Indigeneity in African Religions: Oza Worldviews, Cosmologies and Religious Cultures [Hardcover]

Based on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data,Indigeneity in African Religionsexplores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of indigeneity and contributing to its conceptual understanding within socioreligious change in contemporary Africa.

The future of Oza indigeneity in the face of modernity is illuminated against the backlash of encounters, contestations with multiple hegemonies, transmissions of Christianity and Islam and indigenous (re)appropriations. Thus, any theorizations of such encounters must be cognizant of instantiations of indigeneity politics and identity, culture, tradition and power dynamics. Through decolonizing burdens of history, memory and method, Afe Adogame demonstrates a framework of understanding Oza indigenous religious,sociocultural and political imaginaries.

Afe Adogameis the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society and Chair of the History and Ecumenics Department, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, USA. He is also Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and author ofThe African Christian Diaspora(Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

Contributes importantly to the study of African and other Indigenous religions. Journal of Religion in Africa

Afe Adogame's highly readable book has given great meaning to the existence of a small group in a culturally diverse milieu. By paying crucial attention to the complexities of the Oza people's historical, cultural and religious imaginations over the Longue Duree, the author has used an interpretive framework that discusses the present reality of the Oza people in light of their past experiences. This book will for a long time remain a contempl³®