Kristina Wirtz. 2007. Ritual, Discourse, And Community in Cuban Santeria: Speaking a Sacred World

Kristina Wirtz. 2007. Ritual, Discourse, and Community in Cuban Santeria: Speaking a Sacred World. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 252 pp. ISBN: 0-8130-3064-1. Wirtz's lucid and intimate ethnography of Santeria practice in Santiago de Cuba addresses classic debates in the study of religions and African-derived cultures in the Americas. The book offers illuminating, empirically-grounded answers to such fundamental questions as: how do religious communities establish their boundaries and reproduce themselves?; and, how do certain practices come to be recognized as religious at all? A linguistic anthropologist, Wirtz underscores the centrality of discourse to the differentiation of Santeria within a "popular religious complex" consisting of Palo Monte, Spiritism, Abakua and a variety of other practices. Wirtz notes that despite the "practical blending" that characterizes the pursuit of Santeria, sharp moral and rhetorical distinctions ("discursive polarization") between practices prevail.