Sacred sites and the colonial encounter : a history of meaning and memory in Ghana / / Sandra E. Greene

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910806869803321
• Autore: Greene Sandra E. <1952->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Bloomington, : Indiana University Press, c2002
• ISBN: 9786612062735; 1-282-06273-5; 0-253-10889-6
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (224 p.)
• Disciplina: 966.7/004963374
• Soggetti: Anlo (African people) - Religion; Anlo (African people) - Cultural assimilation; Sacred space - Ghana; Human body - Social aspects - Ghana; Ghana Colonial influence
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-190) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Intro -- SACRED SITES AND THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER -- CONTENTS -- MAPS AND FIGURES -- PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- A NOTE ON EWE ORTHOGRAPHY -- A HISTORY OUTLINED -- INTRODUCTION: MANAGING THE MODERN -- Chapter 1 - Notsie Narratives -- Chapter 2 - Of Water and Spirits -- Chapter 3 - Placing and Spacing the Dead -- Chapter 4 - Belief and the Body -- Chapter 5 - Contested Terrain -- CONCLUSION: EXPLAINING CULTURAL ADAPTATION AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL ABANDONMENT -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- About the Author.
• Sommario/riassunto: "Greene gives the reader a vivid sense of the Anlo encounter with western thought and Christian beliefs... and the resulting erasures, transferences, adaptations, and alterations in their perceptions of place, space, and the body." -- Emmanuel Akyeampong Sandra E. Greene reconstructs a vivid and convincing portrait of the human and physical environment of the 19th-century Anlo-Ewe people of Ghana and brings history and memory into contemporary context. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, early European accounts, and missionary ; archives and publications, Greene shows how ideas from outside forced sacred and spiritual meanings associated with particular bodies of water, burial sites, sacred towns, and the human body itself to change in favor of more scientific and regulatory views. Anlo responses to these colonial ideas involved considerable resistance, and, over time, the Anlo began to attribute selective, varied, and often contradictory meanings to the body and the spaces they inhabited. Despite these multiple meanings, Greene shows that the Anlo were successful in forging a consensus on how to manage their identity, environment, and community.