Empowered objects, powerless subjects: citizenship, religion, and political representation in twentieth-century Cuba

Abstract

[First paragraph]Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940. Alejandra Marina Bronfman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xi + 234 pp. (Paper US$ 19.95)Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity. Christine Ayorinde. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. ix + 283 pp. (Cloth US$ 59.95)In the last ten years, research topics such as race and nation have been privileged areas for the historical and anthropological understanding of Caribbean and Latin American societies. Regarding Cuba in particular, social scientists have dedicated important scholarship to these issues by mapping conceptions of citizenship and political representation, while situating them within a broader debate on the making of the new postcolonial and republican society at the beginning of the twentieth century. By pursuing different aims and following distinct approaches, Alejandra Bronfman and Christine Ayorinde have made contributions to this academic literature. Through divergent theoretical and methodological perspectives, both of their books explore alternative ways of interpreting the making of the nation founded upon a multiple and fluid rhetoric of race.