Title Pathology and identity : the work of Mother Earth in Trinidad / Roland Littlewood

Published Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1993

Copies

Location	Call no.	Vol.	Availability
W'PONDS	299.67 Lit/Pai		AVAILABLE

Description xxii, 322 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm Series Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology ; 90 Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology ; 90 Contents 1. The coming of the Earth People -- 2. A certain degree of instability -- 3. Madness, vice and tabanka: popular knowledge of psychopathology in Trinidad -- 4. Mother Earth and the psychiatrists -- 5. Putting Out The Life -- 6. Your ancestor is you: Africa in a new world -- 7. Nature and the millennium -- 8. Incest: the naked earth -- 9. The Beginning Of The End: everyday life in the valley -- 10. Genesis of meaning, limits of mimesis -- App.1 The members of the valley community, October 1981 -- App.2 Songs Summary The first new religion in the Caribbean since Rastafari, the Earth People draw on local strategies of resistance and on West African sources to assert a renascent African identity and celebrate female creativity. They argue that Black people are the guardians of a natural environment, which is constantly under threat from European science. Roland Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticizes received ideas about pathology and creativity, and on the development of religions. While the founder's ideas emerged in her experience of cerebral disease, Dr Littlewood shows how the Earth People appropriate such radical personal experiences to build a community. Naturalistic and personalistic interpretations of human life are both valid and necessary, and neither can be reduced to the other Analysis Sects Trinidad Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-312) and index Notes Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology no:90 Subject Mother Earth (Religious leader) -- Mental health. Mother Earth -- Mental health Mother Earth Cults -- Trinidad and Tobago. Earth People (Cult) Genius and mental illness -- Trinidad and Tobago -- Case studies. Genius and mental illness -- Case studies. Mentally ill -- Religious life -- Case studies. Mentally ill -- Religious life -- Trinidad and Tobago -- Case studies. Psychology, Religious -- Trinidad and Tobago. Psychology, Religious -- Trinidad and Tobago -- Trinidad. LC no. 92018251 ISBN 0521384273

  Permalink