Beyond ‘Fetishism’: Rethinking West African Religion episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 19, 2025 · 9 MIN

Beyond ‘Fetishism’: Rethinking West African Religion

from Mystical Sources of African Traditional Religion

Welcome to today’s episode, “Beyond ‘Fetishism’: Rethinking West African Religion.” For a long time, European writers described African religions with words like “primitive,” “savage,” and “fetishism.” Those labels did not just misunderstand African faiths; they distorted them. In this episode, the focus is on how one mid‑twentieth‑century scholar, E. Geoffrey Parrinder, challenged these ideas in his study West African Religion, and what his work reveals about the richness and complexity of West African spiritual life.

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Beyond ‘Fetishism’: Rethinking West African Religion

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This episode is 9 minutes long.

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This episode was published on December 19, 2025.

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Welcome to today’s episode, “Beyond ‘Fetishism’: Rethinking West African Religion.” For a long time, European writers described African religions with words like “primitive,” “savage,” and “fetishism.” Those labels did not just misunderstand...

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