Saamaka Dreaming

by Richard Price

Overview

When Richard and Sally Price stepped out of the canoe to begin their fieldwork with the Saamaka Maroons of Suriname in 1966, they were met with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion, ambivalence, hostility, and fascination. With their gradual acceptance into the community they undertook the work that would shape their careers and influence the study of African American societies throughout the hemisphere for decades to come. In Saamaka Dreaming they look back on the experience, reflecting on a discipline and a society that are considerably different today. Drawing on thousands of pages of field notes, as well as recordings, file cards, photos, and sketches, the Prices retell and comment on the most intensive fieldwork of their careers, evoke the joys and hardships of building relationships and trust, and outline their personal adaptation to this unfamiliar universe. The book is at once a moving human story, a portrait of a remarkable society, and a thought-provoking revelation about the development of anthropology over the past half-century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822369660
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	08/04/2017
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Richard Price taught for many years at Yale University and Johns Hopkins University and is Professor Emeritus at the College of William and Mary. His numerous prize-winning books include Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination and Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial.

Sally Price has taught in the United States, France, and Brazil and is Professor Emerita at the College of William and Mary. Her studies of the place of “primitive art” in the imaginary of Western viewers include Primitive Art in Civilized Places and Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly. The Prices have coauthored many books, including Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

October 12, 1949

Place of Birth:

Bronx, New York

Education:

B.A., Cornell University, 1971; M.F.A., Columbia University

Table of Contents

Preface  ix
1. Testing the Waters  1
2. On Trial  13
3. A Feast for the Ancestors  28
4. Going "Outside"  34
5. On Nai's Doorstep  40
6. Under Kala's House  51
7. The Sika  58
8. What Month It It?  62
9. The Captain's "Granddaughter"  71
10. Upriver  74
11. At the Ancestor Shrine  86
12. The Cock's Balls  100
13. Nai's Rivergod  103
14. Agbago's Seagod  108
15. Kala's Snakegod  114
16. A Touch of Madness  123
17. Playing for the Gods  132
18. A Tree Falls  139
19. Sickness  144
20. Death of a Witch  155
21. Chasing Ghosts  173
22. Death of a Child  179
23. Returns  190
24. Foto  202
25. Looking at Paper  205
26. The End of an Era  215
Notes  231
Bibliography  243
Index  247

What People are Saying About This

Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy - John Collins

“With their keen attunements, customary honesty, ethnographic verve, spare poetics, and dashes of hubris and humor, Richard and Sally Price offer an extraordinary meditation on life, anthropology, and their encounter with the Saamakas. Saamaka Dreaming is a compelling text that astounds in its richness.”

Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary - George E. Marcus

“Richard and Sally Price’s elegiac account of their time living among the Saamakas of Suriname in the 1960s is wholly engrossing, and of the very highest narrative quality. I can see, smell, and feel everything they describe. The Prices have never been fresher or more readable as literature.”

Editorial Reviews

"A complex ethnographic narrative . . .  a dynamic story with a cast of Saamaka characters. . . . Though the book is published over fifty years after the initial research, it still shows a candor and eye for painstaking detail of moment to moment happenings in daily life."

Anthropos - Cheryl White

"This inspiring book combines ethnography with a brilliantly written autobiographical account. . . .  The way in which Richard Price and Sally Price position themselves as the main protagonists of their interlocutions with Saamaka villagers, is precisely what makes the book so rich."  

New West Indian Guide - Olivia M. Gomes da Cunha

"Beautifully written, this book presents a satisfying commentary on the anthropological enterprise, to be enjoyed by a wide variety of readers. Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries."
 

Choice - P. Passariello

"A retrospective on a life’s work, Saamaka Dreaming stands alone as an introduction to understanding social memory in the black diaspora via ethnographic practice. But it also shows us how that memory can shape political engagement in the present premised on what we might call the hopes—or dreams—of a better future that anthropologists can also help create."

American Ethnologist - Sarah E. Vaughn

"This is an inspiring narrative on Saamaka Maroons lifestyle changes through half a century, on changes from an anthropological perspective on these people, as well as the development of anthropology as a science and the impact that a researcher can make. It is not only a great source to learn about Saamaka culture but also a great narrative to read—it is literary anthropology at its best."

Anthropological Notebooks - Asnate Morozova

With their keen attunements, customary honesty, ethnographic verve, spare poetics, and dashes of hubris and humor, Richard and Sally Price offer an extraordinary meditation on life, anthropology, and their encounter with the Saamakas. Saamaka Dreaming is a compelling text that astounds in its richness.

Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy - John Collins

Richard and Sally Price’s elegiac account of their time living among the Saamakas of Suriname in the 1960s is wholly engrossing, and of the very highest narrative quality. I can see, smell, and feel everything they describe. The Prices have never been fresher or more readable as literature.

Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary - George E. Marcus