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.
- Cover
- Contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1. Testing the Waters
- Chapter 2. On Trial
- Chapter 3. A Feast for the Ancestors
- Chapter 4. Going “Outside”
- Chapter 5. On Nai’s Doorstep
- Chapter 6. Under Kala’s House
- Chapter 7. The Sika
- Chapter 8. What Month Is It?
- Chapter 9. The Captain’s “Granddaughter”
- Chapter 10. Upriver
- Chapter 11. At the Ancestor Shrine
- Chapter 12. The Cock’s Balls
- Chapter 13. Nai’s Rivergod
- Chapter 14. Agbago’s Seagod
- Chapter 15. Kala’s Snakegod
- Chapter 16. A Touch of Madness
- Chapter 17. Playing for the Gods
- Chapter 18. A Tree Falls
- Chapter 19. Sickness
- Chapter 20. Death of a Witch
- Chapter 21. Chasing Ghosts
- Chapter 22. Death of a Child
- Chapter 23. Returns
- Chapter 24. Foto
- Chapter 25. Looking at Paper
- Chapter 26. The End of an Era
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index