For many Africanist historians, traditional religion is simply a starting                  point for measuring the historic impact of Christianity and Islam. In Tongnaab, Jean                  Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by                  tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine,                  Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains                  of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman                  and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and                  practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events                  in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist                  agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of                  ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern                  nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at                  the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade                  to the tourist trade.

Tongnaab: The History of a West African God PDF

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