Ritual, Embodiment, and Agency: Making Religion in Contemporary West Africa

An English translation of a French study of the rituals of the Mande people in West Africa.

Ritual, Embodiment, and Agency shows through rich ethnographic analysis how Mande people in West Africa resort to multiple ritual practices to address an “episteme of doubt.” In the context of armed conflicts and terrorist attacks, climate disruptions, financial crises, and illness, members of “hunter societies," experts who handle certain agentive artifacts, and adepts in a spiritual possession cult ...