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Death and the Invisible Powers: The World of Kongo Belief

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Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
List Price: $14.95
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Average Customer Ratings:

"The description of Kongo culture is vivid, beautifully clear, and absolutely authentic, as only a native could make it. The marvelous anecdotes are worth any amount of anthropological summary...I don't know of anything of its kind that is both as good, ethnographically, and as readable." - Wyatt MacGaffey. Rich in anecdote and firsthand experience, "Death and the Invisible Powers" is an account of the spiritual life of the Kongo people by a native of Lower Zaire. Setting aside the stereotypes about Kongo beliefs and practices, Simon Bockie reveals a subtle, coherent religious outlook that governs all aspects of Kongo life. Bockie shows that Kongo life is communal, rather than individualistic. But the communal order of this world is only part of the larger design that extends into the invisible world of spirits. Communication with the invisible world is an integral part of daily life, and traditional beliefs are still vigorously held by many educated and Christianized Africans, who have adapted them to urban settings. For Bockie, this reaffirmation of African cultural identities is a significant aspect of contemporary African life that may offer encouragement to African Americans in their search for roots.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.683931
EAN: 9780253208088
ISBN: 0253208084
Label: Indiana University Press
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: 1993-09
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Studio: Indiana University Press


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CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed this book very much
Comment: The author states this book arose out of his doctoral thesis, which explains the rigorous approach to its subject matter. Anyone who has studied history or anthropology at college could easily understand the author's approach. I was very impressed with this book's presentation of Kongo community, family, education, social mores, and religion. Mr. Bokie himself qualifies as a member of a Christian church, but, as he explains in numerous examples, many if not most Kongo peoples beleive and practice Kongo traditions even if they are members of various Christian or syncretic churches. I personally prefer the scholarly over the confessional, though it should be noted the author presents numerous personal ancedotes throughout the book that help further his discussion of the subject matter. All in all I found this to be a very well written, intelligent and thoughtful book. I highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Concise, intelligent survey - even though dry at times
Comment: Simon Bockie does a bang-up job surveying the religious structures, beliefs and practices of one large tribal affiliation (BaManienga) in the Kongo region. Though a bit deadening, being more scholarly than confessional, it's very thoroughgoing as to what he sets out to do: in addition to covering purely native cults, he includes mention of the numerous eclectic amalgams of native and Christian faiths which were an eventual result of early rampant colonialism.

Since he's not a medicine man or sorcerer or any of that kind of thing himself, he doesn't get inside the system as does, say, Malidoma Somé (the Dagara people of Burkina Faso and Ghana), or the Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa.

But his last chapter "God" does an about face from the general dryness, and shows how in fact God was in Congolese religion well before the Christian missionaries hit the beaches, and how the new proselytizers really didn't bring anything gratifyingly new or spiritually enlightening to the region. He writes some beautiful and wise passages here, then also makes it plentifully evident that the best of the 'amalgams' graft the new onto the old, rather than indulging in subordination of native to Christian beliefs.

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