Description
Book SynopsisAfrican Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change is a collection of carefully and analytically written essays on different aspects of African sacred spaces. The interaction between the past and present points to Africans' continuing recognition of certain natural phenomena and places as sacred. Western influence, the introduction of Christianity and Islam, as well as modernity, have not succeeded in completely obliterating African spirituality and sacred observances, especially as these relate to space in its various iterations. Indeed, Africans, on the continent and in the Diasporas, have responded to the challenges of history, environmentalism, and sustainability with sober and versatile responses in their reverence for sacred space as expressed through a variety of religious, historical, and spiritual practices, as this volume attempts to show.
Trade ReviewAfrican Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the functional relationship between “space, geography and imagined in relation to African Spirituality.” It is highly commended to scholars and students of religions.
* African Studies Quarterly *
African Sacred Spacesis an intriguing and diverse collection of essays. Every chapter is, in its own right, serious and well-researched. This collection of articles makes some significant contributions to our understanding of how the concept of sacred space informs African (or at any rate Nigerian) cultures.
* Nova Religio: The Journal Of Alternative And Emergent Religions *
“In African Sacred Spaces the authors provide a rich harvest of African and African diaspora sacred spaces as central to the notion of individual and group identities. The volume is unique in that there is something of interest for every reader irrespective of disciplinary specialty.” -- Raphael Chijioke Njoku, Idaho State University
“African Sacred Spaces analyzes the extraordinary worldview of Africans that various worlds—seen and unseen—converge to birth the interdependence of humans, nature and nurture—thereby revealing the extraordinary uniqueness of ideas that unite men with mountains, women with the moon, and children with the sun. In the indivisible world of the spiritual and physical, the book gives cogency and urgency to the need to emote along a non-Western mode of thinking in order to reform our chaotic world.” -- Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin, USA
“African Sacred Spaces is an interdisciplinary book that probes key issues pertaining to African and African diasporic sacred spaces. Taken together, the twelve chapters in this volume provides a collective understanding of African spirituality in its multi-layered interactions. It is a key resource for those who want a comprehensive book focused on the intersection of African religion, culture, and history.” -- Akintunde Akinyemi, University of Florida
Table of ContentsChapter 1: African Sacred Places in the Americas
Kevin Young
Chapter 2: History and the Sacred: The Royal Tombs of Igboho
Julius O. Adekunle
Chapter 3: Rituals and African Space: Funeral Rites and Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty
Donald O. Omagu
Chapter 4: Sacred Spaces and Ritual Performances in Ejagamland of Cameroon
Emmanuel Mbah and Tom Victor Ntui
Chapter 5:Masjid: Sacred Space in Nigerian Islam
Muhammadu Mustapha Gwadabe and Muhammad Kyari
Chapter 6: The Metaphysics of Space in Yoruba Traditional Religion
’BioDun J. Ogundayo
Chapter 7: Sacred Spaces: Mountains in Yoruba Spirituality
Enoch Olujide Gbadegesin
Chapter 8: Tradition and Modernity: The Dynamics of the Management of Osun Sacred Groves
Saheed Balogun Amusa
Chapter 9: African Sacred Groves and Sustainability
Fortune Sibanda
Chapter 10: Space, Art, and Religion in Changó, el gran putas
Hawwkayoo N. Zoggyie
Chapter 11: Islam and Ancient Sacred Places in Hausaland
Mukhtar Umar Bunza and Adamu Musa Kotorkoshi
Chapter 12: Sacred Space and Time in an African University
Oluwasegun Aluko
