Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast

The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast offers an in-depth analysis of an iconoclastic religious movement initiated by a Muslim preacher among coastal Baga farmers in the French colonial period. With an ethnographic approach that listens as carefully to those who suffered iconoclastic violence as to those who wanted to 'get rid of custom', this work discusses the extent to which iconoclasm produces a rupture of religious knowledge and identity, and analyses its relevance in the making of modern nations and citizens. The book will appeal to a wide range of readers, particularly those with an interest in the anthropology of religion, iconoclasm, the history and anthropology of West Africa, or the politics of heritage. *This book examines the historical complexity of the interface between Islam, tradition religions and Christianity in west Africa, and how this interface links with dramatic political changes *It gives a detailed ethnographic approach through which such complex history is unveiled and analysed *It presents a dialogue between the field findings, a long tradition of anthropology and the most recent anthropological debates

Ramon Sarro is Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. He read social anthropology at University College London PhD 1999). In 2000-2002 he was the Ioma Evans-Pritchard Research Fellow at Saint Anne's College, Oxford. Since 1992 he has conducted extensive field research in Guinea. His other works include Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches (with David Berliner). He is based at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, where he leads an EU project on African Christianities in Europe.