Elizabeth Pérez' Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions is a great addition to "Theorizing Religion." Our first (and only) full anthropological study, it introduces participant observation as an approach to the study of religion. The way Pérez argues that new arrivals to the Lukumí house temple Ilé Laroye are themselves "seasoned" as they learn how to season foods for the orishas parallels the change of perspective afforded by participation. Cooking also proves a suggestive metaphor for many religious activities, and Pérez lets this play out even as, of course, the cooking at Ilé Laroye is as real as cooking can be, labor intensive, skill-dependent, learned through doing and through the example of experienced elders.
This is also one of the texts I added to try to make the interrogation of white supremacy a theme in our class, and it proved to do this even more profoundly than I'd expected. Black Atlantic traditions - forged and reforged in the crucibles of slavery and colonialism across the Americas and interqcting with indigenous as well as every kind of European tradition - are every bit as much products of (and responses to) "modernity" as the 18th-20th century white Atlantic constellations we usually privilege. What if, taking a page from James Cone's liberationist view that religious vision is at its most profound among the marginalized and oppressed, we let practices and communities like the one Pérez studied become paradigmatic of our predicament and our prospects?
This is also one of the texts I added to try to make the interrogation of white supremacy a theme in our class, and it proved to do this even more profoundly than I'd expected. Black Atlantic traditions - forged and reforged in the crucibles of slavery and colonialism across the Americas and interqcting with indigenous as well as every kind of European tradition - are every bit as much products of (and responses to) "modernity" as the 18th-20th century white Atlantic constellations we usually privilege. What if, taking a page from James Cone's liberationist view that religious vision is at its most profound among the marginalized and oppressed, we let practices and communities like the one Pérez studied become paradigmatic of our predicament and our prospects?
