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African Political Systems
by E. E. Evans-Pritchard Meyer ForbesAfrican Political Systems is a foundational work in the field of anthropology and political science, edited by Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. First published in 1940, the book offers a comparative study of governance structures across various African societies, challenging earlier Western assumptions about political organization in non-Western cultures.Through a series of in-depth case studies, the book explores the diversity of political systems in African societies—ranging from stateless societies with decentralized authority to centralized kingdoms with hierarchical governance. It covers communities such as the Nuer, Zulu, and Bemba, revealing how political order is maintained through kinship ties, rituals, alliances, and local customs. Each chapter demonstrates how these systems reflect the unique cultural, social, and economic conditions of the communities they govern.The editors introduce key anthropological concepts, including the distinction between "primitive" and "modern" political systems, although later scholarship has criticized some of these categories. Nevertheless, African Political Systems remains a pioneering effort in understanding political organization outside the Western context, and it continues to influence research in anthropology, history, and political theory.With its rich ethnographic insights, the book offers readers an invaluable perspective on governance, authority, and social cohesion across Africa, making it an essential text for those interested in cross-cultural political studies.
African Political Systems (Routledge Revivals)
by M. Fortes E. E. Evans-PritchardFirst published in 1940 and this edition in 1987, this book is a comparative study of African political institutions. It describes different types of social organisation that are found in a number of African societies and analyses the principles underlying these traditional forms of government. The volume represents the results of field studies carried out by trained investigators in a number of areas, and was compiled and edited under the auspices of the International African Institute. It will be of interest to students, anthropologists and administrators.
African Political Systems Revisited: Changing Perspectives on Statehood and Power (Integration and Conflict Studies #26)
by Aleksandar Bošković Günther SchleeReexamining a classical work of social anthropology, African Political Systems (1940), edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, this book looks at the colonial and academic context from which the work arose, as well as its reception and its subject matter, and looks at how the work can help with analysis of current politics in Africa. This book critically reflects upon the history of anthropology. It also contributes to a political anthropology which is aware of its antecedents, self-reflexive as a discipline, conscious of pitfalls and biases, and able to locate itself in its academic, social and political environment.
African Political Thought
by Guy MartinFocusing on individual political thinkers and beginning with indigenous African political thought, the book successively examines African nationalism, African socialism, populism and Marxism, Africanism and pan-Africanism, concluding with contemporary perspectives on democracy, development and the African state.
African Politics and Ethics: Exploring New Dimensions
by Munyaradzi Felix MuroveIn this book, Munyaradzi Felix Murove explores African traditional ethical resources for African politics. Arguing that African ethics is integral to African post-colonial political contentious discourse, Murove invites the reader to reflect on various problematic political issues in post-colonial Africa and how African ethics has been applied in these situations. Starting with a succinct discussion of the scope of African ethics, he discusses how African ethical values have been applied by post-colonial politicians in the reconstruction of their societies. Further, Murove looks critically at the issue of African poverty and how the ethic of regional integration and economic cooperation among post-colonial African nation-states has been instrumental to efforts aimed at overcoming the scourge of poverty. The main question this book seeks to answer is: Are African traditional ethical values a panacea to modern African political problems?
African Politics in Comparative Perspective
by Goran HydenThis revised and expanded second edition of African Politics in Comparative Perspective reviews fifty years of research on politics in Africa and addresses some issues in a new light, keeping in mind the changes in Africa since the first edition was written in 2004. The book synthesizes insights from different scholarly approaches and offers an original interpretation of the knowledge accumulated in the field. Goran Hyden discusses how research on African politics relates to the study of politics in other regions and mainstream theories in comparative politics. He focuses on such key issues as why politics trumps economics, rule is personal, state is weak and policies are made with a communal rather than an individual lens. The book also discusses why in the light of these conditions agriculture is problematic, gender contested, ethnicity manipulated and relations with Western powers a matter of defiance.
African Population And Capitalism: Historical Perspectives
by Dennis D. CordellThis is a synthesis of case studies and theory which takes issue with established African demographic theory, emphasising that demography is an historical process, a permanent and varied adaptation to social and economic change. The book covers 20 African societies in the sub-Saharan region, examining not the effects of slavery, colonialism and capitalism on each, but also the resistance and resilience of indigenous African institutions and individuals.
African Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities And The Democratic Consensus (African Histories and Modernities)
by Sanya OshaAfrican cultures and politics remain significantly affected by precolonial and postcolonial configurations of modernity, as well as hegemonic global systems. This project explores Africa's conversation with itself and the rest of the world, critiquing universalist notions of democratization.
African Presidential Republics (African Governance)
by Jean BlondelThis book provides a systematic assessment of the behaviour of some relatively successful presidents in African presidential republics, examining the part played by presidents in the development of their countries. Using two groups of case studies, African Presidential Republics examines the variations between presidential republics within Africa since decolonisation. Jean Blondel divides the ten countries studied into those in which presidents had always been elected regularly, namely Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal and Tanzania, and those in which there was irregularity in the appointment of presidents, namely Benin, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. The case studies analyse the manner in which presidential republics have manifested themselves in Africa, exploring the argument that the presidential republic is one of the key institutional arrangements likely to lead societies towards development. African Presidential Republics will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, comparative politics and political leadership.
African Principles on the Law
by Jan L NeelsThis booklet contains the first draft of the envisaged African Principles on the Law Applicable to International Commercial Contracts. The proposal could be used by national legislators on the continent and African economic integration organisations, particularly the African Union, in, respectively, domestic legislation and regional or supranational laws of a soft or binding nature. The existence of a reliable transnational legal infrastructure in respect of international commercial law, including commercial private international law, is a prerequisite for investor confidence, inclusive economic growth, sustainable development, and the ultimate alleviation of poverty on the African continent. The instrument may contribute to sustainable growth on a long-term basis. The regulation of private international law of contract is essential to the further development of the African Continental Free Trade Area.
African Print Cultures: Newspapers and Their Publics in the Twentieth Century
by Emma Hunter Derek Peterson Steph NewellThe essays collected in African Print Cultures claim African newspapers as subjects of historical and literary study. Newspapers were not only vehicles for anticolonial nationalism. They were also incubators of literary experimentation and networks by which new solidarities came into being. By focusing on the creative work that African editors and contributors did, this volume brings an infrastructure of African public culture into view. The first of four thematic sections, "African Newspaper Networks," considers the work that newspaper editors did to relate events within their locality to happenings in far-off places. This work of correlation and juxtaposition made it possible for distant people to see themselves as fellow travellers. "Experiments with Genre" explores how newspapers nurtured the development of new literary genres, such as poetry, realist fiction, photoplays, and travel writing in African languages and in English. "Newspapers and Their Publics" looks at the ways in which African newspapers fostered the creation of new kinds of communities and served as networks for public interaction, political and otherwise. The final section, "Afterlives, " is about the longue durée of history that newspapers helped to structure, and how, throughout the twentieth century, print allowed contributors to view their writing as material meant for posterity.
African Proverbs for All Ages
by Johnnetta Betsch Cole Nelda LaTeefAfrican Proverbs for All Ages is a beautifully-illustrated, engaging picture book about the power of proverbs, how they evolve over time, and the wisdom of various cultures in Africa.It has been said that a proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.Whether you are young or old, proverbs can open your mind to a whole new way of seeing the world. We underestimate children when we assume they are incapable of understanding metaphor and deeper meaning. There are multiple ways that children learn, but for each method by which they learn, they need their imagination engaged and their visual sensibilities ignited. And as adults, we underestimate ourselves when we allow our lives to be about practical matters only. Proverbs can stir our soul and spark our imagination. --Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Ph.D. President Emerita of Spelman and Bennett CollegesIn African Proverbs for All Ages, noted anthropologist and educator Dr. Johnetta Betsch Cole and award-winning illustrator Nelda LaTeef invite children and adults to explore and reflect on complex notions about relationships, identity, society, and the human condition.A Roaring Brook Press and Oprah Book
African Psycho
by Alain MabanckouFinalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015&“The novel with which [Mabanckou] cemented his reputation as one of French-language fiction&’s leading lights . . . Black as pitch and bitter as wormwood, a razor-sharp satire in which the trials of a would-be serial killer are played for laughs.&” —Times Literary SupplementIts title recalls Bret Easton Ellis&’s infamous book, American Psycho. But while Ellis&’s narrator was a blank slate, the protagonist of African Psycho is a quivering mass of lies, neuroses, and relentless internal chatter. Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. He&’s been planning the crime for some time. But the act of murder requires a bit of psychological and logistical preparation. Luckily, he has a mentor to call on, the far more accomplished serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn&’t prevent Gregoire from holding lengthy conversations with him. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima&’s life and criminal exploits with his own. Continuing with the plan despite a string of botched attempts and abject failures, Gregoire&’s final shot at offing Germaine leads to his abrupt unraveling. Lauded in France for its fresh and witty style, African Psycho&’s inventive use of language surprises and delights, relieving the reader through an injection of humor into a plainly disturbing subject.
African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus
by Rachel HolmesSaartjie Baartman was twenty-one years old when she was taken from her native South Africa and shipped to London. Within weeks, the striking African beauty was the talk of the social season of 1810–hailed as “the Hottentot Venus” for her exquisite physique and suggestive semi-nude dance. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. In African Queen, Rachel Holmes recounts the luminous, heartbreaking story of one woman’s journey from slavery to stardom. Born into a herding tribe known as the Eastern Cape Khoisan, Saartjie was barely out of her teens when she was orphaned and widowed by colonial war and forced aboard a ship bound for England. A pair of clever, unscrupulous showmen dressed her up in a body stocking with a suggestive fringe and put her on the London stage as a “specimen” of African beauty and sexuality. The Hottentot Venus was an overnight sensation. But celebrity brought unexpected consequences. Abolitionists initiated a lawsuit to win Saartjie’s freedom, a case that electrified the English public. In Paris, a team of scientists subjected her to a humiliating public inspection as they probed the mystery of her sexual allure. Stared at, stripped, pinched, painted, worshipped, and ridiculed, Saartjie came to symbolize the erotic obsession at the heart of colonialism. But beneath the costumes and the glare of publicity, this young Khoisan woman was a person who had been torn from her own culture and sacrificed to the whims of fashionable Europe. Nearly two centuries after her death, Saartjie made headlines once again when Nelson Mandela launched a campaign to have her remains returned to the land of her birth. In this brilliant, vividly written book, Rachel Holmes traces the full arc of Saartjie’s extraordinary story–a story of race, eros, oppression, and fame that resonates powerfully today.
African Radio and Minority Languages: Participation and Representation (Routledge African Media, Culture and Communication Studies)
by 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 Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora (One World Archaeology Ser. #48)
by Jay B. Haviser Kevin C. MacDonaldRipped from motherland and family, ethnically mixed to quell the potential of uprisings, and brutalized by regimes of hard labor, the heart - the spirit - of Africa did not stop beating in the New World. Rather, it survived and has re-emerged; changed by contacts with new cultures and environments, but still part of the continuum of African tradition: an African Re-Genesis. This is the first volume in its field to emphasize the interdisciplinary temporal and geographic comparative research of Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Linguistics to allow us to form unique perspectives on broader trends in the transformation and (re-) emergence of African Diaspora cultures. African Re-Genesis confirms that regardless of discipline, from continental Africa to Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Indian Ocean, all Diaspora research requires a relevance to modern communities and sensitivity to the interplay with contemporary cultural identities. Matters concerning race and cultural diversity, though ostensibly de-fused by the vocabulary of political correctness, remain contentious. Indeed, the topic of racial relations has become to the twenty-first century what sex was to the nineteenth century - something best not discussed in public, and better talked around than confronted directly. African Re-Genesis strikes at the nerve of urgency that the past, present and future globalization of African cultures, is a cornerstone of the entire human experience, and it thus deserves recognition as such.
African Refugees
by Toyin Falola Olajumoke Yacob-HalisoAfrican Refugees is a comprehensive overview of the context, causes, and consequences of refugee lives, discussing issues, policies, and solutions for African refugees around the world. It covers overarching topics such as human rights, policy frameworks, refugee protection, and durable solutions, as well as less-studied topics such as refugee youths, refugee camps, LGBTQ refugees, urban refugees, and refugee women. It also takes on rare but emergent topics such as citizenship and the creativity of African refugees.Toyin Falola and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso showcase the voices and experiences of individual refugees through the sweep of history to tell the African refugee story from the historical past through current developments, covering the full range of experience from the causes of flight to living in exile, all while maintaining a persistent focus on the complicated search for solutions.African Refugees recognizes African agency and contributions in pursuit of solutions for African refugees over time but avoids the pitfalls of the colonial gaze—where refugees are perpetually pathologized and Africa is always the sole cause of its own problems—seeking to complicate these narratives by recognizing African refugee issues within exploitative global, colonial, and neo-colonial systems of power.
African Refugees: Development Aid And Repatriation
by Howard Adelman; John SorensonOf the world's refugees, more than a third live in Africa, displaced from their homelands by war, poverty, famine and political persecution. In this book, contributors explore key issues related to these refugee populations. The first section looks at the legal framework for defining and assisting refugees, and the second deals with the issue of relief by considering specific cases, the general problems faced and particular relief efforts. Subsequent chapters examine forced migration, resettlement and repatriation, conflict with local populations, integration of refugees, and sustainable development.
African Regional Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes
by James Thuo GathiiAfrican regional trade integration has grown exponentially in the last decade. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the legal framework within which it is being pursued. It will fill a huge knowledge gap and serve as an invaluable teaching and research tool for policy makers in the public and private sectors, teachers, researchers and students of African trade and beyond. The author argues that African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are best understood as flexible legal regimes particularly given their commitment to variable geometry and multiple memberships. He analyzes the progress made toward trade liberalization in each region, how the RTAs are financed, their trade remedy and judicial regimes and how well they measure up to Article XXIV of GATT. The book also covers monetary unions as well as intra-African regional integration, and examines Free Trade Agreements with non-African regions including the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.
African Religion Defined: A Systematic Study of Ancestor Worship Among the Akan (3rd Edition)
by Anthony Ephirim-DonkorThis edition updates the scholarship on ancestor worship--with the addition of three new chapters. Beginning with Akan theology and ending with sacrifices, the study examines Akan conception of God, the abosom (gods and goddesses) relative to creation, centrality of the ancestors' stool as the ultimate religious symbol housing the soul of the Akan, and organized annual propitiatory festivities carried out among the Akan in honor of the ancestors (Nananom Nsamanfo) and abosom. The book, therefore, serves as an invaluable resource for those interested in the phenomenon of African religion, because it provides real insight into ancestor worship in ways that are meaningful, practical, systematic, and as a way of life by an Akan Traditional ruler (Ↄdikro) and a professor of Africana studies.
African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life
by Laurenti MagesaDescribes the moral teachings (values, norms and principles to follow so that life might be abundant for all) of the African religion as it relates to individuals and community.
African Religions and Philosophy
by John S. MbitiDiscusses the philosophies, rituals, and ceremonies of various African religions and their influence in the lives of the people.
African Rhinos
by Kristin L. NelsonDo you know . . . * how much a rhino weighs? * what rhinos eat? * why rhinos charge? Read this book to find out!
African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms
by John M. Chernoff"We have in this book a Rosetta stone for mediating, or translating, African musical behavior and aesthetics." --Andrew Tracey, African Music. "John Miller Chernoff, who spent 10 years studying African drumming, has a flair for descriptive writing, and his first-person narratives should be easily understood by any reader, while ringing unmistakably true for the reader who has also been to West Africa." --Roderick Knight, Washington Post Book World. "Ethnomusicologists must be proud that their discipline has produced a book that will, beyond doubt, rank as a classic of African studies." --Peter Fryer,Research in Literatures. "A marvelous book. ... Not many scholars will ever be able to achieve the kind of synthesis of 'doing' and 'writing about' their subject matter that Chernoff has achieved, but he has given us an excellent illustration of what is possible." --Chet Creider, Culture. "Chernoff develops a brilliant and penetrating musicological essay that is, at the same time, an intensely personal and even touching account of musical and cultural discovery that anyone with an interest in Africa can and should read. ... No other writing comes close to approaching Chernoff's ability to convey a feeling of how African music 'works'." --James Koetting, Africana Journal. "Four stars. One of the few books I know of that talks of the political, social, and spiritual meanings of music. I was moved. It was so nice I read it twice." --David Byrne of "Talking Heads". The companion cassette tape has 44 examples of the music discussed in the book. It consists of field recordings illustrating cross-rhythms, multiple meters, call and response forms, etc.
African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston
by Randy WestonThe pianist, composer, and bandleader Randy Weston is one of the world's most influential jazz musicians and a remarkable storyteller whose career has spanned five continents and more than six decades. Packed with fascinating anecdotes, African Rhythms is Weston's life story, as told by him to the music journalist Willard Jenkins. It encompasses Weston's childhood in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood--where his parents and other members of their generation imbued him with pride in his African heritage--and his introduction to jazz and early years as a musician in the artistic ferment of mid-twentieth-century New York. His music has taken him around the world: he has performed in eighteen African countries, in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, in the Canterbury Cathedral, and at the grand opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina: The New Library of Alexandria. Africa is at the core of Weston's music and spirituality. He has traversed the continent on a continuous quest to learn about its musical traditions, produced its first major jazz festival, and lived for years in Morocco, where he opened a popular jazz club, the African Rhythms Club, in Tangier. Weston's narrative is replete with tales of the people he has met and befriended, and with whom he has worked. He describes his unique partnerships with Langston Hughes, the musician and arranger Melba Liston, and the jazz scholar Marshall Stearns, as well as his friendships and collaborations with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Billy Strayhorn, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, the novelist Paul Bowles, the Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, the Ghanaian jazz artist Kofi Ghanaba, the Gnawa musicians of Morocco, and many others. With African Rhythms, an international jazz virtuoso continues to create cultural history.