Download e-book for iPad: A Year in White: Cultural Newcomers to Lukumi and Santería by C. Lynn Carr

In the Afro-Cuban Lukumi non secular tradition—more usually recognized within the usa as Santería—entrants into the priesthood endure a rare fifty-three-week initiation interval. in this time, those novices—called iyawo—endure a number of prohibitions, together with so much significantly donning completely white clothing. In A 12 months in White, sociologist C. Lynn Carr, who underwent this initiation herself, opens a window in this outstanding year-long spiritual transformation.
 
In her intimate research of the “year in white,” Carr attracts on fifty-two in-depth interviews with different contributors, a web survey of approximately 2 hundred others, and nearly a decade of her personal ethnographic fieldwork, accumulating tales that permit us to determine how cultural novices and natives notion, felt, and acted with reference to their initiation. She files how, throughout the iyawo yr, the ritual slowly transforms the initiate’s identification. For the 1st 3 months, for example, the iyawo would possibly not use a replicate, even to shave, and needs to consume all nutrients whereas seated on a mat at the ground utilizing just a spoon and their very own set of dishes. in the course of the whole yr, the iyawo loses their identify and is just addressed as “iyawo” via kin and friends.
 
Carr additionally indicates that this year-long non secular ritual—which is conducted while the iyawo is going approximately day-by-day life—offers new perception into faith in most cases, suggesting that the sacred isn't separable from the profane and certainly that faith stocks an ongoing dynamic dating with the realities of way of life. spiritual expression occurs at domestic, at the streets, at paintings and school.
 
supplying perception not just into Santería but additionally into faith extra quite often, A yr in White makes an enormous contribution to our figuring out of complicated, dynamic spiritual landscapes in multicultural, pluralist societies and the way they inhabit our day-by-day lives.