Ebook: Africa's Ogun: Old World and New

OGUN—the ancient African god of iron, war, and hunting—is worshipped by more than 40 million adherents in West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Africa’s Ogun is a rich interdisciplinary collection that draws on field research from several continents to reveal Ogun’s dramatic power and enduring appeal. Five new essays, focusing mainly on Ogun worship in the new world, enhance this landmark introduction to Yoruba religion.

This enlarged version of Africa’s Ogun comes at a special moment—a time when the flow of ideas and peoples from one continent to another is producing a crescendo of reinvented traditions, novel representations, and fresh ideas about how the world has been and, perhaps more important, should be making itself.

The second edition captures the spirit of these accelerated processes with five new essays and a new introduction—all centered on Ogun, and for the most part written to portray his new meanings and expressions at their creative peak. The impetus for a larger volume emerged from the pleas of critics and readers for more descriptions and analyses of Ogun’s late-twentieth-century florescence and for more insights into Ogun’s nineteenth-century manifestations in West Africa.

SANDRA T. BARNES is Professor of Anthropology and Director of African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is author of 'Patrons and Power: Creating a Political Community in Metropolitan Lagos'.