Although the religions of the Caribbean have been a subject of popular media, there have been few ethnographic publications. This text is a much-needed and long overdue addition to Caribbean studies and the exploration of ideas, beliefs, and religious practices of Caribbean folk in diaspora and at home. Drawing upon ethnographic and historical research in a variety of contexts and settings, the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between religious and social life. Whether practiced at home or abroad, the contributors contend that the religions of Caribbean folk are dynamic and creative endeavors that have mediated the ongoing and open-ended relation between local and global, historical and contemporary change.

Although the religions of the Caribbean have been a subject of popular media, there have been few ethnographic publications. This text is a much-needed and long overdue addition to Caribbean studies and the exploration of ideas, beliefs, and religious practices of Caribbean folk in diaspora and at home. Drawing upon ethnographic and historical research in a variety of contexts and settings, the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between religious and social life. Whether practiced at home or abroad, the contributors contend that the religions of Caribbean folk are dynamic and creative endeavors that have mediated the ongoing and open-ended relation between local and global, historical and contemporary change.

This is a timely book that fills the gap in the study of Chinese overseas and their religions in the global context. Rich in ethnographic materials, this is the first comprehensive book that shows the transnational religious networks among the Chinese of different nationalities and between the Chinese overseas and the regions in China. The book highlights diverse religious traditions including Chinese popular religion, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, and discusses inter-cultural influences on religions, their localization, their significance to cultural belonging, and the transnational nature of religious affiliations and networking.

Exploring various African religions as part of a cultural system, relevant to national identity in Trinidad, this text deals with the dynamic doctrinal and ideological changes that have occurred within the religions and documents the legislative and social acceptance of African religion.

The forced migration of Africans to the Americas through the trnasatlantic slave trade created primary centres of settlement in the Caribbean, Brazil and the United States - the cornerstones of the New World and the black Americas. However, unlike Brazil and the US, the Caribbean did not (and still does not) have the uniformity of a national framework. Instead, the region presents differing situations and social experiences born of the varying colonial systems from which they were developed. Using the Caribbean experience as the focus, Christine Chivallon examins the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as founding events in the identification of a black diaspora experience. The exploration is extended to include the United States to exemplify contrasting situations in slavery-based systems and identifies the links between the expressions of culture emanting from the black populations of the New World and the diversity of interpretations of the cultural identities of the black Americas.Divided into three main parts, The Black Diaspora of the Americas firstly examines the foundation of the black experiences of the New World by considering the slave trade. The second part takes a more theoretical examination of 'black diaspora' using Rastafarianism, Garveyism and Pan-Africanism while referencing the work of a range of thinkers including Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Richard Price, douard Glissant, Melville Herskovits and Sidney Mintz. The work is concluded in the third part with the proposition of an a-centred community of persons of African descent - a culture devoid of centrality.The Black Diaspora of the Americas brings together the key arguments about creolisation and the concept of a black diaspora and presents an outstanding contribution to understanding the dynamics of diaspora.

The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities investigates music's role in everyday practice and social history across the diversity of Christian religions and practices around the globe. The volume explores Christian communities in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia as sites of transmission, transformation, and creation of deeply diverse musical traditions. The book's contributors, while mostly rooted in ethnomusicology, examine Christianities and their musics in methodologically diverse ways, engaging with musical sound and structure, musical and social history, and ethnography of music and musical performance. These broad materials explore five themes: music and missions, music and religious utopias (and other oppositional religious communities), music and conflict, music and transnational flows, and music and everyday life. The volume as a whole, then, approaches Christian groups and their musics as diverse and powerful windows into the way in which music, religious ideas, capital, and power circulate (and change) between places, now and historically. It also tries to take account of the religious self-understandings of these groups, presenting Christian musical practice and exchange as encompassing and negotiating deeply felt and deeply rooted moral and cultural values. Given that the centerpiece of the volume is Christian religious musical practice, the volume reveals the active role music plays in maintaining and changing religious, moral, and cultural values in a long history of intercultural and transnational encounters.

This book explores the experience of religious communities that have migrated from South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) to live in Britain, Canada, and the United States, three countries sharing a common language (English) and an interwoven history. The work introduces the migration history of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs along with the cultural nuances of these traditions. The contributors discuss the various communities' experiences that grow out of or are related to religion. The book shows how traditions are reformed or reinvented and how they are passed on, both through the family and through institutions. Issues related to public policy and minority status are also addressed. While the main focus is on the Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities, specific sections also cover South Asian Christians, the Zoroastrian diaspora, and new religious movements in the West led by South Asians. The book strikes a balance between stories and statistics in order to emphasize the narrative of the immigrants' experience. [Contributors include: Roger Ballard, Judith Coney, Harold Coward, Diana L. Eck, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, John R. Hinnells, Kim Knott, Gurinder Singh Mann, Sheila McDonough, Jørgen S. Nielsen, Joseph T. O'Connell, and Raymond Brady Williams.]

This collection of essays looks at the shared experience of exile across different groups in the early modern period. Contributors argue that exile is a useful analytical tool in the study of a wide variety of peoples previously examined in isolation.

This book investigates the identity issues of South Asians in the diaspora. It engages the theoretical and methodological debates concerning processes of culture and identity in the contemporary context of globalisation and transnationalism. It analyses the South Asian diaspora - a perfect route to a deeper understanding of contemporary socio-cultural transformations and the way in which information and communication technology functions as both a catalyst and indicator of such transformations. The book will be of interest to scholars of diaspora studies, cultural studies, international migration studies, and ethnic and racial studies. This book is a collection of papers from the journal South Asian Diaspora.

The historiography of African religions and religions in Africa presents a remarkable shift from the study of 'Africa as Object' to 'Africa as Subject', thus translating the subject from obscurity into the global community of the academic study of religion. This book presents a unique multidisciplinary exploration of African Traditions in the Study of Religion, Diaspora, and Gendered Societies. The book is structured under two main sections. The first provides insights into the interface between Religion and Society. The second features African Diaspora together with Youth and Gender which have not yet featured prominently in studies on religion in Africa. Contributors drawn from diverse African and global contexts situate current scholarly traditions of the study of African religions within the purview of academic encounter and exchanges with non-African scholars and non-African contexts. African scholars enrich the study of religions from their respective academic and methodological orientations. Jacob Kehinde Olupona stands out as a pioneer in the socio-scientific interpretation of African indigenous religion and religions in Africa and the new African Diaspora. This book honours his immense contribution to an emerging field of study and research.