Silva focuses on important link for Angolan refugees

Sonia Silva, assistant professor of anthropology, has published a new book titled Along an African Border: Angolan Refugees and Their Divination Baskets (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 

Silva examines how Angolan refugees living in Zambia use divination baskets to cope with daily life in a new land. The divination baskets of south Central Africa are woven for a specific purpose. Known as lipele, the baskets contain 60 or so small articles, each with its own name and symbolic meaning. For the Luvale and related peoples, the lipele is more than a container of souvenirs; it is a tool, a source of crucial information from the ancestral past and advice for the future.

Silva documents the special processes involved in weaving the baskets and transforming them into oracles. A total of 37 illustrations accompany her text.

Philip M. Peek of Drew University calls the book "A thought-provoking study of the dynamics of divination in a refugee population seeking stability in a disrupted world through an ancient and effective 'way of knowing'. Using the frame of a divination basket's life history from birth to adulthood, Silva provides a rich contextual study of the various paths to understanding presented by the core cultural institution of divination: material culture and art, economic theory, gender relations, the nature of knowledge, ethnography, jurisprudence, and personhood."

A member of the Skidmore faculty since 2007, Silva's research and teaching interests include sub-Saharan Africa with emphasis on ritual and religion; art and material culture; social memory; and forced displacement and refugees. She earned a B.A. degree at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Indiana University, Bloomington.

For more information on Along an African Border, please check the publisher's Web site.