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Pathology and Identity Roland Littlewood (University College London)

Pathology and Identity By Roland Littlewood (University College London)

Summary

The Earth People draw on West African traditions and assert the particular power of female creativity. Their leader is Mother Earth, whose faith emerged following a cerebral disease. This 1993 account of a new West Indian religion examines how social patterns may emerge from radical personal experiences.

Pathology and Identity Summary

Pathology and Identity: The Work of Mother Earth in Trinidad by Roland Littlewood (University College London)

The first new religion in the Caribbean since Rastafari, the Earth People draw on West African sources, assert a renascent African identity, and celebrate female creativity. They argue that Black people are the guardians of a natural environment, which is constantly under threat from European science. In this 1993 book, Dr Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticizes received ideas about pathology and creativity. The founder's ideas emerged in her experience of cerebral disease, and Dr Littlewood shows how the Earth People reinterpret radical personal experiences to build a community. While naturalistic and personalistic interpretations of human life are both valid and necessary, neither can be reduced to the other.

Pathology and Identity Reviews

"...both original and truly significant. It represents a major contribution to the study of millenarian movements, to African-Caribbean Studies and, one would hope, to the writing of ethnography...Littlewood's text is neither book-bound nor prosaic. It is refreshingly erudite and beautifully written." Times Literary Supplement

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. The coming of the Earth People; 2. A certain degree of instability; 3. Madness, vice and Tabanka: popular knowledge of psychopathology in Trinidad; 4. Mother Earth and the psychiatrists; 5. Putting out the life; 6. Your ancestor is you: African in a new world; 7. Nature and the millennium; 8. Incest: the naked earth; 9. The beginning of the end: everyday life in the valley; 10. Genesis of meanings, limits of mimesis; Appendices; Glossary; Notes; List of references; Index.

Additional information

GOR009232998
9780521384278
0521384273
Pathology and Identity: The Work of Mother Earth in Trinidad by Roland Littlewood (University College London)
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Cambridge University Press
1993-04-29
352
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Pathology and Identity