Afterword: Descent and Alliance in Afro-Atlantic Anthropology

The afrerword to this special issue discusses the individual contributions in light of recent paradigm shifts in the study of the Afro-Atlantic world. In particular, it aims to highlight how a previous obsession with Old World origins in the study of African American cultural formation has given way to a more hisroricist concentration on the gradual emergence of patterns of trans-atlantic "alliances" in the forging of those cultural patterns we nowadays regard as Afro-Atlantic.