"Witchcraft and Welfare is a delightful and insightful book,
evocative and well-written, which unpacks the multilayered history
of Puerto Rican folk beliefs and practices convincingly showing not
only how brujeri a makes sense in people's everyday lives, but also
how it is becoming institutionalised as an integral part of
official Puerto Rican society, and indeed how beliefs and practices
of this kind can be complementary, not opposed, to bureaucratic
rationality." -- Anthropos Overall, Witchcraft and Welfare is an
excellent analysis of Puerto Rican Brujeri a and other African
diasporic religions. This book, however, is not only useful for
students and scholars of Puerto Rican or Caribbean culture and
religion. It is also, through its ingenious analysis of the
influences of 21st century globalization on the processes of
syncretization, a window on the macrocosm of future trends in world
religion. -- The Journal of Latin American Anthropology "This book
makes an important addition to the literature on magic and spirits
in the modern world. . . . In comparison with other well-known
anthropological works on magic and modernity, this stands out on
account of its skill at evocation, at getting inside people and
events and not merely using them as examples or 'case studies.'" --
Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
Persecuted as evil during colonial times, considered charlatans
during the nation-building era, Puerto Rican brujos (witch-healers)
today have become spiritual entrepreneurs who advise their clients
not only in consultation with the spirits but also in compliance
with state laws and new economic opportunities. Combiningtrance,
dance, magic, and healing practices with expertise in the workings
of the modern welfare state, they help lawyers win custody suits,
sick employees resolve labor disability claims, single mothers
apply for government housing, or corporation managers maximize
their commercial skills.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork among practicing brujos, this
book presents a masterful history and ethnography of Puerto Rican
brujeri a (witch-healing). Raquel Romberg explores how brujeri a
emerged from a blending of popular Catholicism, Afro-Latin
religions, French Spiritism, and folk Protestantism and also looks
at how it has adapted to changes in state policies and responded to
global flows of ideas and commodities. She demonstrates that, far
from being an exotic or marginal practice in the modern world,
brujeri a has become an invisible yet active partner of consumerism
and welfare capitalism.
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