Beyond Vodou and Anthroposophy in the Dominican-Haitian Borderlands

Bibliographic Data

ID18981853
AuthorsMarit Brendbekken (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume46
Issue3
Publication date2002-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Analysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0155-977X • E-ISSN: 1558-5727
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/015597702782409266
OpenAlexW2076137104
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

This essay concerns the paradoxes emerging in the dynamic space of hybridisation between vodou magic2 and the occult science of anthroposophy. These lived imaginaries and registers of interpretation are engaged within countermodernising environmental discourses and practices in the Dominican-Haitian borderlands. Here NGO-affiliated European anthroposophists, orientated by the work of Rudolf Steiner,3 are organising a biodynamic programme in co-operation with marginalised Dominican and Haitian borderlands peasants who live the consequences of radical deforestation. These peasants have for long been subjugated to the often violent dictates of post-colonial ruling élites, and their world of vodou spirits is itself the creation of ‘resistant accommodation’ to the forces of modernity/coloniality and their post-colonial transmutations

Colonialism · Compromise · Ethnology · Modernity · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOI