Ritual, Discourse, and Community in Cuban Santería - (Contemporary Cuba) by Kristina Wirtz (Paperback)

About the Book

Examining the religious lives of Santería practitioners in Santiago de Cuba, this book explores how practitioners of different backgrounds create and maintain religious communities.

Book Synopsis

An insightful ethnographic account of the lives of Santería practitioners in Cuba

How do Santería practitioners in Cuba create and maintain religious communities amidst tensions, disagreements, and competition among them, and in the absence of centralized institutional authority? What serves as the "glue" that holds practitioners of different backgrounds together in the creation of a moral community? Examining the religious lives of santeros in Santiago de Cuba, Wirtz argues that these communities hold together not because members agree on their interpretations of rituals but because they often disagree.

Religious life is marked by a series of "telling moments"--not only the moments themselves but their narrated representations as they are retold and mined for religious meanings. Long after they occur, spiritually elevated experiences circulate in narratives that may express skepticism or awe and hold the promise of more such experiences. The author finds that these episodes resonate in gossip and other forms of public commentary about the experiences of their fellow Santería practitioners.

Drawing on ethnographic research about Santería beliefs and practices, Wirtz observes that practitioners are constantly engaged in reflection about what they and other practitioners are doing, how the orichas (deities) have responded, and what the consequences of their actions were or will be. By focusing their reflective attention on particular events, santeros re-create, moment to moment, what their religion is. Wirtz also argues that Santeria cannot be considered in isolation from the complex religious landscape of contemporary Cuba, in which African-based traditions are viewed with a mix of fascination, folkloric pride, and suspicion. Interactions among the conflicting discourses about these religions--as sacred practices, folklore, or dangerous superstitions, for example--have played a central role in constituting them as social entities. This book will interest scholars of religion, the African diaspora, the Caribbean, and Latin America, as well as linguistic and cultural anthropologists.

Review Quotes

"Wirtz's
lucid and intimate ethnography of Santería practice in Santiago de Cuba
addresses classic debates in the study of religions and African-derived
cultures in the Americas.. . . . A rewarding, tightly structured read."--Caribbean
Studies

"The
reader comes away with a vivid sense of the complexities of the historical emergence
of Santería, of the competing agendas of Santería's ritual experts at this
historical moment, of the distillation of relatively stable religious stances
through moment-to-moment activities and discourse, and of the intimate
interplay between the divine and the all too human."--Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology

"A
sympathetic and detailed ethnography of a religious community. . . . A fine
book for scholars interested in cultural theory and the construction of
religious communities."--Nova Religio

"Wirtz
brings . . . a background in ecology and evolutionary theory that, combined
with her expertise in linguistic anthropology, give her descriptions of
discursive competition as a path to religious survival a rare prescience and
urgency."--Journal of Anthropological Research

"Wirtz's
attention to the socially constitutive force of reflective discourse and her
detailed ethnography suggest new directions for the study of Santería and
religion."--Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology