Materiality, affection, personhood: on sacrifice in the worship of the goddess Kali in Guyana
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- Catalogue identifier
- kali-0066
- Alternate titles and import identifiers
- KALI-0066; doi:10.1590/1809-43412020v17d506
- Author or attribution
- Mello, Marcelo Moura
- Record type
- Article
- Language
- English
- Date / edition
- 2020
- Source / repository
- Associação Brasileira de Antropologia / Vibrant
- Access
- Open access
- Subjects
- Kali Library Research Catalogue; Academic Research and Peer-Reviewed Articles; Contemporary Worship and Living Traditions
Description and curator notes
Based on fieldwork among Indo-Guyanese devotees, this article examines sacrifice as a process involving substances, bodies, divine manifestations, and interpersonal relations. Mello follows the movements and transformations of materials used in Kali worship to show how religious personhood and the presence of deities are experienced and discussed. The study situates these practices within the descendants of Indian indentured migrants without reducing them to incomplete survivals of an Indian original. It is a major source for Caribbean Kali Puja, healing, embodiment, and the interpretive problems created when sacrifice is treated only as killing or exchange.
KALI-0066 — Kali Library Research Catalogue.
Access and reliability assessments below are supplied by the curator's 4–5 November 2026 research release, not a new independent verification.
Author / attribution: Mello, Marcelo Moura
Publication: Associação Brasileira de Antropologia / Vibrant · 2020
Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 17, e17506 (2020)
Format / language: Journal article · English
Identifier: doi:10.1590/1809-43412020v17d506
Kali relevance: Direct ethnography of Kali worship in Guyana.
Context: Guyana; Indian diaspora; sacrifice, healing, and personhood.
Subjects: Academic Research and Peer-Reviewed Articles; Contemporary Worship and Living Traditions
Evidence / reliability: Peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Access / rights: Complete text checked 2026-11-04. Freely readable from the stated institutional or original publication host. Copyright retained; no general republication licence established. Link to the work rather than copying it.
Source and alternate access links:
Read complete text: https://www.scielo.br/j/vb/a/xfzTcvJh6DJNNkYnf99jqwy/?format=html&lang=en&ilang=en
Source access
Read or locate the original source at Associação Brasileira de Antropologia / Vibrant
Rights and reading conditions
Complete text checked 2026-11-04. Freely readable from the stated institutional or original publication host. Copyright retained; no general republication licence established. Link to the work rather than copying it. This library links to the source and does not reproduce its full text.
Citation
Mello, Marcelo Moura. Materiality, affection, personhood: on sacrifice in the worship of the goddess Kali in Guyana. Associação Brasileira de Antropologia / Vibrant · 2020.
This page supplies catalogue metadata and links. It does not reproduce the underlying source text. Historical, religious, healing and interpretive claims belong to the cited sources, not to an independent verification by this catalogue.