Deepest Dye - Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World

Aisha Khan examines two cultural phenomena of colonized laborers in the West Indies: the ¿African¿ supernatural practice of obeah and the ¿Indian¿ mourning festival of Hosay. The British criminalized both, establishing hierarchies through racial and religious identities still relevant to postcolonial power dynamics, as well as justice movements.

About the author

Aisha Khan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University. The author of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad, she has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Summary

Aisha Khan examines two cultural phenomena of colonized laborers in the West Indies: the “African” supernatural practice of obeah and the “Indian” mourning festival of Hosay. The British criminalized both, establishing hierarchies through racial and religious identities still relevant to postcolonial power dynamics, as well as justice movements.

Product details

• Authors: Aisha Khan, Khan Aisha
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2021
• EAN: 9780674987821
• ISBN: 978-0-674-98782-1
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, comparative religion, RELIGION / Comparative Religion, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology, History of the Americas