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Masquerades of Modernity

Power and Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal

Ferdinand de Jong author Ferdinand de Jong editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Edinburgh University Press

Published:26th Oct '07

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Masquerades of Modernity cover

How do those on the margins of modernity face the challenges of globalization? This book demonstrates that secrecy is one of the means by which a society on the fringe of modernity produces itself as locality. Focusing on initiation rituals, masked performances and modern art, this study shows that rituals and performances long deemed obsolete, serve the insertion of their performers in the world at their own terms. The Jola and Mandinko people of the Casamance region in Senegal have always used their rituals and performances to incorporate the impact of Islam, colonialism, capitalism, and contemporary politics. Their performances of secrecy have accommodated these modern powers and continue to do so today. The performers incorporate the modern and redefine modernity through secretive practices. Their traditions are not modern inventions, but traditional ways of dealing with modernity. This book will interest anthropologists, historians, political scientists and all those studying how globalisation affects peripheral societies. It shows that secrecy, performed as a weapon of the weak, empowers their performers. Secrecy serves to mark boundaries and define the local in the global.

De Jong's work covers a diverse array of subjects in the Casamance region of Senegal, a multi-ethnic region in the sway of global modernity, including initiation ceremonies, age-sets and gendering, Islamisation, state formation, civil unrest, and the commoditisation of performance as 'heritage'. [It offers] a solid and thought-provoking engagement with contemporary theoreticians. Nicolas Argenti, Brunel University -- Social Anthropology 17/4 De Jong's work covers a diverse array of subjects in the Casamance region of Senegal, a multi-ethnic region in the sway of global modernity, including initiation ceremonies, age-sets and gendering, Islamisation, state formation, civil unrest, and the commoditisation of performance as 'heritage'. [It offers] a solid and thought-provoking engagement with contemporary theoreticians. Nicolas Argenti, Brunel University

ISBN: 9780748633197

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

256 pages