Mia D. Alexander-Snow

It is important to keep in mind when learning about "culture," particularly if it is
outside your own cultural parameters, that "experience" is culturally defined. Thus
"as life circumstances change, and as people attempt to conduct the same sorts of
activities under these new circumstances, their cultural understandings will affect
the way they both view their circumstances and experiences" ( Roseberry, 1994,
p. 43). Thus, culture becomes defined in experiential communality--the sharing of
particular experiences by a group of people.

The anthropological theories of cultural ecology and historical political
economy primarily look at the relationship between culture and experience.
Cultural ecology is the study of the relationship of culture to the natural
environment. Two distinct phenomena are involved: "the physical environment
itself, and the cultural arrangements by which the environment is exploited,
including technology and economic organization" ( Hatch, 1973, pp. 114-115).
Historical political economy adds another dimension to cultural ecology by
emphasizing the role that inequality and domination of power have on cultural
meanings and expressions ( Roseberry, 1994).

Borrowing from the cultural ecology and historical political economy
perspectives, I argue that the ecological and geographic factors of preslavery and
slavery America encouraged the retention, rather than the destruction, of the
traditional African value system or philosophical orientations--"one with nature"
and "survival of the people"--and that the value system is embodied in the
experiential communality of African Americans in contemporary Black America.

Traditional Africa, from which the vast majority of slaves were taken, was a
deeply religious society. The traditional African peoples believed that religion was

-23-