Joel E. Tishken, Toyin Falola, and Akintunde Akinyemi (Eds.). Sango in Africa and Lhe African Diaspora
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Joel E. Tishken, Toyin Falola, and Akintunde Akinyemi (eds.). Sango in Africa and lhe African Diaspora (Bloomington: 2009, Indiana University Press. Pp.365. ISBN :978-0-253-22094-3) Several years ago, on my first visit to Cuba, I was approached by a stranger who, upon spotting a line of freckles on my shoulder, insisted that I was a son of Chango. birthmark meant nothing to me before this, yet upon inquiry I was told that it looked like Chango had hit me with his axe. I soon learned that a second birthmark, a non-descript patch of darkened skin on my outer thigh, was read by some as a mark from Chango's lightning. Apparently, my body belongs to an aggressive warrior spirit, who controls thunder and lightning, carries a double-headed axe, and, in some circles, is seen as a particularly virile, hyper-masculine leader. While attending a Santeria ceremony one night, I saw two people lose control of their bodies and become possessed by orisa, the West African dieties Yemaya (protector of the oceans) and Ellegua (guardian of the crossroads). When Ellegua spotted me, he stated with great enthusiasm that I was one of his sons. Yemaya disagreed. two argued and eventually concluded that I am a son of Ellegua but that I spend much of my time in the house of Chango. I am dedicated to Chango but not owned by him. (1) I begin with this personal anecdote to reveal both my own connections and potential biases to the cult of Sango, as well as my desire to give a thorough review of this book. I likewise use it to emphasize the diversity of experiences and interpretations that accompany Sango worship, with particular reference to the African diaspora. editors of Sango in Africa and the African Diaspora have set out to explain a complex piece of West African history and spirituality, to demonstrate how one deity, associated with the small city of Oyo in the ancient kingdom of (within the borders of contemporary Nigeria and Benin), has continued to develop as a powerful force in politics and popular culture across much of Africa and the New World. This work blends approaches from history and folklore, as well as religious and literary studies. authors include both academics and practitioners, some of whom fulfill both categories simultaneously. Part One, Defining Sango in West Africa, consists of four essays, each of which mainly focuses on historical narratives and mythologies and the question of the origin and spread of the cult of Sango. In chapter two, Place of Sango in the Yoruba Pantheon, Akintunde Akinyemi starts by demonstrating the differences ofviews on the exact order of the Yoruba pantheon--namely interpretations and debates on the order of deities through various Yoruba communities. He states up front that his goal is not to argue for the supremacy of Sango but rather to explain why Sango is such a popular deity both in Nigeria and throughout much of the African diaspora. It is a complex essay, and it is assumed that the reader already has a firm understanding of the context of this debate. Many of these details, however, become clearer in the following chapters. My greatest concern in this essay is Akinyemi's uncritical use of the word syncretization in relation to Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian religion (this is covered later on, however, by Glazier in chapter eleven). Regardless, Akinyemi provides a thorough examination of Yoruba mythology in the New World, along with an explanation of the direct role of Sango in the lives of believers through the Eerindinlogun divination system. This system is referenced in several additional chapters, with the greatest practical explanation given by George Olusola Ajibade (chapter four). Arinpe Gbekelolu Adejumo, The Practice and Worship of Sango in Contemporary Yorubaland (chapter three), takes a slightly more ethnographic turn while building on the same question of how and why Sango became such a popular and powerful deity. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".