Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T09:46:34.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Yoruba Ethnogenesis from Within

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Andrew Apter
Andrew Apter*
Affiliation:
Departments of History and Anthropology, UCLA
*
aapter@history.ucla.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is an anthropological truism that ethnic identity is “other”-oriented, such that who we are rests on who we are not. Within this vein, the development of Yoruba identity in the late nineteenth century is attributed to Fulani perspectives on their Oyo neighbors, Christian missionaries and the politics of conversion, as well as Yoruba descendants in diaspora reconnecting with their West African homeland. In this essay, my aim is to both complement and destabilize these externalist perspectives by focusing on Yoruba concepts of “home” and “house” (ilé), relating residence, genealogy and regional identities to their reconstituted ritual frameworks in Cuba and Brazil. Following Barber's analysis of Yoruba praise-poetry (oríkì) and Verran's work on Yoruba quantification, I reexamine the semantics of the category ilé in the emergence of Lucumí and Nagô houses in order to explain their sociopolitical impact and illuminate transpositions of racial “cleansing” and ritual purity in Candomblé and Santería. More broadly, the essay shows how culturally specific or “internal” epistemological orientations play an important if neglected role in shaping Atlantic ethnicities and their historical trajectories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 356 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ajayi, J. F. Ade. 1960. How Yoruba Was Reduced to Writing. Odu 8: 49–58.Google Scholar
Akinnaso, F. Niyi. 1980. The Sociolinguistic Basis of Yoruba Personal Names. Anthropological Linguistics 22, 7: 275–305.Google Scholar
Apter, Andrew. 1992. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Apter, Andrew. 1995. Notes on Orisha Cults in the Ekiti Yoruba Highlands: A Tribute to Pierre Verger. Cahiers d'Études Africaines 35, 138/9: 369–401.Google Scholar
Apter, Andrew. 2002. On African Origins: Creolization and Connaissance in Haitian Vodou. American Ethnologist 29, 2: 233–60.Google Scholar
Barber, Karin. 1991. I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oríkì, Women, and the Past in a Yoruba Town. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Barth, Frederick. 1969. Introduction. In Barth, F., ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference. Boston: Little, Brown, 9–38.Google Scholar
Bastide, Roger. 1971. African Civilizations in the New World. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Bastide, Roger. 1978. The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations. Sebba, Helen, trans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Bastide, Roger. 1986 [1960]. Sociología de la Religión. Madrid: Ediciones Jucar.Google Scholar
Beier, Ulli. 1980. Yoruba Myths. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bender, D. R. 1970. Agnatic or Cognatic? A Reevaluation of Ondo Descent. Man (NS) 5, 1: 71–87.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Nice, Richard, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowdich, Thomas E. 1819. Mission from Cape Coast to Ashantee: With a Statistical Account of that Kingdom, and Geographical Notices of Other Parts of the Interior of Africa. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Brown, David H. 2003. Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Capone, Stefania. 2010 [1999]. Searching for Africa in Brazil: Power and Tradition in Candomblé. Grant, L. L., trans. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Carneiro, Edison. 1961. Candomblés da Bahia. Rio de Janeiro: Conquista.Google Scholar
Carvalho Soares, Mariza de. 2004. From Gbe to Yoruba: Ethnic Change and the Mina Nation in Rio de Janeiro. In Falola, T. and Childs, M., eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 231–47.Google Scholar
Childs, Matt D. 2006. The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John L. 2010. The End of Anthropology, Again: On the Future of an In/Discipline. American Anthropologist 112, 4: 524–38.Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip. 1969. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Denham, D. and Clapperton, H.. 1826. Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the Years 1822, 1823, and 1824. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Díaz, María Elena. 2000. The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dumont, Louis. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. Sainsbury, M., trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Eades, Jeremy S. 1980. The Yoruba Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fadipe, Nathaniel A. 1970. The Sociology of the Yoruba. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.Google Scholar
Freyre, Gilberto. 1986 [1933]. The Masters and the Slaves [Casa-Grande & Senzala]: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. Putnam, S., trans. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. 2003. African Ethnicities and the Meanings of Mina. In Lovejoy, P. and Trotman, D., eds., Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora. London: Continuum, 65–81.Google Scholar
Heywood, Linda and Thornton, John. 2007. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Idowu, E. Bolaji. 1962. Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief. London: Longmans.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul C. 2002. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Samuel. 1921. The History of the Yorubas. Lagos: C.M.S. Bookshops.Google Scholar
Kiddy, Elizabeth W. 2005. Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Law, Robin. 1997. Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: ‘Lucumi’ and ‘Nagô’ as Ethnonyms in West Africa. History in Africa 24: 205–19.Google Scholar
Law, Robin. 2004. Yoruba Liberated Slaves Who Returned to Africa. In Falola, T. and Childs, M., eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 349–65.Google Scholar
Law, Robin. 2005. Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of ‘Mina’ (Again). History in Africa 32: 247–67.Google Scholar
Lindsay, Lisa. 1994. ‘To Return to the Bosom of Their Fatherland’: Brazilian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Lagos. Slavery and Abolition 15, 1: 22–50.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Peter C. 1954. The Traditional Political System of the Yoruba. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 10, 4: 366–84.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Peter C. 1955. The Yoruba Lineage. Africa 25, 3: 235–51.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Peter C. 1962. Yoruba Land Law. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Peter C. 1966. Agnatic and Cognatic Descent among the Yoruba. Man (NS) 1, 4: 484–500.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Peter C. 1968. Conflict Theory and Yoruba Kingdoms. In Lewis, I. M., ed., History and Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock, 25–61.Google Scholar
Lopéz Valdés, Rafael L. 1986. Notas para el estudio etnohistórico de los esclavos Lucumí de Cuba. Anales del Caribe 6: 55–74.Google Scholar
Lopéz Valdés, Rafael L. 1994. Cabildos de Africanos y religions afro-cubanas: Un nuevo enfoque. MS.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul E. 2003. Ethnic Designations of the Slave Trade and the Reconstruction of the History of Trans-Atlantic Slavery. In Lovejoy, P. and Trotman, D., eds., Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Slavery in the African Diaspora. London: Continuum, 9–42.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul E. 2004. The Yoruba Factor in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. In Falola, T. and Childs, M., eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 40–55.Google Scholar
Matory, J. Lorand. 1999. The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, 1: 72–103.Google Scholar
Matory, J. Lorand. 2005. Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. and Price, R.. 1992 [1976]. The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Nunley, John W. 1987. Moving with the Face of the Devil: Art and Politics in Urban West Africa. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Ojo, Olatunje. 2009a. The Root Is also Here: The Nondiaspora Foundations of Yoruba Ethnicity. In Falola, T. and Usman, A., eds., Movements, Borders and Identities in Africa. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 53–80.Google Scholar
Ojo, Olatunje. 2009b. ‘Heepa (Hail) Òrìsà’: The Òrìsà Factor in the Birth of Yoruba Identity. Journal of Religion in Africa 39, 1: 30–59.Google Scholar
Palmié, Stephan. 1993. Ethnogenetic Processes and Cultural Transfer in Afro-American Slave Populations. In Binder, W., ed., Slavery in the Americas. Würtzburg: Königshausen Un Neumann, 337–63.Google Scholar
Palmié, Stephan. 2010. Ekpe/Abakuá in Middle Passage: Time, Space and Units of Analysis in African American Historical Anthropology. In Apter, Andrew and Derby, L., eds., Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 1–44.Google Scholar
Paquette, Robert L. 1988. Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Parés, Luis Nicolau. 2004. The ‘Nagôization’ Process in Brazilian Candomblé. In Falola, T. and Childs, M., eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 185–208.Google Scholar
Parés, Luis Nicolau. 2010. Memories of Slavery in Religious Ritual: Comparing Benin Vodun and Bahian Candomblé. In Apter, Andrew and Derby, L., eds., Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 71–97.Google Scholar
Peel, John D. Y. 1983. Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s–1970s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peel, John D. Y. 1989. The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis. In Tonkin, E., McDonald, M. O., and Chapman, M., eds., History and Ethnicity. London: Routledge, 198–215.Google Scholar
Peel, John D. Y. 2000. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Reis, João J. and Mamigonian, Beatriz G.. 2004. Nagô and Mina: The Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil. In Falola, T. and Childs, M., eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 77–110.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Sansi, Roger. 2007. Fetishes and Monuments: Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in the 20th Century. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Scheffler, Harold. 1966. Ancestor Worship in Anthropology; or, Observations on Descent and Descent Groups. Current Anthropology 7, 5: 541–48.Google Scholar
Schwab, William B. 1955. Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba. Africa 25, 4: 352–74.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Stuart B. 1985. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skidmore, Thomas E. 1993 [1974]. Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thornton, John. 1984. The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750. Journal of African History 25, 2: 147–67.Google Scholar
Verger, Pierre. 1968. Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le golfe de Bénin et Bahia de todos os santos du dix-septième au dix-neuvième siècle. Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Verger, Pierre. 1981. Orixás: Deuses Iorubás na Africa e no Novo Mundo. Salvador, Brazil: Corrupio.Google Scholar
Verran, Helen. 2001. Science and an African Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar