Where Men are Wives and Mothers Rule: Santeria Ritual Practices and their Gender Implications

by Mary Ann Clark
WMAWCoverWhile much theological thinking assumes a normative male perspective, this study demonstrates how our ideas of religious beliefs and practices change in the light of gender awareness. Exploring the philosophy and practices of the Orisha traditions (principally the Afro-Cuban religious complex known as Santeria) as they have developed in the Americas, Clark suggests that, unlike many mainstream religions, these traditions exist within a female-normative system in which all practitioners are expected to take up female gender roles.

Examining the practices of divination, initiation, possession trance, sacrifice, and witchcraft in successive chapters, Clark explores the ways in which Santeria beliefs and practices deviate from the historical assumptions about and the conceptual implications of these basic concepts. After tracing the standard definition of each term and describing its place within the worldview of Santeria, Clark teases out its gender implications to argue for the female-normative nature of the religion. By arguing that gender is a fluid concept within Santeria, Clark suggests that the qualities of being female form the ideal of Santeria religious practice for both men and women. In addition, she asserts that the Ifa cult organized around the male-only priesthood of the babalawo is an independent tradition that has been incompletely assimilated into the larger Santeria complex.

Based on field research done in several Santeria communities, Clark's study provides a detailed overview of the Santeria and Yoruba traditional beliefs and practices. By clarifying a wide range of feminist- and gender-related themes in Cuban Santería, she challenges the traditional gendering of the religion and provides an account that will be of significant interest to students of Caribbean studies and African religions, as well as to scholars in anthropology, sociology, and gender studies.

Details

Size: 208 pages     6x9
Cloth: $59.95   ISBN: 0-8130-2834-5
University Press of Florida
Series: The History of African-American Religions

What People are Saying

"Mary Ann Clark's pioneering latest work, Where Men are Wives and Mothers Rule, establishes a landmark in the Academic Fields of Religious Studies and Gender Studies by providing the first book-length treatise devoted exclusively to the role of women in Afro-Cuban Lukumi--a religion known to most outsiders as "Santeria."… In the spirit of the Lukumi Cuba experience, Clark distills knowledge of various theoretical and disciplinary traditions and creolizes them into a new discursive formation that allows her to advance the idea that Lukumi is a female-normative system in which men and women are compelled to assume female gender roles. --Roberto Strongman, Caribbean Studies, 35:1 (Jan-Jun 2007)

"In this well-written and suggestive theoretical study, Mary Ann Clark intends to show that Santeria is a female normatlve system in which all practitioners, regardless of their own understandings of sex, gender, or sexual orientation, are expected to take up fen1ale roles. …  This is a fine study, clearly and cleanly written, suggestive, and in general ethnographically accurate. Mary Ann Clark certainly has succeeded in her maIn Intentions regarding gender."--George Brandon, Journal of Religion, 87:3, Jul-Sep 2007.

"One of the strengths of this book is that in order to explore the ways in which Orisha structures valorize the female over the male in their philosophy and practice, Clark provides a philosophical and historical overview of gender's definitions and uses. By studying gender as a linguistic term, as performance, as a constitutive element of social relationships, and as a way in which to signify relations of power, and by then exploring the role of gender in Yoruban culture specifically, the author offers a compelling framework to discuss gender fluidity in Orisha practices. While she does not ignore the existence of certain gender-based limitations in attaining full authority in Orisha practices and the cultural forces responsible for these restrictions, the author convincingly dem0nstrates that Santeria proper is both female-oriented and female-normative."--Ivette Romero-Cesareo, Journal of Church and State, 49:1, Winter, 2007.

Clark shines in fleshing out the contours of her rnain argument and forging connections between ceremonial and linguistic practices, as in her masterful, nuanced elaboration ofthe ways in which the term iyawo ("wife") is used with reference to Santeria priests. Her apologia -- in the technical sense of a formal defense -- is conscientiously crafted with impressive insight into the rationales for ritual protocols from an emic perspective, for instance, when dem0nstrating that animal sacrifice does not operate in order to undergird patriarchal control." --Elizabeth Ann Perez, New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 80:3 & 4, 2006.

"This book does a service to the scholarship of Afro-Cuban religion. Breakiwth the the parochial tendencies in the literature, Clark shows how  an analytically astute engagement iwth Afro-Cuban religion can have a purchase on much wider theoretical concerns, in this case the role of gender in religious experience. Most compellingly, Clark brings the detail of santeria wroship to bear not only on familiar social scientific debates about gender, but also on older theological concerns with the relationship between humanity and divinity."--Martin Holbraad,University College London, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol 38, 2006.

Clark's work is current, comprehensive, useful, informative,and thorough in its detail on many aspects of the religious practice,and thus it will gain a well deserved place within the rapidly increasing corpus of literature on this religion as it is practiced in North America."--Christine Ayorinde, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 31:62, 2006.

"A brilliant book and a significant contribution to Caribbean religions which explores issues of gender through the lenses of the religious beliefs and practices of Santería. . . . this book is a must for students of African and Caribbean religions and culture."--Leslie G. Desmangles, Trinity College

"Very well written book that deals with historical issues in Cuba and the United States which have lead to divisions between Santo and Ifa, between men and women and between Africa and Brazil, Cuba and the US. Exceptionally scholarly and insightful."--Ifalade, Raymond Crawford, New York

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction Download pdf file.Read an Excerpt
2. Gender
3. Destiny and Divination
4. Initiation
5. Possession Phenomena
6. Sacrifice and Violence
7.Witchcraft
8. Conclusion: A Distinction without a Difference
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography

About the Author

Dr. Mary Ann Clark is an independent scholar and adjunct professor in the University of Houston system where she has taught Introduction to Religious Studies, Basic Texts I (Western Tradition to Renaissance), Basic Texts III (Asia, Africa and Native America) and Peoples of Africa. She received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University, Houston, Texas, in 1999. She was a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Center for Latin American Studies and the Religion in the Americans Program at the University of Florida. Spring 2003. She is currently serving as the coordinator for the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion. (Click for complete vita).

Other Works

Mary Ann Clark
Comments to: drmaryann49 at mac dot com
Revised: March 2007
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