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African Languages and Literatures in the 21st Century
by Esther Mukewa Lisanza Leonard MuakaThis edited book examines the crucial role still played by African languages in pedagogy and literatures in the 21st century, generating insights into how they effectively serve cultural needs across the African continent and beyond. Boldly positioning African languages as key resources in the 21st century, chapters focus on themes such as language revolt by marginalized groups at grassroots level, the experience of American students learning African languages, female empowerment through the use of African languages in music, film and literary works, and immigration issues. The contributions are written by scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics, and the book will be of interest to students and scholars in these and related areas.
The African Metropolis: Struggles over Urban Space, Citizenship, and Rights to the City (Global Africa)
by Toyin Falola Bisola FalolaOn a planet where urbanization is rapidly expanding, nowhere is the growth more pronounced than in cities of the global South, and in particular, Africa. African metropolises are harbingers of the urban challenges that lie ahead as societies grapple with the fractured social, economic, and political relations forming within these new, often mega, cities. The African Metropolis integrates geographical and historical perspectives to examine how processes of segregation, marginalization, resilience, and resistance are shaping cities across Africa, spanning from Nigeria and Ghana to Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The chapters pay particular attention to the voices and daily realities of those most vulnerable to urban transformations, and to questions such as: Who governs? Who should the city serve? Who has a right to the city? And how can the built spaces and contentious legacies of colonialism and prior development regimes be inclusively reconstructed? In addition to highlighting critical contemporary debates, the book furthers our ability to examine the transformations taking place in cities of the global South, providing detailed accounts of local complexities while also generating insights that can scale up and across to similar cities around the world. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African Studies, urban development and human geography.
African Mythology, Femininity, and Maternity (Pan-African Psychologies)
by Ismahan Soukeyna DiopThis book explores feminine archetypes and mythological figures in African and European traditions with an underlying goal of describing the foundations of social status for women. The author provides a rich corpus of mythology and tales to illustrate aspects of female and mother-daughter relationships. Diop analyzes the symbolic aspects of maternity and femininity, describing the social meaning of the matrix, breasts, and breastfeeding. A retrospective of female characters in African literature brings an interesting approach to explore the figures of femininity and maternity in society. After an extensive analysis of African mythology and tales, the author proposes a way to integrate them in the clinical psychotherapy as a projective material. The analysis of clinical cases offers an example of how this material can be used in therapy with women from African descent.
The African Origins of Rhetoric (African Studies)
by Cecil BlakeThrough a critical analysis of ancient African texts that predate Greco-Roman treatises Cecil Blake revisits the roots of rhetorical theory and challenges what is often advanced as the "darkness metaphor" -- the rhetorical construction of Africa and Africans. Blake offers a thorough examination of Ptah-hotep and core African ethical principles (Maat) and engages rhetorical scholarship within the wider discourse of African development. In so doing, he establishes a direct relationship between rhetoric and development studies in non-western societies and highlights the prospect for applying such principles to ameliorating the development malaise of the continent.
African Philosophical Illuminations
by John MurungiThe illumination of African philosophy offered in this volume leads to the illumination of philosophy in general. Illuminating arises as an essential task of philosophy, whether African or not. What is illuminated is not already there, but is constituted at the moment of illumination. This book invites the reader to participate in the illuminating work of philosophy and necessarily, thereby, to contribute to his or her own self-constituting self-illumination. Although the focus is on African philosophy, the book also bridges the gap between African philosophy and other branches. Today more than ever, a bridging philosophy is called for, and this book helps to meet that need. This book poses philosophical questions such as who is an African and what Africa is, and seeks philosophical answers. In doing so, it contributes to the ongoing discourse on African philosophy. It addresses such issues as the African grounding of philosophy, the difference between African and Black philosophy, the African body, African art as expressed in and by Chiwara, the plight of African trees as the plight of Africans, and the symbolic meaning of Robben Island.
African Philosophy of Education Reconsidered: On being human (New Directions In The Philosophy Of Education Ser.)
by Yusef WaghidMuch of the literature on the African philosophy of education juxtaposes two philosophical strands as mutually exclusive entities; traditional ethnophilosophy on the one hand, and �scientific� African philosophy on the other. While traditional ethnophilosophy is associated with the cultural artefacts, narratives, folklore and music of Africa�s peop
African Pilgrimage: Ritual Travel in South Africa's Christianity of Zion
by Retief MüllerYears after the end of Apartheid South Africa remains racially polarized and socially divided. In this context pilgrimage and travelling rituals serve to help those who often find themselves at the bottom end of the social ladder to make sense of their world. This book describes a South Africa that is made up of a number of different fragmented worlds. The focus is on the Zion Christian Church, one of the largest religious movements in southern Africa, and a good example of indigenized African Christianity. Pilgrimage plays an important role in reintegrating some of those fragmented worlds into something approaching wholeness. This book tells the story of how the enduring ritual of pilgrimage is transforming African religion, along with the lives of ordinary South Africans.
African Radio and Minority Languages: Participation and Representation (Routledge African Media, Culture and Communication Studies)
by null Limukani MatheWithin Africa, radio provides an important platform for accommodating diverse linguistic groups and enabling speakers to express themselves in their own local languages. This book investigates how radio broadcasting across the continent provides a platform for cultural participation and the representation of minority language speakers in a contested public sphere. In African media, a fierce contest wages for representation and participation, in which majority languages often emerge at the exclusion of minority ethnolinguistic groups. This book considers the important role that radio can play in broadcasting in minority languages. Drawing on in-depth original analysis, ethnographic observation and interviews with minority language radio hosts and guests from across South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Kenya, this book considers to what extent African radio is accommodative of minority languages and what the challenges and prospects are for this. Ultimately, the book argues that radio’s three-tier system of broadcasting through analogue and digital radio leaves the medium of radio particularly well placed to provide equal access for ethnolinguistic groups in Africa.This ambitious and broad-ranging study will be an essential read for scholars and students of media studies and sociolinguistics in Africa.
African Roots, Brazilian Rites
by Cheryl SterlingThis text explores how Afro-Brazilians define their Africanness through Candomblé and Quilombo models, and construct paradigms of blackness with influences from US-based perspectives, through the vectors of public rituals, carnival, drama, poetry, and hip hop.
African Societies: The Changing Sociological Landscape
by R. SooryamoorthyThis book addresses a notable gap in African sociological knowledge by leveraging extensive empirical data covering all 54 African countries and drawing on historical insights from across the continent. Offering a nuanced understanding of African society, it signifies an unprecedented endeavour committed to unravelling the intricate tapestry of African society. The analysis presented in the book goes into the dynamic evolution of sociological topics, their interconnections with African knowledge, the identification of contemporary themes, methodological diversity, and contemporary challenges and issues of indigenisation, decolonisation, and promoting an Africa-centered sociology.
African Studies: Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania
by Emma HunterPolitical Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania is a study of the interplay of vernacular and global languages of politics in the era of decolonization in Africa. Decolonization is often understood as a moment when Western forms of political order were imposed on non-Western societies, but this book draws attention instead to debates over universal questions about the nature of politics, concept of freedom and the meaning of citizenship. These debates generated political narratives that were formed in dialogue with both global discourses and local political arguments. The United Nations Trusteeship Territory of Tanganyika, now mainland Tanzania, serves as a compelling example of these processes. Starting in 1945 and culminating with the Arusha Declaration of 1967, Emma Hunter explores political argument in Tanzania's public sphere to show how political narratives succeeded when they managed to combine promises of freedom with new forms of belonging at local and national level.
The African Texans
by Alwyn BarrImmigrants of African descent have come to Texas in waves—first as free blacks seeking economic and social opportunity under the Spanish and Mexican governments, then as enslaved people who came with settlers from the deep South. Then after the Civil War, a new wave of immigration began. In The African Texans, author Alwyn Barr considers each era, giving readers a clear sense of the challenges that faced African Texans and the social and cultural contributions that they have made in the Lone Star State. With wonderful photographs and first-hand accounts, this book expands readers’ understanding of African American history in Texas. Special features include · 59 illustrations · 12 biographical sketches · excerpts from newspaper articles · excerpts from court rulings The African Texans is part of a five-volume set from the Institute of Texan Cultures. The entire set, entitled Texans All, explores the social and cultural contributions made by five distinctive cultural groups that already existed in Texas prior to its statehood or that came to Texas in the early twentieth century: The Indian Texans, The Mexican Texans, The European Texans, The African Texans, and The Asian Texans.
African Womanhood and Incontinent Bodies: Kenyan Women with Vaginal Fistulas
by Kathomi GatwiriThis book reveals the structures of poverty, power, patriarchy and imperialistic health policies that underpin what the World Health Organization calls the “hidden disease” of vaginal fistulas in Africa. By employing critical feminist and post-colonial perspectives, it shows how “leaking black female bodies” are constructed, ranked, stratified and marginalised in global maternal health care, and explains why women in Africa are at risk of developing vaginal fistulas and then having adequate treatment delayed or denied. Drawing on face-to-face, in-depth interviews with 30 Kenyan women, it paints a rare social portrait of the heartbreaking challenges for Kenyan women living with this most profound gender-related health issue – an experience of shame, taboo and abjection with severe implications for women’s wellbeing, health and sexuality. In absolutely groundbreaking depth, this book shows why research on vaginal fistulas must incorporate feminist understandings of bodily experience to inform future practices and knowledge.
African Women: Three Generations
by Mark Mathabane"This gripping saga by the author of Kaffir Boy presents a truthful, passionate, and illuminative biography of his great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother in South Africa. Mathabane vividly describes the shocking, heartbreaking stories of each generation of women as they struggle for independent incomes to support themselves and their children; while resisting apartheid, they must also resist the traditions imposed by their own society and the oppresion imposed by their men. The stories are an inspiration and tribute to millions of women worldwide in similar conditions. A thought-provoking book that is sure to deliver a strong message all who read it."--From Libary Journal
African Youth Languages: New Media, Performing Arts And Sociolinguistic Development
by Ellen Hurst-Harosh Fridah Kanana ErastusThis book showcases current research on language in new media, the performing arts and music in Africa, emphasising the role that youth play in language change and development. The authors demonstrate how the efforts of young people to throw off old colonial languages and create new local ones has become a site of language creativity. <P><P>Analysing the language of ‘new media’, including social media, print media and new media technologies, and of creative arts such as performance poetry, hip-hop and rap, they use empirical research from such diverse countries as Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. <P>This original edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of African sociolinguistics, particularly in the light of the rapidly changing globalized context in which we live.
Africana Studies: A Survey Of Africa And The African Diaspora
by Mario AzevedoThe third edition of Africana Studies: A Survey of Africa and the African Diaspora is an update of the second edition (1998) and incorporates new chapters that include expanded coverage of issues on women, health, terrorism, the African Union, and many others, as well as the most recent theories and methods in Africana studies. To date, Africana Studies remains the most comprehensive and most suitable text for both teachers and students interested in Africa and the Diaspora in the US, the Caribbean, Afro-Latin-America, and elsewhere. The book is divided into five parts: the state of the art of Africana studies; the evolution of the history of black people; analysis of the contributions of the black world; the present and future status of these peoples; and the societies and values of black people. The book also includes a chronology of significant events in the history of peoples of African descent and a number of maps.
Africanisms In American Culture, Second Edition
by Joseph E. Holloway Margaret Washington Selase W. Williams Molefi Kete Asante George Brandon Robert L. Hall Jessie Ruth Gaston Portia K. Maultsby John Edwards Philip Robert Farris ThomsonAn important work in the field of diaspora studies for the past decade, this collection has inspired scholars and others to explore a trail blazed originally by Melville J. Herskovits, the father of New World African studies. Since its original publication, the field has changed considerably. Africanism has been explored in its broader dimensions, particularly in the area of white Africanisms. Thus, the new edition has been revised and expanded. Joseph E. Holloway has written three essays for the new volume. The first uses a transnational framework to examine how African cultural survivals have changed over time and readapted to diasporic conditions while experiencing slavery, forced labor, and racial discrimination. The second essay is "Africanisms in African American Names in the United States." The third reconstructs Gullah history, citing numerous Africanisms not previously identified by others. In addition, "The African Heritage of White America" by John Phillips has been revised to take note of many more instances of African cultural survivals in white America and to present a new synthesis of approaches.
Africanity and Ubuntu as Decolonizing Discourse (Human Rights Interventions)
by Otrude Nontobeko MoyoThis book explores and discusses emerging perspectives of Ubuntu from the vantage point of “ordinary” people and connects it to human rights and decolonizing discourses. It engages a decolonizing perspective in writing about Ubuntu as an indigenous concept. The fore grounding argument is that one’s positionality speaks to particular interests that may continue to sustain oppressions instead of confronting and dismantling them. Therefore, a decolonial approach to writing indigenous experiences begins with transparency about the researcher’s own positionality. The emerging perspectives of this volume are contextual, highlighting the need for a critical reading for emerging, transformative and alternative visions in human relations and social structures.
Africa's World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space
by Alegi Peter Bolsmann ChrisAfrica s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space focuses on a remarkable month in the modern history of Africa and in the global history of football. Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann are well-known experts on South African football, and they have assembled an impressive team of local and international journalists, academics, and football experts to reflect on the 2010 World Cup and its broader significance, its meanings, complexities, and contradictions. The World Cup s sounds, sights, and aesthetics are explored, along with questions of patriotism, nationalism, and spectatorship in Africa and around the world. Experts on urban design and communities write on how the presence of the World Cup worked to refashion urban spaces and negotiate the local struggles in the hosting cities. The volume is richly illustrated by authors photographs, and the essays in this volume feature chronicles of match day experiences; travelogues; ethnographies of fan cultures; analyses of print, broadcast, and electronic media coverage of the tournament; reflections on the World Cup s private and public spaces; football exhibits in South African museums; and critiques of the World Cup s processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as its political and economic legacies. The volume concludes with a forum on the World Cup, including Thabo Dladla, Director of Soccer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Mohlomi Kekeletso Maubane, a well-known Soweto-based writer and a soccer researcher, and Rodney Reiners, former professional footballer and current chief soccer writer for the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town. This collection will appeal to students, scholars, journalists, and fans. Cover illustration: South African fan blowing his vuvuzela at South Africa vs. France, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, June 22, 2010. Photo by Chris Bolsmann. "
Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity #16)
by Amos Yong Estrelda Y AlexanderThis &“well researched, illuminating, and highly informative" volume presents a comprehensive, scholarly overview of Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity (Choice). Since the American Pentecostal movement began in the early twentieth century, its African American sector has been markedly influential. Black Christians have been integrally involved in every aspect of the Pentecostal movement, making significant contributions to its founding as well as the evolution of Pentecostal/charismatic styles of worship, preaching, music, engagement of social issues, and theology. Yet despite its being one of the fastest growing segments of the Black Church, Afro-Pentecostalism has not received the kind of critical attention it deserves. Afro-Pentecostalism brings together fourteen interdisciplinary scholars to examine different facets of the movement, including its early history, issues of gender, relations with other black denominations, intersections with popular culture, and missionary activities, as well as the movement&’s distinctive theology. Bolstered by editorial introductions to each section, the chapters reflect on the state of the movement, chart its trajectories, discuss pertinent issues, and anticipate future developments. Contributors: Estrelda Y. Alexander, Valerie C. Cooper, David D. Daniels III, Louis B. Gallien, Jr., Clarence E. Hardy III, Dale T. Irvin, Ogbu U. Kalu, Leonard Lovett, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., Cheryl J. Sanders, Craig Scandrett-Leatherman, William C. Turner, Jr., Frederick L. Ware, and Amos Yong
The Afrocentric Praxis of Teaching for Freedom: Connecting Culture to Learning
by Joyce E. King Ellen E. SwartzThe Afrocentric Praxis of Teaching for Freedom explains and illustrates how an African worldview, as a platform for culture-based teaching and learning, helps educators to retrieve African heritage and cultural knowledge which have been historically discounted and decoupled from teaching and learning. The book has three objectives: To exemplify how each of the emancipatory pedagogies it delineates and demonstrates is supported by African worldview concepts and parallel knowledge, general understandings, values, and claims that are produced by that worldview To make African Diasporan cultural connections visible in the curriculum through numerous examples of cultural continuities––seen in the actions of Diasporan groups and individuals––that consistently exhibit an African worldview or cultural framework To provide teachers with content drawn from Africa’s legacy to humanity as a model for locating all students––and the cultures and groups they represent––as subjects in the curriculum and pedagogy of schooling This book expands the Afrocentric praxis presented in the authors’ "Re-membering" History in Teacher and Student Learning by combining "re-membered" (democratized) historical content with emancipatory pedagogies that are connected to an African cultural platform.
Afrocentric Traditions
by James L. Conyers Jr.Ever since the first contacts between Europe and Africa, African people have operated from the fringes of Eurocentric experience in the Western mind. Much of what we have studied in African history and culture, or literature and linguistics, or politics and economics, has been orchestrated from the standpoint of Europe's interests. Whether it is a matter of economics, history, politics, geographical concepts, or art, Africans have been seen as peripheral. This volume reviews the past in order to evaluate the present and move ahead with appropriate policies for the future. The articles in this volume, the first in a new serial publication in Africana studies, cover a broad range of subject matter and methodology. Topics range from the W.E.B. DuBois-Booker T. Washington schism that led to the formation of the Niagara movement, to the popular dissemination of black hip-hop culture. It opens with a description of Afrocentricity by Molefi K. Asante. Kobi K.K. Kambon and Reginald Rackley discuss the construct, that produces European cultural "misidentification" among Africans. Nell Irvin Painter, in discussing the Shoah and Southern history, parallels the rhetoric of hate that permeated the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German diatribes against Jews with that of the Southern white supremacists against blacks. Anthony B. Pinn notes similarities that tie together slavery and colonialism in a bond of existential and ontological destruction. Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr., examines critical issues about black masculinity. James B. Stewart elaborates on the development of Africana studies. Julius E. Thompson explores the historical importance of the African-American writer in Mississippi history. Cary DeCordova Wintz the basis of the conflict between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington in an effort to expose its underlying causes. James L. Conyers, Jr. summarizes social and cultural movements, in particular the popular black hip-hop culture. Rounding out the pres
Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia: Massacre at Bellavista-Bojayá-Chocó
by Aurora Vergara-FigueroaThis book provides a socio-historical analysis of the 2002 massacre at Bellavista-Bojay#65533;-Choc#65533;, Colombia. The author examines how the concepts of forced displacement and migration could be formulas for historical erasure. These concepts are used to name populations, such as the survivors of this massacre, and are limited in their ability to contribute to the demands for reparation of the affected populations. Instead, based on an ethnographic study of the pain and suffering generated in the survivors, the book proposes the concept of deracination as a tool to study land dispossession. It captures both the complex local specificities, the global linkages of this phenomenon and the strategies of resistance used by the people of this community to channel what seems as an impossible mourning.
AfroSurrealism: The African Diaspora's Surrealist Fiction (The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture)
by Rochelle SpencerExamining the surrealist novels of several contemporary writers including Edwidge Danticat, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, Junot Díaz, Helen Oyeyemi, and Colson Whitehead, AfroSurrealism, the first book-length exploration of AfroSurreal fiction, argues that we have entered a new and exciting era of the black novel, one that is more invested than ever before in the cross sections of science, technology, history, folklore, and myth. Building on traditional surrealist scholarship and black studies criticism, the author contends that as technology has become ubiquitous, the ways in which writers write has changed; writers are producing more surrealist texts to represent the psychological challenges that have arisen during an era of rapid social and technological transitions. For black writers, this has meant not only a return to Surrealism, but also a complete restructuring in the way that both past and present are conceived, as technology, rather than being a means for demeaning and brutalizing a black labor force, has become an empowering means of sharing information. Presenting analyses of contemporary AfroSurreal fiction, this volume examines the ways in which contemporary writers grapple with the psychology underlying this futuristic technology, presenting a cautiously optimistic view of the future, together with a hope for better understanding of the past. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural, media and literary studies with interests in the contemporary novel, Surrealism, and black fiction.
After 9/11: Solutions For A Saner World
by Don Hazen Tate Hausman Tamara Straus Michelle ChiharaEssays, from the progressive point of view, on various aspects of the 9/11 events, their causes, aftermath and what to do so that all may live in a safer, saner world in the future.