeosemime U. (Afeosemime Unuose), 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Igbo (African people)--Nigeria, Southwest--Religion.

Igbo (African people).

Africa--Religious life and customs.

Africa.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 pages)

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.

Summary:

Based on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data, Indigeneity in African Religions explores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of "indigeneity" and contributing to its conceptual understanding within socioreligious change in contemporary Africa. The future of Oza indigeneity in the face of modernity is illuminated against the backlash of encounters, contestations with multiple hegemonies, transmissions of Christianity and Islam and indigenous (re)appropriations. Thus, any theorizations of such encounters must be cognizant of instantiations of indigeneity politics and identity, culture, tradition and power dynamics. Through decolonizing burdens of history, memory and method, Afe Adogame demonstrates a framework of understanding Oza indigenous religious, sociocultural and political imaginaries.

Contents:

Intro

Half-title Page

Dedication Page

Series Page

Title Page

Contents

List of Plates

Preface

1 Decolonizing history, memory and method

Encumbering historiography: Africa as object, Africa as subject

Remembering and forgetting: The politics of memory

Decolonizing from my locationality and positionality

Engaging the decolonizing discourse

Unmasking indigeneity

The road map

2 Historical origins, migration narratives, relationship with neighbours

Myths of historical origins and migration narratives

Ọza land tenure system

Ọza and its neighbours: A precarious proximity

Ọza people and Ilẹmẹ (Unẹmẹ-Osu)

Ọza during the Nupe invasion and hegemony in the nineteenth century

Ọza under Benin and Yoruba hegemonies

3 World views, religious cosmologies, spiritual agency

Ritual roles and special functionaries

Divination and healing

Empowering words, ritual prohibitions and taboos

4 Genealogies of kinship and sacral kingship

Myth and sacral kingship

Women, ritual power and sacral kingship

Feminine ingenuity: The sacrality and aesthetics of Ẹrẹma pottery making

Negotiating Ọza indigenous polity under a coloniality of power

5 Kingship myth, leadership succession and legal imbroglios (1991-2011)

6 Rituals of passage

Rituals of childbirth

From Osokuru to Osọ: Transitional rituals towards adulthood

The rites of marriage - Iruvie Imumi

Rituals of Iregu: Death

7 Gendering rituals

Ukpe Ọza (Ọza annual festival)

Ibishika

Ọza musical cultures

The marriage ceremony

Post-marriage rituals

8 The future of Ọza indigeneity in the face of African modernity

Negotiating Nupenization, Yorubanization, Christianization and colonial modernity

Reconfiguring rituals.

The interplay of mission Christianity, colonial education and indigenous knowledge production

Notes

Oral Sources

Select Bibliography

Index

Images

Copyright Page.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781350008274

1350008273

OCLC:

1276855227