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.
Afe Adogame is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society and Chair of the History and Ecumenics Department, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, USA. He is also Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and author of The African Christian Diaspora (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).
Image ListPreface1. Decolonizing History, Memory and Method2. Historical Origins, Migration Narratives, Relationship with Neighbours3. Worldviews, Religious Cosmologies, Spiritual Agency4. Genealogies of Kinship and Sacral Kingship5. Kingship Myth, Leadership Succession and Legal Imbroglios (1991-2011)6. Rituals of Passage7. Gendering Rituals8. The Future of ?za Indigeneity in the Face of African ModernityOral SourcesNotes Select Bibliography Index
Contributes importantly to the study of African and other Indigenous religions.