© Columbia University Press
Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymara, and the "New Evangelization"
Paper, 376 pages, 26 photos, 5 maps, 2 figures
ISBN: 978-0-231-13069-1
$30.50
/ £18.00
November, 2004
Cloth, 376 pages, 26 photos, 5 maps, 2 figures
ISBN: 978-0-231-13068-4
$78.50
/ £46.00
"A detailed and encompassing discussion." — Emma Cervone, Current Anthropology
"Catechizing Culture is a richly textured and far-reaching ethnographic analysis of what it means to study locality in an age of globalization and transnational linkages.[Orta]succeeds in his endeavor, producing a sensitive reading of subjects whom ethnographers once viewed as unsavory missionaries and catechists . . . highly illuminating." — Joanne Rappaport, Georgetown University
"What happens when the Catholic church in Bolivia reverses itself after 450 years and, in a policy move called 'theology of inculturation,' not only hands over missionary duties to Aymara catechists, but trains them to foster and revive, rather than to stamp out, sacrifical rites and 'native' shamanic practices? In this ambitious and innovative dual ethnography of missionizing priests and catechists and missionized Aymara communities, Orta sets a new standard for the study of both transnational process and the production of local worlds, tying the two together through a subtle analysis of embodied subjectivity and personhood. In Catechizing Culture, cutting-edge theory meets lively ethnographic narrative, and the reader is witness to the latest twists in the making of millennial Andean societies." — Thomas A. Abercrombie, associate professor, anthropology, New York University