Luis Nicolau Parés. The Formation of Candomblé

Luis Nicolau Parés’s reputation as a critical scholar for the study of the African diaspora in Brazil is well-deserved. His research, bridging both history and anthropology, has brought important changes in the way scholars have understood the crafting of ethnicity and religion by African arrivals to the New World. This new translation of his work will bring his many insights to a wider audience and will be welcomed especially by scholars of the Black Atlantic not able to access his work in Portuguese. Parés focuses his study on the institution of Candomblé, a polytheistic religion that emerged amongst Africans and their descendants in the Northeastern state of Bahia, Brazil. While similar religions surfaced elsewhere across Brazil, Bahian Candomblé was exceptional for its dense proliferation in the port of Salvador and its sugar hinterland and for the claims, made by many twentieth-century practitioners and scholars, that modern Bahian Candomblés represented continuations of practices brought from Africa long ago.

Diaspora · Ethnology · History of Africa · Portuguese · Reputation · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philosophy