Paper short abstract:

The ethnography of a marine storm will allow to accompany the overlapping of ecological and ritual transgression in an urban African context. It also will allow to suggest that traditional ritual specialist can embrace an emerging ecological engagement.

Paper long abstract:

Formerly, among the kimbundu-speaking fishermen of Luanda (Angola), the good relationship between humans and the sea was insured by periodic food offering by humans that the sea rewarded through the availability of fish. In the contemporary era, the combined effect of the abandon of ritual routines and pollution and urbanization of maritime areas broke this former relation. The transgression of ritual and ecological orthopraxis translated into the reaction of the sea under the form of marine storms. These catastrophic events became the paradigmatic relation between humans and the sea in the contemporary era. The ethnography of a marine storms will illustrate how much the religious representations are subject to the history and more specifically to the ecological degradation that characterizes the contemporary era. It will also allow to suggest that traditional ritual specialist can embrace an emerging ecological engagement.