RT Book
T1 In my time of dying: a history of death and the dead in West Africa
A1 Parker, John 1960-
LA English
PP Princeton, NJ
PB Princeton University Press
YR 2021
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/175354940X
AB Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Maps -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 Cultural Encounter -- 2 Body, Soul and Person -- 3 Speaking of Death -- 4 Grief and Mourning -- 5 Gold, Wealth and Burial -- 6 Faces of the Dead -- 7 The Severed Head -- 8 Slaves -- 9 Human Sacrifice -- 10 Poison -- 11 Christian Encounters -- 12 From House Burial to Cemeteries -- 13 Ghosts and Vile Bodies -- 14 Writing and Reading about Death -- 15 The Colony of Medicine -- 16 Wills and Dying Wishes -- 17 Northern Frontiers -- 18 Reordering the Royal Dead -- 19 Making Modern Deathways -- Conclusion -- Glossary -- Notes -- Index
AB An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuriesIn My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a four hundred-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Parker considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time.From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, Parker shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world’s most vibrant cultures of death. He explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. Parker reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, beginning with the era of the slave trade through to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule and on to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation.With an array of written and oral sources, In My Time of Dying richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living
OP 376
CN GT3289.A358
SN 978-0-691-21490-0
K1 Death : Africa, West : History
K1 Death : Africa, West : Religious aspects
K1 Funeral rites and ceremonies : Africa, West
K1 HISTORY / Africa / West
K1 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying
K1 HISTORY / Social History
K1 Cemetery
K1 West Africa
K1 Funeral
K1 Coffin
K1 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
K1 Modernity
K1 Mourner
K1 Slavery
K1 Akyem
K1 Deathbed
K1 Wealth
K1 Basel Mission
K1 Deity
K1 Death
K1 Indication (medicine)
K1 Akwamu
K1 Golden Stool
K1 Cape Coast
K1 Abusua
K1 Writing
K1 Capital Punishment
K1 Christianity
K1 Accra
K1 Narrative
K1 In Death
K1 Military campaign
K1 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General
K1 HISTORY / Africa / General
K1 house burial
K1 immolation
K1 inheritance
K1 king of Gyaman
K1 mortuary exchange
K1 mortuary
K1 poison
K1 poisonings
K1 sculptures of the dead
K1 servitude and death
K1 testaments
K1 wills
K1 Adinkra
K1 African funerals
K1 African history
K1 Akan
K1 Asante
K1 Birifu
K1 Eric Seeman
K1 Ga
K1 Gandah
K1 Ghanaian history
K1 Gold Coast
K1 Katherine Verdery
K1 The Reaper’s Garden
K1 Thomas Laqueur
K1 Vincent Brown
K1 angry ghosts
K1 burials
K1 cemeteries
K1 curation of human crania
K1 death duties
K1 dishonorable dead
K1 funerals
K1 funerary culture
K1 funerary
K1 gold
K1 grave good
K1 graveyard
K1 human sacrifice
K1 mourning
K1 Kumasi
K1 burial
K1 grief
DO 10.1515/9780691214900