TY  - BOOK
AU  - Venkatachalam,Meera
ED  - International African Institute,
TI  - Slavery, Memory and Religion in Southeastern Ghana, c.1850-present
T2  - The International African library
SN  - 9781107108271 (hbk)
AV  - DT510.43.A58 VEN 2015
U1  - 306.3/6209667 23
PY  - 2015///
CY  - New York
PB  - Cambridge University Press
KW  - Anlo (African people)
KW  - Religion
KW  - Cults
KW  - Ghana
KW  - Collective memory
KW  - Slavery
KW  - Religious aspects
N1  - Co-published by International African Institute, London; Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-227) and index
N2  - Based on a decade of fieldwork in southeastern Ghana and analysis of secondary sources, this book aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of rituals collectively known as 'Fofie', which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past. The Anlo developed a sense of discomfort about their agency in slavery in the early twentieth century which they articulated through practices such as ancestor veneration, spirit possession, and by forging links with descendants of peoples they formerly enslaved. Conversion to Christianity, engagement with 'modernity', trans-Atlantic conversations with diasporan Africans, and citizenship of the postcolonial state coupled with structural changes within the religious system - which resulted in the decline in Fofie's popularity - gradually altered the moral emphases of legacies of slavery in the Anlo historical imagination as the twentieth century progressed
ER  -