Special Issue: Gender and Power in a Diverse Religious Landscape

This special issue of the journal Religion and Gender consists of four ethnographic and arts-based articles investigating gender and sexuality in marginalised, unorthodox or politically radical religious communities in the contemporary Caribbean. The authors occupy varying ‘insider’ positions in these communities as Caribbean academics and artists: they write as co-practitioners, mediums, apprentices of ritual specialists, or family members of radical religious activists. Their ethnographic and visual arts methods have produced rich and intimate knowledge of working class theology and ritual practice from the vantage point of scholars living and working in the Global South, an invaluable but regrettably rare perspective in religious studies, theological, or anthropological debates on gender and religion. With its focus on present-day Obeah, Kali Mai Puja, pilgrimages to a black Madonna, and radical Islam, the special issue charts under-researched areas and theoretical questions in the diverse religious landscape of the Caribbean.