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The marriage of cultures in the island of Meeting
FRANÇOISE DUMAS-CHAMPION
Paris, Karthala, 08/2008, 312 pages
How does the population "blended" by plantations think of its plural origins ? Why do between blood relations of the same father mother give each a different ethnic identity ? Although all honour the ancestors of their family in the religion of their country of origin, the elder declares itself malgas, the puîné is considered malbar Hindu church-goer as, its brother who favours its Africain origins tells herself kaf, its sister who is meant to be exclusively Catholic feels kréol, while the youngest son defines himself as a batar because he demands all his origins.
Marked by numerous inheritances, in what contexts, by what processes of development did the «marriage of culture s» take place in Meeting ? According to the hypothesis of the author, the practice of an ancestor worship, correspondent to core values and Malagasy and the Bantu, which continued after the massive arrival of the Hindus, contributed to the edification of an unified religious thought while letting live together the cultural and religious worlds of each.
This paradoxical situation, analysed by inside, becomes clearer from the present phenomena of possession in the rituals which reveal the supremacy of the ancestors by order social and the life of each. The « malagasy religion », imported in Meeting by the slaves and the "enlisted men" , acts as backdrop to include correlations with the Hinduism native to the south of India and the Catholicism imposed by colonisation.
In the same rubric :
- The islands of memory. Plant of pictures and writing of history in the churches of the lake Tānā, Éthiopie, XVIITH - XVIIITH century
- Africain politics, n ° 111 - October, 2008
- Between word and writings. Contributions in the history of Africa in homage to Claude-Helen Perrot
- Africa of Sarkozy. A denial of history
- Eotilé of Ivory Coast in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries. Be possible lignager religion and
- Pedro Páez, História da Etiópia
- The Africain "Renaissance" of the Saltigi du Sine in the Senegal
- Structural acts of violence and systematic acts of violence. The ordinary violence of the social reports in Africa.
