African Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change

African Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change is a collection of carefully and analytically written essays on different aspects of African sacred spaces. The interaction between the past and present points to Africans’ continuing recognition of certain natural phenomena and places as sacred. Western influence, the introduction of Christianity and Islam, as well as modernity, have not succeeded in completely obliterating African spirituality and sacred observances, especially as these relate to space in its various iterations. Indeed, Africans, on the continent and in the Diasporas, have responded to the challenges of history, environmentalism, and sustainability with sober and versatile responses in their reverence for sacred space as expressed through a variety of religious, historical, and spiritual practices, as this volume attempts to show.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: African Sacred Places in the Americas Kevin Young Chapter 2: History and the Sacred: The Royal Tombs of Igboho Julius O. Adekunle Chapter 3: Rituals and African Space: Funeral Rites and Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty Donald O. Omagu Chapter 4: Sacred Spaces and Ritual Performances in Ejagamland of Cameroon Emmanuel Mbah and Tom Victor Ntui Chapter 5:Masjid: Sacred Space in Nigerian Islam Muhammadu Mustapha Gwadabe and Muhammad Kyari Chapter 6: The Metaphysics of Space in Yoruba Traditional Religion ’BioDun J. Ogundayo Chapter 7: Sacred Spaces: Mountains in Yoruba Spirituality Enoch Olujide Gbadegesin Chapter 8: Tradition and Modernity: The Dynamics of the Management of Osun Sacred Groves Saheed Balogun Amusa Chapter 9: African Sacred Groves and Sustainability Fortune Sibanda Chapter 10: Space, Art, and Religion in Changó, el gran putas Hawwkayoo N. Zoggyie Chapter 11: Islam and Ancient Sacred Places in Hausaland Mukhtar Umar Bunza and Adamu Musa Kotorkoshi Chapter 12: Sacred Space and Time in an African University Oluwasegun Aluko

About the Author :
‘BioDun J. Ogundayo is associate professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Pittsburgh. Julius O. Adekunle is professor of African history at Monmouth University.

Review :
African Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the functional relationship between “space, geography and imagined in relation to African Spirituality.” It is highly commended to scholars and students of religions. African Sacred Spacesis an intriguing and diverse collection of essays. Every chapter is, in its own right, serious and well-researched. This collection of articles makes some significant contributions to our understanding of how the concept of sacred space informs African (or at any rate Nigerian) cultures. “In African Sacred Spaces the authors provide a rich harvest of African and African diaspora sacred spaces as central to the notion of individual and group identities. The volume is unique in that there is something of interest for every reader irrespective of disciplinary specialty.” “African Sacred Spaces analyzes the extraordinary worldview of Africans that various worlds—seen and unseen—converge to birth the interdependence of humans, nature and nurture—thereby revealing the extraordinary uniqueness of ideas that unite men with mountains, women with the moon, and children with the sun. In the indivisible world of the spiritual and physical, the book gives cogency and urgency to the need to emote along a non-Western mode of thinking in order to reform our chaotic world.” “African Sacred Spaces is an interdisciplinary book that probes key issues pertaining to African and African diasporic sacred spaces. Taken together, the twelve chapters in this volume provides a collective understanding of African spirituality in its multi-layered interactions. It is a key resource for those who want a comprehensive book focused on the intersection of African religion, culture, and history.”