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The issue addressed here concerns the construction of the African-Brazilian religious diversity in Southwestern Bahia, more specifically in the city of Vitória da Conquista, a subject that has been a matter of investigation by the author since 1997, under the competent guidance of Professor Dr. Josildeth Gomes Consorte. It deals with the investigation of aspects of religious traditions built over the years from the cultural relations between the different peoples who exchanged symbols in the contexts where they lived in the Backcountry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the ritual practices of Candomblé religion based on African beliefs in Brazil, the difference between scientific and traditional knowledge on weather forecasting in Namibia, and the issue of race and kinship.

Latin American state efforts to recognize ethnically and racially marked populations have focused on knowledge and expertise. This article argues that this form of state recognition does not only call on subaltern groups to present themselves in a frame of expertise. It also pushes such groups to position themselves and their social and political struggles in a matrix based on expertise and knowledge. In the context of early 2000s Brazil, the drive to recognition led activists from the Afro‐Brazilian religion Candomblé to reimagine the religion's practitioners' long‐term engagements with scholars and scholarly depictions of the religion as a form of epistemological exploitation that had resulted in public misrecognition of the true source of knowledge on the religion: Candomblé practitioners. To remedy this situation, the activists called on Candomblé practitioners to appropriate the "academic's tools," the modes of representation by which scholarly expertise and knowledge were performed and recognized by the general public and state officials. This strategy transformed religious structures of expertise and knowledge in ways that established a new, politically efficacious epistemological grounding for Candomblé practitioners' calls for recognition. But it also further marginalized temples with limited connections or access to scholars and higher education. [politics of recognition, politics of expertise, state recognition, Candomblé religion, Brazil] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Xangô religion of Recife is a the cult of the orixás, gods of West African (mainly Yoruba) derivation syncretized with the saints of Lusitanian popular Catholicism. The essential act of the cult consists of sacrifice and feasting: animal slaughter, during which the faithful sing, dance and experience trances. The cult characteristics imply a whole set of responses to environmental pressures of various kinds, with oppositions of a dialectical character between the community and domination; the initiate as a ritual son and the initiate as a client; the meat and the feast; and the sacrifice and the party. In other words, between the practical requirements of culture and its surplus that transpires as the feast and as the holy and the beautiful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migratory phenomena and global flows have changed the religious diversity in Europe. The resulting processes of accommodation of religions and practices within new social contexts are characterized by complex dynamics of preservation/adaptation of religious elements. This paper aims to discuss the ways Afro-Brazilian religions, specifically Candomblé Ketu, have been introduced into and adapted within an Italian context. Based on fieldwork that took place in 2013-2016, it analyzes the religious/spiritual paths of Italian practitioners in order to understand how they approach Candomblé and how their observance of both Afro-Brazilian religions and so-called therapeutic practices promote dialogues and re-significations of some religious/spiritual elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oswaldo de Andrade's poem, "O Santeiro do Mangue" (1991 [1950]) and Ruth Landes' ethnography "City of Women" (2006 [1947]) both highlight how African-Brazilian religions have maintained connections to sexual practices considered to be "perverse" by Christian moralities. The present article describes the presence of the orixás in today's brothels in Rio de Janeiro. We emphasize the use of Candomblé and Umbanda as counter-hegemonic forms of spirituality which protect women involved in the sale of sex and are used as symbolic languages criticizing a moral order that highlights female passivity. Through the language of the saints, that which cannot be said becomes public in Carioca brothels, highlighting agencies in a space nominally dominated by men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Candomblé began with Yoruba people from Nigeria and Benin sold into slavery in Brazil. Topics include Candomblé is practiced through dancing, playing drums, singing, embodying orishas, cooking for and eating with them, Candomblé does not have a written doctrine, but is based on oral knowledge, and dogmas of faith to black African people's mentality.

In article the author highlights the connection of lights with god's message and religion, Candomblé, a religion widely practiced in Brazil. Topics include the presence of spirits bounded by light not just dark; and the "white table" ceremony (mesa branca) and temple's hall covered with statues of catholic saints and spirit entities.

This article is an ethnography of Candomblé transnationalization to the city of New York. I describe the journeys of three Brazilian mães-de-santo (mothers-of-saints), who have carried their practices and knowledge with them from Brazil. I report how they settled in the city, the dialog with urban space in a megalopolis, the changes that have occurred in the rituals, and the potential transpositions to this new space, their clientele and motivations. It aims to comprehend the importance of the Candomblé itinerary as one of the main components responsible for its maintenance, establishment and expansion in Brazil and in other parts of the world. The connecting points of this article were the stories of three Brazilian mothers-of-saints who moved to New York City, carrying with them Candomblé rituals practiced in Brazil, transposing them to this new place, having to discuss and rethink their practices in the North American context, reinventing traditional religious settings or, rather, inventing traditions, and dialoging with the concept of reinvention of tradition, as proposed by Roy Wagner (1975). An important topic found in this reinvention process is a change of hierarchy, as a more horizontal interaction system is adopted by the mothers-of-saints with their devotees and clients, as opposed to the more vertical model which prevails in the Brazilian terreiros (places of worship). Following the work of the three mothers-of-saints, aiming to transpose religion to a new context, I describe their encounters with their devotees, who seek health care and well-being through the use of plants and prayers during rituals and religious ceremonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called Transatlantic Traffic imposed new linguistical and cultural configurations on the three continents involved in this tragedy: Africa, America and Europe. Such configurations acquire a complex of dynamics that, nowadays, we speak of flux and reflux of traffic, because of the intense and broad cultural and social exchange between these continents. Religion is one of the main or fundamental elements that is diluted in the cultural exchanges between Africa and America, especially those of the so called Sudanese nations, which receive various denominations: santeria, vodun, and Candomblé, among others. I will deal with the presentation of the Jeje nagô pattern in order to promote a dialogue, taking in account manifestation in Cuba, Haiti, Brazil and Benin. I will choose, describe and analyse from a comparative perspective a sample of songs and ritual lexicon (including terms of kinship) of Dahomean and Ewé-Fon origin in arará santeria, vodun in Haiti, and Mina-jeje candomblé in Brazil in one part of the study, and in the other part, with the vodun of Benin. This experience will undoubtedly shed light on the diversity and richness of meanings attributed from cultural and social relations in religious spaces and in society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Candomblé rituals from the perspective of human-environment relations, taking into account not only human followers, but also animals, plants and artifacts that are necessary for the making of Candomblé terreiros. While this process of interaction between different realms is codified by strict rules and prescriptions, it also adapts according to the environment where the Candomblé community is located. Drawing from fieldwork data collected in a Candomblé terreiro that has been active in Italy for almost two decades, this paper aims at presenting the challenges and adaptations of the religious practice in different natural landscapes. By taking into account the spatial composition and the material culture involved in the Italian terreiro and its references in Brazil, this work re-thinks how Candomblé practitioners relate to the cultural and ecological environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text of a public lecture delivered by Valdina Oliveira Pinto, a teacher and practitioner of the philosophical and healing traditions of the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé, at the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Denver in April 2011. Topics include Pinto's personal history with Candomblé, reflection on the environmental consciousness embedded in the religion and role of Candomblé in the preservation of African-based ritual resources in Brazil.

This article discusses how those who experience spirit possession within Bahian Candomblé religion listen to ritual music outside of the ceremonial context. It proposes a theory of aesthetics based on bodily sensations and mythological imagination that initiated dancers develop through experience and socialization. This embodied aesthetics is then linked to discourses of black empowerment, processes of self-fashioning, and issues of secrecy and representation of Candomblé in Bahia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atlantic slave trade extracted kidnapped populations from the entirety of the western African coast between what are now Senegal and Angola, as well as parts of the east African coast in what is now Mozambique. Western slave traders and buyers regularly classified their human merchandise in terms of the African region, coastal town, or commercial fortress from which they had embarked, or in terms of an ethnic group that presumably derived from that place. With such presumptions, ethnic groupings such as Congo, Angola, Carabalí, Ibo, Nagô, Lucumí, Mina, Arará, Koromantee, and so forth were called “nations.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Professor J. Lorand Matory's thorough critique of the English translation of my book, which was first published in Brazil in 2006, did not come to me as a complete surprise. He and I have known each other for some years, and we have shared with each other interests in the cultural history of Candomblé, in particular the place and role of the Jeje nation. We have discussed our interpretative divergences in private and in public, and I have referred to some of them in writing (Nagôization, 2005; Birth, 2005; Formation). I do appreciate and feel honored that such a distinguished scholar has devoted some of his precious time to reviewing my book, giving me the chance to revisit my over-a-decade-old argument in the light of his provoking challenges. Yet, after reading his essay (certainly more than a standard review), I wondered why he had taken the effort to write 15 single-spaced pages of meticulous criticism on a work he ultimately dismisses as theoretically old-fashioned and full of errors and inconsistencies. If it is so worthless, why care about it in the first place? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With an acute awareness across the globe of widening economic inequalities and an increasingly elusive middle class, where do religious institutions fit into the modern social and political ideologies? Examining interviews and ethnographic notes from data compiled in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, I will seek to answer two main questions: First, how does the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God fit (or not) into the neoliberal agenda/ideology? Second, how does the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé fit (or not) into the neoliberal model? Comparing the socio-cultural and symbolic alignments of neo-Pentecostalism and Candomblé and how each religion favors different types of political subject formation in regard to space and racial consciousness, I conclude by remarking on the increasing fragmentation of Afro-Brazilian religious subjects, since each religious institution seeks to gain political influence through conflicting socio-political ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author intends to create a dialogue between Christians from a Reformed perspective and the Candomblé people, an African Brazilian religion. In order to do that, the issue of racism is addressed first, then a Latin-American theoretical framework for inter-religious dialogue is offered. Similarities and differences are established and at the end, a practical itinerary is offered. Fundamentally, this dialogue is a matter of life and death for many Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the Candomblé cult of Bahia, a system of personal prescriptions and avoidances is connected with some extra-human intentionality. Actually, the relation of extra-humans with the initiate could be expressed through sensations or physical negative reactions (sensibilities). Generally, an orixá (deity) or an odu (sign of destiny) are at the origin of his negative reactions (disgust feeling, alimentary intolerance or allergy), which could arise as a ritual interdiction. An implicit conceptualization of these taboos (quizilas) as an embodied consequence of an extra-human aversion or antagonism emerges, from which we can analyze the weight of this kind of "emotional" agencies in the ritual construction of the new identity of the Candomblé's initiate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the way in which the living quarters of a famous priestess from the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé were turned into a heritage site. The Memorial de Mãe Menininha do Gantois shows that the form of the museum might be understood as a particular "language" of status and prestige. The site therefore allows us to discuss what happens when new actors in the public sphere pick up, appropriate, and transform this language of "museumification." Although the profane dimensions of "museumification" are hard to miss, we argue that in the case of the memorial this language does not at all diminish the sacred nature of this site, but actually articulates it in a new way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author explores the ways in which Catholic, evangelical, and Candomblé actors produce competing framings that shape encounters taking place in the city of Cachoeira in the Brazilian state of Bahia. The framing of Cachoeira as a site of heritage tourism – one where local religious practices are read as part of the African heritage and attractions for African American ‘roots tourists’ – obscures as much as it reveals. This is not to suggest that this framing is entirely inaccurate or to deny that many visitors themselves describe their trips to Bahia this way. But I contend that the ‘heritage frame’ masks key issues that complicate diasporic encounters in Cachoeira, particularly different understandings of heritage and religion and their relationship to black identity that African Americans and Afro-Brazilians bring to these encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a historical overview of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, focusing on the history of the temple Ilê Maroiá Laji, located in the state of Bahia, Brazil. Particular attention is given to the history of the Alaketu family, which founded the temple in the first half of the 19th century. The author explores the oral tradition of the temple, which according to the Alaketu family was founded as early as the 17th century. Topics include the version of the history of the temple by high priestess Olga do Alaketu, religious practices among slaves and freed slaves in Brazil, and economic conditions of Brazilian black families in the 19th century.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including slavery in Brazil, the history of Afro-Brazilians, and the history of the Candomblé religion in Brazil.

The present article aims to present the contributions of the African-Brazilians in the systematization of African religions in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, from the arrival of them, from different African Nations on Brazilian soil. We intend to focus on the contribution of some babalorixás in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro`s geographies, but in highlight the babalorixá Joãozinho da Goméa, who came from Salvador to the Baixada Fluminense, and in the neighborhood of Duque de Caxias disclosed the enchantments of Candomblé as Afro-Brazilian cultural product for all Cariocas social classes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to analyze the idea of person among the Yorùbá people of Western Africa, taking into account the conception of orí, i.e., the head, which is understood by them as the bowl of human personality and destiny. Those ideas are clearly present in the plural literature concerning the human personality and its destination among the Yorùbá people. Taking the orí as starting point, I shall problematize the predestination idea among the Yorùbá and the meaning of the bọrí, the ritual presented as 'feeding-the-head'. Such process will be extended to Afro-Brazilian religious system named Candomblé. The problematization will guide my observation to the dramatic plurality of interpretations concerning destiny, while it will spell out the linguistic dilemmas around the translation of concepts. Those dilemmas influence, clearly, the theological construction of the object. At the same time, the paper will deliver us to the evidence of the historical construction of Yorùbá religion, which is a mutable and dynamic religious expression, highly crossed with Christianity and Islam (in African contexts). Those processes of transformation are also clear in Brazil, where the celebration of orí has different religious attitudes comparing to African native ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the presence of "images" in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé In many traditional houses of Candomblé it is often said that it is not allowed to photograph or film rituals. On the other hand, in recent years, the presence of Catholic and other figurative images in Candomblé shrines has been questioned by recent "purification" movements--often led by these traditional houses--who fight syncretism, separating Catholicism from African religion. Still, in many cases figurative images are present in shrines, and rituals are photographed and filmed. This article argues that, beyond syncretism, images in Candomblé are contentious because they can be powerful: they can be indexes of the presence of Candomblé santos, they can become instances of a "distributed person." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay traces the origins of African Studies in the U.S. to ethnographic, sociological, and linguistic work carried out by African American scholars in Brazil among practitioners of the Candomblé religion. More specifically, the author analyzes the interrelated work of African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, anthropologist Melville Herskovits, and African American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner.

This paper examines the Afro-Brazilian afoxé as a form of cultural struggle that critically contests narratives and practices that reproduce racial inequality in contemporary Brazil. Through their afoxé in the interior of São Paulo, the Orùnmilá Cultural Center mobilizes Afro-Brazilian knowledge and cultural practices to challenge culturalist treatments of Afro-Brazilian 'difference' in the management and representation of carnaval. I explore how such treatments reflect broader state-orchestrated attempts to undermine black anti-racism and the implementation of substantive policies to address racial inequality in various spheres, including education and culture. The afoxé and the Orùnmilá Center's broader work constitute an important, contemporary means through which black organizations in Brazil make visible and vocal public claims for representation and self-determination. Such work pushes policy-makers and academics to reinterpret the terms of black inclusion vis-à-vis subaltern or 'other' cultures, historical experiences, perspectives, and participation in societal transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative study of the formation of religious and ethnic identities within black Pentecostals in Brazil and the U.S. The author asserts that both groups of black Pentecostals share a feeling of mutual denial in terms of their religious identities. Research in the U.S. focuses on the Bible Way movement of Pentecostalism, which mostly exists in the American South, and Brazilian research centers on differences between Pentecostal churches and the Afro-Brazilian religions of Umbanda and Candomblé. Religious topics such as testimonials, salvation, and Pentecostal fundamentalism are also explored.

In this article, the authors will present findings from a phenomenological study exploring the healing experiences of favela residents who utilize Candomblé as a psychospiritual intervention for traumatic response to neocolonial conditions. Findings have transnational implications for understanding Afro-Brazilian spiritual methods of resisting colonialism and the cultural genocide that plagues Diasporic Africans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the African-Brazilian religion Candomblé in religious and secular situations in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Particular attention is given to the citywide visibility of the representations of this religion's deities, called orixás. The frequency of public art with the themes of this religion are discussed. Article topics include the group of sculptures on the Dique do Tororó by Bahian artist Tatti Moreno, African identity in Salvador da Bahia, and Candomblé altars in sacred spaces.

Scholars of religion continue to talk of syncretism where their colleagues have moved on to talk of hybridity. This paper reviews critiques of the latter concept and argues that “hybridity” can be a useful concept, but only if further specified. I follow Peter Wade in distinguishing between hybridity of origin (the combination of pre-existing forms), and hybridity of encounter (the result of diasporic movements). I propose a third type, hybridity of refraction, in order to highlight the manner in which religious or cultural phenomena refract social tensions within a specific nation or society, resulting in a spectrum of ritual, doctrinal and/or religious forms. The typology is not meant to be complete or mutually exclusive: it suggests the value of adopting distinct, potentially overlapping, perspectives on hybridization. I illustrate the heuristic value of this approach with the case of Umbanda, a twentieth-century Brazilian religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the axiom that, for anthropology, the only relevant epistemologies and ontologies are those offered by the peoples we work with, this article offers a sketch of the current debate around the once famous ideas of 'fetish' and 'fetishism'. Focusing on the way that this debate has been extended in studies of Afro-Brazilian religions, the argument employs fieldwork and bibliographic data from one of these religions, candomblé, in order to present a native theory of the creative process underlying what has been baptized with the strange names 'fetish' and 'fetishism'. In short, this native theory holds that the creative process consists more in the actualization of already existing virtualities contained in beings and objects in the world than in the model of ex nihilo production, which is characteristic of our dominant Judeo-Christian and capitalist cosmologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the referential of the post-colonial studies, the propose of this article is to analyze the existing Candomble communities in the city of Goiânia under the perspective of the cultural in between. Trying to understand, through the speech of the sacerdotal leaders of the refereed religion, the tense articulation between power's coloniality and the marginal thought, in the historical process sphere of this communities constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, social scientists have seen money and religion in Brazil as two incompatible terms. In contrast, this article shows how money has always been present in Brazilian popular religion. This argument leads to a second point: a criticism of the interpretation of Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal churches as ‘money fetishists’, religions of neoliberalism and globalization. Neo-Pentecostals in Brazil appropriate money not just for economic ends, but also with the political project of Christianizing the country. More generally, the article introduces a different perspective both from the classical discourse on money as an agent of globalization and modernity on the one hand, and a more recent literature on the personalization of money and alternative currencies, on the other. In both the discourses on modernity and personalization, nation-states are increasingly marginal. But the nation is still very much at the centre of the Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of its history, candomblé was a marginal and persecuted spirit possession cult. From the 1920s onward, however, the cult evolved into the "trademark" of Bahia, a state in northeastern Brazil The color white--a spotless and impeccable white--has come to dominate the public face of the cult: evoking positive connotations such as cleanliness and purity, the color helped to portray candomblé as the splendid cultural heritage of the Bahian state as well as a respectable African religion. However, the "politics of white" has always been intersected by a "poetics of white," as Bahian artists, writers, and other image producers sought to destabilize the condoned meanings of white. Hinting at that which is absent from the impeccable surfaces of candomblé's public appearance, this "poetics of white" produced a layered public understanding of the cult. As people engage in speculations over the "true" candomblé that lies hidden behind its public façade, claims to be "in the know" reconfigure the notion of cultural capital, and new standards of belonging come into being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effects of new media technologies, such as televisions and videos, on religious imaginations on Bahian candomblé cult in Brazil. The authorities within the cult said that media technologies is in complete opposition with authentic traditional religion. A discussion on the video productions already made had revealed that the cult community members are modern media consumers. Television has become an authenticating and authorizing agent in the religious field.

Through the presentation and analysis of a prototypical medium- ship narrative, this article shows how individuals initiated into the Candomblé religion of north-eastern Brazil come to alter their own self-narratives by learning and internalizing the cultural model for an established social/religious role: that of the medium. As individuals come to identify with this 'role model,' they are able to reinterpret their own life histories in terms of the model's structure and its symbolic content. This article also demonstrates how the social articulation and cognitive internalization of this new self-narrative act therapeutically, to foster a positive transformation in self-understanding that facilitates positive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the role and image of women portrayed in the Candomblé religion in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. History of the religion; Information on several Candomble women leaders; Role of music in the religion.

This article presents a survey of the latest developments in the religious world of Brazil. The author discusses the newest developments in the Roman Catholic Church moving from an orientation on the liberation theology towards an approach directed to a more individual perception of Faith. Furthermore she pays attention to Candomblé, the religion of many blacks in Brazil, the roots of which can be traced to Africa to New Age and to the Pentecostal churches. A very interesting phenomenon is the impact of the scholars. From the religious point of view Brazil is a very interesting country because of the ecclesiogenesis taking place in the country, an emergence of new churches and religious movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers a reading of diasporic possession cult activities as found in vodun and codified in Santeria and candomble. Concept of Charles Long on the religions of the oppressed; Information on Ogou; Description of the dance of Ogou-mounted performers; Information on the performative signs of Ogou; Major genealogies of loa; Representation of Ogou in Haitian history; Information on the dramaturgical personas of the spirit world that embody contradiction.

Focuses on the Afro-Brazilian religion called Candomblé in Brazil. Definition and coverage of Candomblé Adoption of the religion on the social classes in Brazil; Influences of the religion.

Religious systems brought over by African slaves in Brazil gave rise, especially throughout the 19th century, to Candomblé and other modalities of worship of African deities, especially of Yoruba deities known as orishas. This article seeks to provide a general description of Candomblé, of its main orishas, initiation rites and view of the world. It also proposes an interpretation of the fact that this Afro-Brazilian religion is no longer an ethnic religion exclusive to the black population, but a universal religion, without racial, ethnic or geographical barriers, a religion that congregates followers of all racial and social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the use of plants for spiritual and medicinal purposes by the Candomble, an Afro-Brazilian cult in Bahia, Brazil. Religious leaders' retention of the elements of ethnoflora by importing Old World species; Biogeographical similarity between West Africa and Bahia, Brazil, facilitating diffusion of the African religion to the New World.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including Candomblé religion in Brazil, Islam in Egypt, and the effect of light on followers.

The following pages present an important scholarly exchange on a central sociocultural issue in Latin American history. First, we present J. Lorand Matory's review of Luis Nicolau Parés's 2013 book The Formation of Candomblé: Vodun History and Ritual in Brazil. Second, we present Parés's response to the review. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As someone who assigns both Matory and Parés in my graduate courses, I find myself asking what is at stake in this debate. If we take Matory at face value, Parés is an unreformed “Herskovitsian” who searches for linear connections between vodun religion in West Africa and the Jeje Candomblé in Bahia. According to Matory, Parés's emphasis on primordial Africa is based on a quest “to avenge the honor of the Jeje nation.” But avenge it from what? Against whom? As both authors make clear, Nagô Candomblé houses transcended Jeje houses in power and prestige, starting in the late nineteenth century. Matory acknowledges the continuing influence of Jeje, especially through the dialogic exchanges of Jeje elites who traveled back and forth between Africa and Brazil in the 1890s. However, he firmly rejects Parés’ claim that memory of earlier Jeje structures shaped Candomblé as it evolved in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]