Pathology And Identity: The Work Of Mother Earth In Trinidad

The first new religion in the Caribbean since Rastafari, the Earth People draw on local strategies of resistance and on West African sources to assert a renascent African identity and celebrate female creativity. They argue that Black people are the guardians of a natural environment, which is constantly under threat from European science. Roland Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticises received ideas about pathology and creativity, and on the development of religions. While the founder's ideas emerged in her experience of cerebral disease, Dr Littlewood shows how the Earth People appropriate such radical personal experiences to build a community. Naturalistic and personalistic interpretations of human life are both valid and necessary. Neither can be reduced to the other. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Editors: Ernest Gellner, Jack Goody, Stephen Gudeman, Michael Herzfeld, Jonathan Parry 90 PATHOLOGY AND IDENTITY A list of books in the series will be found at the end of the volume PATHOLOGY AND IDENTITY The work of Mother Earth in Trinidad ROLAND LITTLEWOOD University College London CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521384278 © Cambridge University Press 1993 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1993 This digitally printed first paperback version 2006 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Littlewood, Roland. Pathology and identity: the work of Mother Earth in Trinidad / Roland Littlewood. p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 38427 3 1. Earth People (Cult). 2. Mother Earth - Mental health. 3. Mentally ill - Religious life - Case studies. 4. Genius and mental illness - Case studies. 5. Psychology, Religious - Trinidad. I. Title. II. Series. BL2566.T7L58 1992 299f.67-dc20 92-18251 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-38427-8 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-38427-3 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-02615-4 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-02615-6 paperback 4 How can we know the dancer from the dance?' W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems, Macmillan, New York, 1950 Contents List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements A note on idiom 1 The coming of the Earth People page x xi xviii xxi 1 2 A certain degree of instability 13 3 Madness, vice and tabanka: popular knowledge of psychopathology in Trinidad 33 4 Mother Earth and the psychiatrists 59 5 Putting Out The Life 79 6 Your ancestor is you: Africa in a new world 86 7 Nature and the millennium 112 8 Incest: the naked eart