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Death and the Left Hand: Islam, Gender, and “Proper” Mandinga Funerary Custom in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Michelle C. Johnson
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Abstract:

This article explores Islam, gender, and “proper” Mandinga funerary “custom” in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal, specifically the contradictions and debates between men and women about Mandinga custom and Islam as they play out in the ritual of shaking with the left hand, wailing at funerals, and visiting healers to investigate the nature of particular deaths. It suggests that far from constituting a “crisis of modernity,” these contradictions and debates have long been central to how Mandinga imagine themselves in a changing world. They have become intensified, however, in the transnational era, in which continuity among identity, place, and death has been ruptured.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , September 2009 , pp. 93 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2009

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