Beyond ‘Fetishism’: Rethinking West African 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.