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Author Orta, Andrew

Title Catechizing culture : missionaries, Aymara, and the "new evangelization" / Andrew Orta
Published New York : Columbia University Press, ©2004

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 358 pages) : illustrations
Contents Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Converting Difference; Part 1: Entangled Communities; 1. Andean Locality Revisited; 2. Missionary Modernity in the Postwar Andes; 3. Local Missions, Global Alters; Part 2: Syncretic Subjects; 4. Syncretic Subjects:The Politics of Personhood; 5. Alejandro's House:The Porous Production of Locality; Part 3: Locality Dismembered and Remembered; 6. Seductive Strangers and Saturated Symbols; 7. Burying the Past; Conclusion: Locating the Future; Notes; Glossary; References; Index
Summary Nearly five centuries after the first wave of Catholic missionaries arrived in the New World to spread their Christian message, contemporary religious workers in the Bolivian highlands have begun to encourage Aymara Indians to return to traditional ritual practices. All but eradicated after hundreds of years of missionization, the "old ways" are now viewed as local cultural expressions of Christian values. In order to become more Christian, the Aymara must now become more Indian. This groundbreaking study of the contemporary encounter between Catholic missionaries and Aymara Indians is the first ethnography to focus both on the evangelizers and the evangelized. Andrew Orta explores the pastoral shift away from liberation theology that dominated Latin American missionization up until the mid-1980s to the recent "theology of inculturation," which upholds the beliefs and practices of a supposedly pristine Aymara culture as indigenous expressions of a more universal Christianity. Addressing essential questions in cultural anthropology, religious studies, postcolonial studies, and globalization studies, Catechizing Culture is a sophisticated documentation of the widespread shift from the politics of class to the politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-346) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Catholic Church -- Missions -- Bolivia
Catholic Church
SUBJECT Catholic Church fast
Subject Aymara Indians -- Religion
Aymara Indians -- Missions.
RELIGION -- Christian Ministry -- Missions.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- General.
Aymara Indians -- Missions
Aymara Indians -- Religion
Missions
Bolivia
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2004047844
ISBN 023150392X
9780231503921