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Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.
Orishas are divine spirits that play a key role in the Yoruba religion of West Africa and several religions of the African diaspora that derive from it, such as Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican Santería and Brazilian Candomblé. The preferred spelling varies depending on the language in question: òrìṣà is the spelling in the Yoruba language, orixá in Portuguese, and orisha, oricha, orichá or orixá in Spanish-speaking countries.
Anthropology of religion is the study of religion in relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures. The anthropology of religion, as a field, overlaps with but is distinct from the field of Religious Studies. The history of anthropology of religion is a history of striving to understand how other people view and navigate the world. This history involves deciding what religion is, what it does, and how it functions. Today, one of the main concerns of anthropologists of religion is defining religion, which is a theoretical undertaking in and of itself. Scholars such as Edward Tylor, Emile Durkheim, E.E. Evans Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, and Talal Asad have all grappled with defining and characterizing religion anthropologically.
Ifá is a divination system originating among the Yoruba people of West Africa. It plays an important role in Yoruba religion and certain African diasporic religions deriving from it, such as Cuban Santería.
African diaspora religions, also described as Afro-American religions, are a number of related beliefs that developed in the Americas in various nations of the Caribbean, Latin America and the Southern United States. They derive from traditional African religions with some influence from other religious traditions, notably Christianity and Islam.
Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
The Yoruba religion, West African Orisa (Òrìṣà), or Isese (Ìṣẹ̀ṣe), comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practice of the Yoruba people. Its homeland is in present-day Southwestern Nigeria, which comprises the majority of Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara and Lagos States, as well as parts of Kogi state and the adjoining parts of Benin and Togo, commonly known as Yorubaland.
Obeah, also spelled Obiya or Obia, is a series of African diasporic spell-casting and healing traditions found primarily in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. These traditions derive much from traditional West African practices that have undergone cultural creolization, also incorporating elements of European and South Asian origin. There is much regional variation in the practice of Obeah, which is followed by practitioners often called Obeahmen and Obeahwomen. Many of those engaged in Obeah nevertheless avoid that term, which carries pejorative connotations in many Caribbean societies.
The Spiritual Baptist faith is a religion created by persons of African ancestry in the plantations they came to in the former British West Indies countries predominantly in the islands of a Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tobago and the Virgin Islands. It is syncretic Afro-Caribbean religion that combines elements of the many varied traditional African religions brought by the enslaved populations combined with Christianity. Spiritual Baptists consider themselves to be Christians.
Religion in Trinidad and Tobago, which is a multi-religious country, is classifiable as follows:
Isaac Backus was a leading Baptist minister during the era of the American Revolution who campaigned against state-established churches in New England. Little is known of his childhood. In "An account of the life of Isaac Backus", he provides genealogical information and a chronicle of events leading to his religious conversion.
Anthony Francis Clarke Wallace was a Canadian-American anthropologist who specialized in Native American cultures, especially the Iroquois. His research expressed an interest in the intersection of cultural anthropology and psychology. He was famous for the theory of revitalization movements.
Ward Hunt Goodenough II was an American anthropologist, who has made contributions to kinship studies, linguistic anthropology, cross-cultural studies, and cognitive anthropology.
Religion in the Bahamas is dominated by various Christian denominations and reflects the country's diversity.
Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In the United States, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology or sociocultural anthropology.
Trinidad Orisha, also known as Orisha religion and Shango, is a syncretic religion in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean, originally from West Africa. Trinidad Orisha incorporates elements of Spiritual Baptism, and the closeness between Orisha and Spiritual Baptism has led to use of the term "Shango Baptist" to refer to members of either or both religions. Anthropologist James Houk described Trinidad Orisha as an "Afro-American religious complex", incorporating elements mainly of traditional African religion and Yoruba and incorporates some elements of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Baháʼí, and Amerindian mythologies.
Erika Eichhorn Bourguignon was an Austrian-born American anthropologist known primarily for her work on possession trance and other altered states of consciousness. She was “considered the premier anthropological authority on trance, possession, and altered states of consciousness” and "one of the founders of the field of anthropology of consciousness." She was born in Vienna, Austria, but left with her parents in 1938. After receiving a B.A. from Queens College in 1945, she began graduate studies at Northwestern University, working there under Melville J. Herskovits and Alfred Irving Hallowell. She did field research among the Chippewa in Wisconsin and in Haiti (1947–48).
Edith Turner was an English-American anthropologist, poet, and post-secondary educator. In addition to collaborating with her husband, Victor Witter Turner, on a number of early socio-cultural research projects concerning healing, ritual and communitas, she continued to develop these topics following his death in 1983, especially communitas. Edith Turner contributed to the study of humanistic anthropology and was a dedicated social activist her entire life.
Dianne Marie Stewart is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University. Dr. Stewart's work focuses on religion, culture and African heritage in the Caribbean and the Americas as well as womanist religious thought and praxis. Dianne M. Stewart is the author of Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (Oxford University Press, 2005), Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage and Obeah, Orisa and Religious Identity in Trinidad, Volume II, Orisa: Africana Nations and the Power of Black Sacred Imagination.
Leonard E. BarrettSenior was a Jamaican-American professor of religion and anthropology known for his foundational work on Rastafari.
