Anthropology

A student and instructor blog detailing a Ghanaian study abroad trip in Western Africa. Medical anthropology, human rights, sustainability, plant medicine, and anthropology of religion were brought together in a collective volunteer and ethnographic framework.

This article is a comparative and ethnographic analysis of syncretism as a theoretical tool for explaining " African-based " religions (Vodu and Orisha) in West Africa and the New World. Vodu and Orisha defy syncretism as a valid concept for explaining the creativity of ritual life because it fails to account for the historicity, the religious imagination, or the cultural context of these forms. This article discusses that despite many shortcomings and problems with syncretism as a concept, it continues to be employed across many disciplines, even as it conflates and mystifies the different aspects and elements of African religions. Syncretism approaches tend to mystify African symbols and explain away things that, from the inside, are fundamental to African systems. This article will explain and contextualize many of these flaws and deficiencies with the concept through fieldwork and archival research.

This article is a comparative and ethnographic analysis of syncretism as a theoretical tool for explaining " African-based " religions (Vodu and Orisha) in West Africa and the New World. Vodu and Orisha defy syncretism as a valid concept for explaining the creativity of ritual life because it fails to account for the historicity, the religious imagination, or the cultural context of these forms. This article discusses that despite many shortcomings and problems with syncretism as a concept, it continues to be employed across many disciplines, even as it conflates and mystifies the different aspects and elements of African religions. Syncretism approaches tend to mystify African symbols and explain away things that, from the inside, are fundamental to African systems. This article will explain and contextualize many of these flaws and deficiencies with the concept through fieldwork and archival research.

Abstract for “Shamanism and Voodoo in Togo: The Life and Acts of Sofo Bisi”

This paper explores the integration of religion, shamanism and voodoo through the life and acts of one gorovodu (voodoo of the kola nut) practitioner named Sofo Bisi among the Ewes of southern Togo.  Bisi is a regional shaman and diviner (bokonosofo) with almost sixty years of experience working with voodoo spirits, plant-based medicines, and extensive ritual to protect individuals and the social order of the community.  The purpose here is to espouse negative associations and misunderstandings surrounding “voodoo” and related orders, and to stake a claim for such rituals as true shamanism.  This paper stems from ethnographic research into gorovodu by the author from 1996-2013; topics such as healing, spirit possession, witchcraft, and the like are evaluated and synthesized within the frameworks of voodoo and shamanism.

Keywords: Voodoo, shamanism, ethno-medicine, spirit possession, witchcraft, gorovodu, Togo

This article is an ethnographic, textual, and visual approach to a " slice " of a Fetatrotro (turning of the year ceremony) from 2011 among the Ewes of Ghana. Ewe " Gorovodu " adepts construct personhood and reaffirm individual and communal morality through performance rituals and ceremonies dedicated to their " vodu " gods. " They Died in Blood " encompasses the notion of vumeku (or violent deaths) and their associations with particular gorovodu " spirits of the night ". The textual and symbolic approach employed here should help scholars and those interested in " voodoo " better understand the deeply nuanced and embedded nature of vodu ritual and performance and their deep associations with identity, morality, and the social order of Gorovodu communities.

Through evaluation and analysis of a multiplicity of religious encounters in the religiously diverse Yoruba town of Ede in southwestern Nigeria, the authors in Beyond Religious Tolerance suggest a useful and alternative approach to religious differences. Their book comes at a pivotal time when media, governments, and people alike have succumbed to a Jihad vs. McWorld or Clash of Civilizations mentality that ultimately pits West against non-West and Us against Them. This dangerous framework both mystifies members of different religions who coexist in relative peace and harmony and exacerbates our tendency to think of religious differences through a narrative of terrorism and counterterrorism. Polarization and fear need not be the story line. Ede serves as a centuries-long reminder about what religious tolerance looks like when Islam, Christianity, and Orisha not only coexist but work to make one another stronger. Like other Cities of Light, including Córdoba in southern Spain, Ede has a collective balance across its religious triple heritage where all three engage in mutual dialogue and understanding, epitomizing the relativity and inclusivity necessary in modern times, for indeed " Ede is one town. "

This article focuses on the promises of Vodu and Gorovodu for multi-party democracy in contemporary Togo. While focusing on rituals of atonement and reconciliation, and social movements of Ewes from below, it also analyzes current political and economic trends on the national level from above. With comparisons to nearby Benin, the article measures the present role for Vodu in contemporary Togolese society and politics. The role of the anthropologist, coupled with activism and advocacy, and relationships between northerners and southerners are the focus. When marginal groups are included in ongoing power structures in places like Togo, it makes for a more tolerant, peaceful, and pluralistic society, which has been conspicuously absent throughout most of Togolese history. Cet article met l'accent sur les promesses de Vodu et Gorovodu pour la démocratie multipartite dans le Togo contemporain. Tout en se concentrant sur les rituels d'expiation et de réconciliation, et les mouvements sociaux d'Ewes d'en bas, il analyse également les tendances politiques et économiques actuelles au niveau national d'en haut. Avec des comparaisons avec le Bénin voisin, l'article mesure le rôle actuel de Vodu dans la société et la politique contemporaines togolaises. Le rôle de l'anthropologue, conjugué à l'activisme et au plaidoyer, et les relations entre les habitants du Nord et du Sud sont l'accent mis. Lorsque des groupes marginaux sont inclus dans les structures de pouvoir en cours dans des endroits comme le Togo, il fait pour une société plus tolérante, pacifique et pluraliste, qui a été manifestement absente pendant la majeure partie de l'histoire togolaise. In the context of recent government discourse and events of national importance in Togo, cross-ethnic and cross-regional possession trance, with its ethics of radical reciprocity, takes on a certain political irony. While government-controlled press accuses " southerners " of tribal hatred against the north, these very southerners honor northern cultures by hosting and worshipping northern spirits during Vodu rituals.

This article is a photo-essay from a salah Gorovodu ceremony among Anlo-Ewes living in Southern Togo. It is a shared ethnographic project employing the photo-voice of three subjects and the anthropologist. The experiment was determined, produced and edited by three members of a local shrine and compiled during focus groups and feedback screenings in the summers of 2013–2014. Photo-voice and related shared approaches help to cast more light on a historically misinterpreted religion, “Voodoo,” by employing local agency and empowering the subjects to participate in analysis centered on ritual, healing and identity.

This article is a photo-essay from a salah Gorovodu ceremony among Anlo-Ewes living in Southern Togo. It is a shared ethnographic project employing the photo-voice of three subjects and the anthropologist. The experiment was determined, produced and edited by three members of a local shrine and compiled during focus groups and feedback screenings in the summers of 2013–2014. Photo-voice and related shared approaches help to cast more light on a historically misinterpreted religion, “Voodoo,” by employing local agency and empowering the subjects to participate in analysis centered on ritual, healing and identity.

THEY DIED IN BLOOD: MORALITY, COMMUNITAS, AND IDENTITY IN EWE GOROVODU PERFORMANCE
JOURNAL OF RITUAL STUDIES, 2018, Volume 2)

The purpose of this article is to ethnographically document and analyze the ceremonial performance of a Fetatrotro (New Year’s) celebration in Gorovodu among the Ewes of Southern Togo. Anlo-Ewe adepts in southern Togo construct their personhood and reaffirm communal morality through rituals and ceremonies, which build on the understandings of sacrifice and violence outlined by René Girard (1979). Slavery and violence are cornerstones of Ewe existence along the coast, beginning with the Trans-Atlantic trade and continuing with domestic servitude into the twentieth century, so, ritual helps to deal with this discord and conflict by bringing reconciliation and atonement to past injustices via mimesis, performance, and elaborate ritual (Vannier and Montgomery, 2016; Argenti, 2007). The Ewes have a long history of cultural contact and conflict with neighboring groups, colonial powers, and regional northerners who were bought and sold by Ewes in the south during the Atlantic Slave Trade and afterwards in the domestic slave trade at the turn of the century (Montgomery and Vannier, 2017; Argenti 2007; Greene 2002, 1996; Rosenthal 1998; Grace 1975).  Domestic slavery perpetuated a movement of northern “bought people” (amefleflewo) and their religious ideas south, and a dispersion of individual medicine gods from many northern regions were eventually assembled into the Gorovodu pantheon by the 1920’s and 1930’s by Kodzokuma (Friedson 2010; Field, 1960). Past analyses have focused on the ritual exchange and mimesis inherent to spirit worship and performance (Friedson 2010; Argenti 2007; Rosenthal 1998) but the point of departure here frames these performances in terms of personhood, morality, and the “romanticization” of these descendants of northern slaves and gods who help to construct personhood and moral law in the present. In Ewe Gorovodu “debt stays” and the fruits of conquest and slave labor must be made right through rituals of memorialization, reciprocity, and performance where the spirits of slaves and ancestors alike are granted the chance to come and dance the bodies of spirit wives (tronduvi). If these spirits are not given proper ceremony, most importantly the chance to mount the bodies of southern adepts in possession trance, then, they will manifest in the form of illness, witchcraft (aze), and social strife (maso maso). If they are appeased, cajoled, and listened to, they are believed to bring good luck and health to adherents (gorovoduviwo). “They Died in Blood” is a thick-description highlighting the “wild bush spirits” from the north who have been assimilated into local Gorovodu religion, and the relationships these vumeku (lit: “died in blood”) spirits have on individual personhood, conflict management, and collective moral code.

An Ethnography of a Vodu Shrine in Southern Togo: Of Spirit, Slave and Sea. Eric J. Montgomery and Christian N. Vannier. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 316 pp.
DOUGLAS J. FALEN
First published: 15 May 2018

https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12661
Go here for SFX360 Link to Full Text
In their account of the intimate relationships and interactions between humans and gods—Vodu—in the coastal Ewe village of Gbedala in Togo, Eric Montgomery and Christian Vannier use narration of religious ceremonies and testimony from priests, practitioners, and other friends to portray a world where humans and gods live, suffer, and celebrate together within a single community. Amid the struggles for survival in a poor, postcolonial nation ruled by a dictatorship for 50 years, Ewe people turn for support to imported Gorovodu: kola nut gods associated with former domestic slaves sold to southern Ewe families several generations ago. These gods are envisioned as quintessentially Other because they originated with slaves from the “wild” Muslim regions of northern Ghana and Togo, and they are fed northern foods, like kola, and dressed in northern styles during possessions.
With its detailed ethnographic and linguistic information as well as its theoretically sophisticated analysis, this monograph is a valuable reference for specialists in West African religions, particularly for scholars of Vodu and related Vodun traditions. Half the book is devoted to the theoretical framework, Ewe history, an overview of the village of Gbedala, and the names and characteristics of deities in the Gorovodu pantheon. While this information may be useful for some, it is less captivating than the second half of the book, in which the authors narrate their experiences at various ceremonies and provide exquisite ethnographic details about the composition of shrines and the ritual procedures involved in the four pillars of Gorovodu: prayer, sacrifice, divination, and possession.
The book's primary theoretical arguments center around the authors’ elaboration of two concepts: ritual economy and mimesis. Ritual economy refers not only to the exchange relations between humans and gods but to the economic activities (e.g., fishing, commerce, borrowing) that provide the resources to sustain these relations. All gods in the Gorovodu pantheon have their own tastes in food, drink, music, and sacrificial animals, and adherents are responsible for satisfying the deities’ demands in exchange for health, luck, success, and protection from witchcraft. For all rituals, priests and adherents must buy liquor, kola nuts, and animals to be offered to the deities. In addition, priests are responsible for constructing and maintaining the shrines and the various altars within them. One of the strengths of the book is that it offers us extensive details about the material, financial, and ritual obligations that religious leaders must respect in order to tend a shrine and nourish its spirits. This ritual economy creates reciprocal obligations by which gods and humans are bound and through which these different beings interact and form intimate relationships of mutual support.

This article is a photo-essay from a salah Gorovodu ceremony among Anlo-Ewes 5living in Southern Togo. It is a shared ethnographic project employing the photo- voice of three subjects and the anthropologist. The experiment was determined, produced and edited by three members of a local shrine and compiled during focus groups and feedback screenings in the summers of 2013–2014. Photo-voice and related shared approaches help cast more light on a historically misinterpreted 10religion, “Voodoo,” by employing local agency and empowering the subjects to participate in analysis centered on ritual, healing and identity.

Gorovodu and Mama Tchamba: Slaves and Spirits
This chapter explores the idea of “slave spirits” and their connection to ritual, personhood, and spirit possession among Ewe Vodu worshippers of Ghana, Togo, and Bénin. Adding to other chapters from on Africa also prodding the connection between slavery, possession, and power (see Venketachalam, Chapter 6; Nicolini, Chapter 8, this volume). This has tentacles throughout the African Diaspora, since Ewe-land is the epicenter of the “Slave Coast” where so many Africans were sold during Trans-Saharan, Trans-Atlantic, and internal Domestic slave trades. The “traditional” religions of Gorovodu and Mama Tchamba are investigated by the anthropologist with an eye towards history and memories of domestic slaves, especially from the early 20th century when West Africa saw an escalation in domestic slaves of “northern” origins along the West African coast (Argenti 2007). The Gorovodu pantheon itself is comprised of “northern spirits” from the “bush”, where slaves were raided, and later assimilated into Ewe lineages with many women becoming wives, with other being shipped across the Atlantic or elsewhere in Africa. Rush (2013) and Rosenthal (1998) have posited the possibility that many of the Gorovodu’s themselves may be archetypically “slaves”. The Mama Tchamba (meaning “mother slave”) pantheon is connected to Gorovodu, but references spirits of northern slaves specifically, normally through ethnonyms like Hausa, Fulani, and Mossi.