Explore the vast range of titles available.

Black Atlantic Religion illuminates the mutual transformation of African and African-American cultures, highlighting the example of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion. This book contests both the recent conviction that transnationalism is new and the long-held supposition that African culture endures in the Americas only among the poorest and most isolated of black populations. In fact, African culture in the Americas has most flourished among the urban and the prosperous, who, through travel, commerce, and literacy, were well exposed to other cultures. Their embrace of African religion is less a \"survival,\" or inert residue of the African past, than a strategic choice in their circum-Atlantic, multicultural world. With counterparts in Nigeria, the Benin Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad, and the United States, Candomblé is a religion of spirit possession, dance, healing, and blood sacrifice. Most surprising to those who imagine Candomblé and other such religions as the products of anonymous folk memory is the fact that some of this religion's towering leaders and priests have been either well-traveled writers or merchants, whose stake in African-inspired religion was as much commercial as spiritual. Morever, they influenced Africa as much as Brazil. Thus, for centuries, Candomblé and its counterparts have stood at the crux of enormous transnational forces. Vividly combining history and ethnography, Matory spotlights a so-called \"folk\" religion defined not by its closure or internal homogeneity but by the diversity of its connections to classes and places often far away. Black Atlantic Religion sets a new standard for the study of transnationalism in its subaltern and often ancient manifestations.

As Folias dos Santos Reis, assim como outras devoções oriundas do catolicismo medieval, que adentraram no Brasil e passaram a compor o repertório sagrado, imposto aos povos originários e, mais tarde, aos negros africanos acometidos pela diáspora para aqui serem escravizados, ganharam contornos próprios pelo povo que se  formava. Dessa forma, buscamos compreender como um auto devocional que foi entronizado pelo catolicismo popular, ainda na Colônia, se aproxima das religiões afro-brasileiras, principalmente da umbanda, sem negar o mito que a gerou. Um conjunto de fatores, como a deslegitimação pela religião que entronizou a devoção, a chancela de um catolicismo popular que reinventou as práticas devocionais e a saída do campo para as cidades, aproximou esses devotos dos Santos Reis aos cultos da umbanda.

As Folias dos Santos Reis, assim como outras devoções oriundas do catolicismo medieval, que adentraram no Brasil e passaram a compor o repertório sagrado, imposto aos povos originários e, mais tarde, aos negros africanos acometidos pela diáspora para aqui serem escravizados, ganharam contornos próprios pelo povo que se  formava. Dessa forma, buscamos compreender como um auto devocional que foi entronizado pelo catolicismo popular, ainda na Colônia, se aproxima das religiões afro-brasileiras, principalmente da umbanda, sem negar o mito que a gerou. Um conjunto de fatores, como a deslegitimação pela religião que entronizou a devoção, a chancela de um catolicismo popular que reinventou as práticas devocionais e a saída do campo para as cidades, aproximou esses devotos dos Santos Reis aos cultos da umbanda.

This article explores the intricate interplay between empathy and religious experience within the Brazilian Umbanda religion. Umbanda is a syncretic faith that integrates elements from African spiritual practices, Catholicism, and Kardecist spiritism, reflecting the diverse cultural and social dynamics of Brazilian society. The religion emphasizes communication with spirits, particularly the pretos velhos—spirits of old slaves—who are revered for their wisdom and connection to the divine. These spirits engage with practitioners through mediums in rituals held in terreiros, offering guidance and comfort. Central to our discussion is the concept of embodied empathy, which is vital for understanding the deep emotional connections between the practitioners and the spirits. We seek to understand why Umbanda rituals are not just spiritual sessions, but profound empathic exchanges that facilitate communal healing and personal transformation. Through the lens of the predictive processing theory and the concept of embodied cognition, we argue that these empathic interactions are not just psychological but are deeply rooted in the physical and social embodiments of the participants. This perspective helps in understanding how Umbanda serves both as a spiritual practice and a socio-cultural mechanism that aids individuals in navigating their personal and collective life challenges. The empathy experienced within Umbanda rituals exemplifies how religion can serve as a powerful conduit for social cohesion and personal introspection.

Since at least 2005, drug traffickers in the cities and favelas of the state of Rio de Janeiro have been carrying out systematic and violent assaults on Afro-Brazilian religious communities. Motivated by their conversion to sects of Evangelical Christianity that regard Afro-Brazilian religions as devil worship, the traffickers have forcibly expelled devotees of these faiths from their homes and temples, destroyed shrines and places of worship, and threatened to kill priests if they continue to practice their religion. Scholars have often described this religious landscape as a “conflict” and a “spiritual war.” However, I argue that Evangelized drug traffickers and Afro-Brazilian religions are not engaged in a two-sided struggle; rather, the former is unilaterally committing gross violations of the latter’s human rights, which contravene international norms prohibiting crimes against humanity and genocide.

Abstract This article will explore three ethnographies—of Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban espiritismo, and Chilean ufology—whose cosmoses are variably self-referential, paradoxical, and absurd. I follow their anti-logics and argue that they exhibit, firstly, an excess, and secondly, a resistance to interpretation. Taking my concept of excess from Marisol de la Cadena, and of resisting interpretation from Susan Sontag, I argue that a radical version of resisting interpretation must go beyond experience and describe ontological evacuation itself—a ‘nothingness’ that holds all possibilities simultaneously; or an excess that contradicts either-or logics. I suggest we look at both the horror narrative and apophatic mysticism, which resist thought itself, as well as language, for a heuristic that is able to deal with ethnographies that defy logics of meaning or common sense.

O artigo se propõe apresentar alguns elementos da cosmovisão umbandista para que possamos entender de que maneira esta legitima e ressignifica os espaços de inclusão social de parte da população brasileira. Esta cosmovisão recria e dá sentido às vidas e identidades das pessoas e, ao mesmo tempo, evidencia as exclusões sofridas ao longo das décadas. O texto busca uma compreensão dessas dinâmicas antropológicas e sociológicas baseado em algumas teorias que se debruçaram sobre a umbanda. Desde cedo afrodescendentes transitam entre universos simbólicos distintos e lançam mão de sua espiritualidade para reelaborarem suas tradições criando possibilidades de jogar com papéis e identidades diversas. A Umbanda, por ser constitutivamente plural, é, muitas vezes, julgada por não ter identidade própria. Por isso alguns elementos que compõem o arranjo da cosmovisão umbandista foram levantados na expectativa de apresentar um eixo compreensivo dessa identidade religiosa. Entretanto, faz-se necessário apontar traços marcantes da Umbanda justamente para que seu caráter identitário não fique à margem de outras denominações religiosas afro-brasileiras. Palavras-chave: Umbanda. Espiritualidade. Inclusão   Abstract This article presents some elements of Umbanda worldview to a better understanding of how this religion legitimizes and reframes the spaces of social inclusion of a portion of the Brazilian population. This worldview recreates and gives meaning to the lives and identities of people and at the same time, highlights the exclusions suffered by this people over the decades. Since their early years, Brazilian Afrodescendants move between different symbolic universes and use their spirituality to redesign their traditions, creating possibilities to play with different roles and identities. Umbanda, being constitutively plural, is often judged not to have its own identity. Thus, some elements that comprise Umbanda worldview were raised with the purpose of presenting an axis understanding of this religious identity. However, it is necessary to point out some relevant features of Umbanda, so that their identity features do not stay on the sidelines of other african Brazilian religious denominations.Finally, it seeks an understanding of these anthropological and sociological dynamics, based on some theoretical currents that investigate the Umbanda. Keywords: Umbanda. Spirituality. Inclusion. 

Todos os dias 19 e 20 de janeiro, em São João de Pirabas, celebra-se uma festividade para Rei Sabá. Rei Sabá, corruptela de Rei Sebastião, é uma entidade que pertence ao panteão dos encantados, seres que não conheceram a experiência da morte. Transformando-se em entes que possuem seu próprio território – a encantaria - esses seres se manifestam a partir de Rei Sabá e de outros agentes. Por meio de uma etnografia em andamento, o artigo apresenta os rituais que antecedem a festividade principal do Rei Sabá, dedicadas a São Sebastião. O objetivo é descrever como as religiões da encantaria marcam e produzem esta cidade no nordeste paraense. Every year on January 19th and 20th the municipality of São João de Pirabas celebrates Rei Sabá. Rei Sabá. As a version of of the King Sebastian (Rei Sebastião), he is an entity that belongs to the pantheon of the encantados, beings who did not know the experience of death. These encantados transform themselves into entities that have their own territory–the encantaria–and manifest themselves from Rei Sabá and others agents. Based on an ongoing research, the article presents the rituals that precede the main feast of Rei Sabá, dedicated to St. Sebastian (São Sebastião). The purpose is to describe how the religions of encantaria mark and produce the city itself.

In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack’s admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists have studied these primarily orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. Still, they involve practices, such as offering and sacrifice as well as spirit possession and mediumship, that have yet to receive attention from philosophers. We argue that this is not an accident: philosophers have had a highly restricted diet of examples, have not looked at ethnography as source material, and thus still need to put together a methodology to tackle such practices. After elucidating Schilbrack’s suggestions to adopt an embodiment paradigm and apply conceptual metaphor theory and the extended mind thesis to consider religious practices as thoughtful, we offer criticism of the specifics of his threefold solution. First, it assumes language is linear; second, it takes a problematic view of the body; and third, it abides by a misleading view of the “levels” of cognition. We conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices as cognitive enterprises.

Background Cultural and religious practices of African origin have decisively influenced traditional health practices in the Americas since the African diaspora. Plants are core elements in the religions of African origin. Compared with other parts of Brazil where the Afro-Brazilian presence is widely recognized, in Southern Brazil, these cultural practices are often socially invisible. Yet, there are several terreiros of three Afro-Brazilian religions: Candomblé, Umbanda, and Ritual deAlmas e Angola. We hypothesize that the importance of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions is linked not only to spiritual and magical issues but also to the medicinal properties of these plants. We seek to answer the following questions: (a) Which plants are used in the terreiros and what are their indications for use?; (b) Are there plants that stand out culturally in these religious groups?; and (c) What is the importance of the adaptive maintenance and replacement process in the use of plants in these religions, considering the Neotropical and African plants? Methods We performed a census of the existing terreiros on the Island of Santa Catarina to collect information on the knowledge and use of plants. In all terreiros that consented to participate in the research, we collected data through semi-structured interviews, guided tours for plant collection, and participant observation. We identified the botanical species through expert consultations and botanical literature. Results We interviewed 27 spiritual leaders, who cited 93 plants belonging to 86 botanical species. We identified 14 categories of use, with emphasis on liturgical ritual use (59%), general and unspecified diseases (32%), and digestive diseases (27%). In most liturgics uses, direct contact between plant and patient occurs, as in the case of bathing and the cleansing use of smoke. Sixteen plants were cited in all terreiros, configuring a set of species that can be considered as culturally important plants for these religious groups. Conclusions These groups have extensive knowledge about a highly consensual set of therapeutic plants that should be further investigated pharmacologically to understand the effect of their external use. Also, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and valuing this ancestral Afro-Brazilian knowledge and learning also from these people about their broader vision of health which also adds more spirituality in health care.