The Emirate of Kuwait hardly resembles the city-State it was at the start of the 20th century. The discovery of oil in 1938 rapidly transformed the tiny tribal sheikhdom of the Al-Sabah into a modern oil-producing state where, by the early 1980s, citizens were enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world. While much has been written on the reasons why and how the Al-Sabah became a ruling dynasty, little is known about the nature of their authority and its relationship to Kuwait's social structure. Rivka Azoulay shows how despite the rapidity of change in the oil-rich, family-run emirate, it is the pre-oil dynamics of social and political life that dictate how society operates. The author shows that Kuwait's ambitious diversification plans to reduce oil-dependence by 2035 require a renegotiation of the regime's pact with society, which threatens the pre-oil alliances upon which the Al-Sabah's regime has been built.

In a study that challenges familiar Western modes of thought, Jacob K. Olupona focuses on one of the most important religious centers in Africa and in the world: the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife in southwest Nigeria. The spread of Yoruba traditions in the African diaspora has come to define the cultural identity of millions of black and white people in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and the United States. Seen through the eyes of a native, this first comprehensive study of the spiritual and cultural center of the Yoruba religion tells how the city went from great prominence to near obliteration and then rose again as a contemporary city of gods. Throughout, Olupona corroborates the indispensable linkages between religion, cosmology, migration, and kinship as espoused in the power of royal lineages, hegemonic state structure, gender, and the Yoruba sense of place, offering the fullest portrait to date of this sacred African city.

Black Elk was one of the greatest religious thinkers produced by native North America, and the Sun Dance the central religious ritual of his Lakota tradition. Beginning with a review of the recent critical work on Black Elk by Paul B. Steinmetz, Julian Rice and Michael K. Steltenkamp, Holler reconstructs the history and development of the Lakota Sun Dance, essential background for understanding Black Elk's thought. His analysis is a comprehsnive study of the dance, which was banned by the government in 1883. Holler shows how Black Elk adapted the dance to the conditions and circumstances of reservation life, reinterpreting it in terms commensurate with Christianity. His firsthand account of the dance associated with Frank Fools Crow at Three Mile Camp near Kyle, South Dakota, shows how the contemporary Sun Dance reflects Black Elk's vision. Holler's book offers a philosophical engagement with native North American religion, carried out in close dialogue with anthropology. Readers who were captivated by John G. Neihardt's gripping portrait of Black Elk in ""Black Elk Speaks"" may be surprised to learn that he was a vital and creative leader until his death in 1950, not the broken, despairing old man made famous by Neihardt. Holler establishes that Black Elk was both a sincere traditionalist and a sincere Christian, seeing the two religious traditions as expressions of the sacred. Students of religion should be stimulated by Holler's interpretation of Black Elk as a creative thinker, rather than a passive informant on his people's past. Those interested in Native Americans, especially the Lakota, should appreciate his authoritative reconstruction of the Sun Dance, which proposes new understandings of this central Lakota religious ritual. The book also includes a glossary of terms.

The Bektashi dervish order is a Sufi Alevite sect found in Anatolia and the Balkans with a strong presence in Albania. In this, his final book, Robert Elsie analyses the Albanian Bektashi and considers their role in the country's history and society. Although much has been written on the Bektashi in Turkey, little has appeared on the Albanian branch of the sect. Robert Elsie considers the history and culture of the Bektashi, analyses writings on the order by early travellers to the region such as Margaret Hasluck and Sir Arthur Evans and provides a comprehensive list of tekkes (convents) and tyrbes (shrines) in Albania and neighbouring countries. Finally he presents a catalogue of notable Albanian Bektashi figures in history and legend. This book provides a complete reference guide to the Bektashi in Albania which will be essential reading for scholars of the Balkans, Islamic sects and Albanian history and culture.

African cults and religions enrich all aspects of Cuba's social, cultural and everyday life, and encompass all ethnic and social groups. Politics, art, and civil events such as weddings, funerals, festivals and carnivals all possess distinctly Afro-Cuban characteristics. Miguel Barnet provides a concise guide to the various traditions and branches of Afro-Cuban religions. He distinguishes between the two most important cult forms - the Regla de Ocha (Santeria), which promotes worship of the Oshira (gods), and the traditional oracles that originated in the old Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, which promote a more animistic worldview. Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves had to recreate their old traditions in their new Caribbean context. As their African heritage collided with Catholicism and with Native American and European traditions, certain African gods and traditions became more prominent while others lost their significance in the new Afro-Cuban culture. This book, the first systematic overview of the syncretization of the gods of African origin with Catholic saints, introduces the reader to a little-known side of Cuban culture.