Pathology and Identity: The Work of Mother Earth in Trinidad (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 90)

The Earth People of Trinidad draw on Yoruba sources to assert the particular power of female creativity. This first new Caribbean religion since Rastafari is led by a woman, Mother Earth, whose ideas emerged from her experience of a cerebral disease. The author, Roland Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, offers a nonreductionist view on the relationship between pathology and creativity, between the natural and the human sciences. 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, criticizes 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, and neither can be reduced to the other. 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. Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticises received ideas about about pathology and creativity, and on the development of religions. While the founder's ideas emerged in his experience of cerebral disease, Dr. Littlewood shows how the Earth People appropriate such radical personal experiences to build a community. -- Back cover The Earth People draw on West African traditions and assert the particular power of female creativity. Their leader is Mother Earth, whose faith emerged following a cerebral disease. This 1993 account of a new West Indian religion examines how social patterns may emerge from radical personal experiences. Few people in the West Indian island of Trinidad have not heard of the Earth People.