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PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS HAS NOW PASSED. THE CALL FOR PAPERS IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATION.
This interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars who are interested in the connections between religion and power in the Caribbean: the power of colonial and postcolonial states, of ruling elites, of subaltern communities, of nationalism, of ritual specialists, and of the spirits, lwas, orishas, and ancestors. We situate Caribbean religions within their broad historical and social contexts and are particularly interested in work relating to those communities, practices and belief systems that have been stigmatized or even outlawed, most of which have been symbolically connected to Africa. These include obeah, quimbois, santería/ regla de ocha, vodou, Rastafari, kali mai puja, the Spiritual Baptist religion / the Converted, brujería, palo monte, Orisha, pocomania/ pukkumina, winti, and Revival Zion.
We invite papers that consider one or more of the following themes:
• Knowledge, power, and categories: many Caribbean religious formations have historically been positioned on the margins of, or have been excluded from, the category ‘religion’. What were and are the effects of the categorization of so many religions as ‘magic’, ‘superstition’, ‘witchcraft’ etc? How have these categorizations been produced and sustained? When, why and with what effects have the borders of ‘religion’ shifted? How have academic disciplines and practices such as anthropology, ethnography and history been involved in these shifts? To what extent and in what ways have religious communities and affiliates controlled interpretations and representations of their faiths? What does an examination of Caribbean religions in their historical and social contexts reveal about the relationship between power and knowledge?
• ‘Modernity’ and ‘tradition’: How have religious and healing ‘traditions’ been constructed in a region that is, for many analysts, central to the formation of modernity? To what extent are the concepts of ‘the modern’ and ‘modernity’ useful in analysing Caribbean religious formations? How have past and present adherents and observers understood the relationship of Caribbean religious practice to aspects of modernity? How can investigations of Caribbean modernity from the vantage point of religion help to revise paradigms of ‘modernity’?
• Hybridity, creolization, and purity: Why has the question of origins been so powerful in the study and practice of religion in the Caribbean? What is at stake in the connection of specific religious communities and beliefs to particular African ethnic identities? How do and have non-African ethnic symbols and identities figured in the production of Caribbean religious practices and cosmologies? How has the search for origins, roots and transcendent traditions been implicated in New World modernities?
• Politics: How have Caribbean political organizers and thinkers interacted with religion? What have been the implications of the predominantly secular orientation of mainstream Caribbean politics, considering the spiritual and religious orientation of most Caribbean people? In what ways and with what effects have Caribbean popular political struggles been played out within a religious or spiritual framework?
• Migrations, transnationalism and place: How have migrations and movement of capital within and beyond the Caribbean led to the transcendence or the reinforcement of locally-based religious identities and practices? How have specific religious and healing traditions differed from one another according to locality; how, conversely, have they been connected across different localities within and beyond the region? How have the boundaries and borders constructed by colonial powers and independent nation states contributed to the production of particular religious formations?
• Representation: At particular historical moments stereotypes of Caribbean religion—especially but not uniquely Haitian ‘voodoo’--have symbolically stood for the entire region. How have these representations worked and from where do they draw their power? How have they been imbricated with international politics (particularly the politics of colonialism and external occupations), with class relations, and with the experience and struggles of Caribbean people within and outside the region? Have representations produced within the Caribbean and/or by Caribbean people—in the arts, in politics, and in everyday life—contended with, utilized or ignored these largely hostile external representations? How have ‘insider’ representations constructed Caribbean religious formations and with what cultural effects?
• Agency and the power of religious rituals and practitioners: How have members of Caribbean religions challenged or supported colonial and postcolonial power structures? How have ritual specialists, like obeahmen and –women, healers, mambos, Spiritual Mothers or santeros acted against oppression? How is power produced and enacted in Caribbean rituals? How does the power of God, the lwas, orishas, saints, spirits, ancestors and other spiritual beings relate to and affect mundane power struggles and hierarchies?
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