Postcolonial African Anthropologies

Postcolonial African Anthropologies PDF Author: Rosabelle Boswell
Publisher: HSRC Publishers
ISBN: 9780796925695
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Postcolonial African Anthropologies showcases a selection of recent African ethnographies and critically discusses anthropology's engagement with decolonisation and postcolonialism. The ethnographers in the book show that contemporary anthropology in Africa is dynamic and deeply self-reflexive, engaging issues of power and life in Africa and its nearby diaspora in multi-vocal and diverse ways."--Back cover.

Postcolonial African Anthropologies

Postcolonial African Anthropologies PDF Author: Rosabelle Boswell
Publisher: HSRC Publishers
ISBN: 9780796925695
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Postcolonial African Anthropologies showcases a selection of recent African ethnographies and critically discusses anthropology's engagement with decolonisation and postcolonialism. The ethnographers in the book show that contemporary anthropology in Africa is dynamic and deeply self-reflexive, engaging issues of power and life in Africa and its nearby diaspora in multi-vocal and diverse ways."--Back cover.

The Postcolonial Turn

The Postcolonial Turn PDF Author: Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956726656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
This innovative book is a forward-looking reflection on mental decolonisation and the postcolonial turn in Africanist scholarship. As a whole, it provides five decennia-long lucid and empathetic research involvements by seasoned scholars who came to live, in local people's own ways, significant daily events experienced by communities, professional networks and local experts in various African contexts. The book covers materials drawn from Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Themes include the Whelan Research Academy, rap musicians, political leaders, wise men and women, healers, Sacred Spirit churches, diviners, bards and weavers who are deemed proficient in the classical African geometrical knowledge. As a tribute to late Archie Mafeje who showed real commitment to decolonise social sciences from western-centred modernist development theories, commentators of his work pinpoint how these theories sought to dismiss the active role played by African people in their quest for self-emancipation. One of the central questions addressed by the book concerns the role of an anthropologist and this issue is debated against the background of the academic lecture delivered by René Devisch when receiving an honorary doctoral degree at the University of Kinshasa. The lecture triggered critical but constructive comments from such seasoned experts as Valentin Mudimbe and Wim van Binsbergen. They excoriate anthropological knowledge on account that the anthropologist, notwithstanding his or her social and cognitive empathy and intense communication with the host community, too often fails to also question her own world and intellectual habitus from the standpoint of her hosts. Leading anthropologists carry further into great depth the bifocal anthropological endeavour focussing on local people's re-imagining and re-connecting the local and global. The book is of interest to a wide readership in the humanities, social sciences, philosophy and the history of the African continent and its relation with the North.

Ordering Africa

Ordering Africa PDF Author: Helen Tilley
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526118718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
African research played a major role in transforming the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century. Ethnographic studies, in turn, had significant effects on the way imperial powers in Africa approached subject peoples. Ordering Africa provides the first comparative history of these processes. With essays exploring metropolitan research institutes, Africans as ethnographers, the transnational features of knowledge production, and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration, this volume both consolidates and extends a range of new research questions focusing on the politics of imperial knowledge. Specific chapters examine French West Africa, the Belgian and French Congo, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Italian Northeast Africa, Kenya, and Equatorial Africa (Gabon) as well as developments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. A major collection of essays that will be welcomed by scholars interested in imperial history and the history of Africa.

Neoliberal Frontiers

Neoliberal Frontiers PDF Author: Brenda Chalfin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226100626
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In Neoliberal Frontiers, Brenda Chalfin presents an ethnographic examination of the day-to-day practices of the officials of Ghana’s Customs Service, exploring the impact of neoliberal restructuring and integration into the global economy on Ghanaian sovereignty. From the revealing vantage point of the Customs office, Chalfin discovers a fascinating inversion of our assumptions about neoliberal transformation: bureaucrats and local functionaries, government offices, checkpoints, and registries are typically held to be the targets of reform, but Chalfin finds that these figures and sites of authority act as the engine for changes in state sovereignty. Ghana has served as a model of reform for the neoliberal establishment, making it an ideal site for Chalfin to explore why the restructuring of a state on the global periphery portends shifts that occur in all corners of the world. At once a foray into international political economy, politics, and political anthropology, Neoliberal Frontiers is an innovative interdisciplinary leap forward for ethnographic writing, as well as an eloquent addition to the literature on postcolonial Africa.

African Anthropologies

African Anthropologies PDF Author: Mwenda Ntarangwi
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781842777633
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
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Reluctant Landscapes

Reluctant Landscapes PDF Author: Francois G. Richard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625254X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
West African history is inseparable from the history of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. According to historical archaeologist François Richard, however, the dominance of this narrative not only colors the range of political discourse about Africa but also occludes many lesser-known—but equally important—experiences of those living in the region. Reluctant Landscapes is an exploration of the making and remaking of political experience and physical landscapes among rural communities in the Siin province of Senegal between the late 1500s and the onset of World War II. By recovering the histories of farmers and commoners who made up African states’ demographic core in this period, Richard shows their crucial—but often overlooked—role in the making of Siin history. The book also delves into the fraught relation between the Seereer, a minority ethnic and religious group, and the Senegalese nation-state, with Siin’s perceived “primitive” conservatism standing at odds with the country’s Islamic modernity. Through a deep engagement with oral, documentary, archaeological, and ethnographic archives, Richard’s groundbreaking study revisits the four-hundred-year history of a rural community shunted to the margins of Senegal’s national imagination.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa

A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa PDF Author: Roy Richard Grinker
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119251486
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
An essential collection of scholarly essays on the anthropology of Africa, offering a thorough introduction to the most important topics in this evolving and diverse field of study The study of the cultures of Africa has been central to the methodological and theoretical development of anthropology as a discipline since the late 19th-century. As the anthropology of Africa has emerged as a distinct field of study, anthropologists working in this tradition have strived to build a disciplinary conversation that recognizes the diversity and complexity of modern and ancient African cultures while acknowledging the effects of historical anthropology on the present and future of the field of study. A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa is a collection of insightful essays covering the key questions and subjects in the contemporary anthropology of Africa with a key focus on addressing the topics that define the contemporary discipline. Written and edited by a team of leading cultural anthropologists, it is an ideal introduction to the most important topics in the field, both those that have consistently been a part of the critical dialogue and those that have emerged as the central questions of the discipline’s future. Beginning with essays on the enduring topics in the study of African cultures, A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa provides a foundation in the contemporary critical approach to subjects of longstanding interest. With these subjects as a groundwork, later essays address decolonization, the postcolonial experience, and questions of modern identity and definition, providing representation of the diverse thinking and scholarship in the modern anthropology of Africa.

Reversed Gaze

Reversed Gaze PDF Author: Mwenda Ntarangwi
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252090241
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Deftly illustrating how life circumstances can influence ethnographic fieldwork, Mwenda Ntarangwi focuses on his experiences as a Kenyan anthropology student and professional anthropologist practicing in the United States and Africa. Whereas Western anthropologists often study non-Western cultures, Mwenda Ntarangwi reverses these common roles and studies the Western culture of anthropology from an outsider's viewpoint while considering larger debates about race, class, power, and the representation of the "other." Tracing his own immersion into American anthropology, Ntarangwi identifies textbooks, ethnographies, coursework, professional meetings, and feedback from colleagues and mentors that were key to his development. Reversed Gaze enters into a growing anthropological conversation on representation and self-reflexivity that ethnographers have come to regard as standard anthropological practice, opening up new dialogues in the field by allowing anthropologists to see the role played by subjective positions in shaping knowledge production and consumption. Recognizing the cultural and racial biases that shape anthropological study, this book reveals the potential for diverse participation and more democratic decision making in the identity and process of the profession.

Modernity and Its Malcontents

Modernity and Its Malcontents PDF Author: Jean Comaroff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226114392
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
What role does ritual play in the everyday lives of modern Africans? How are so-called "traditional" cultural forms deployed by people seeking empowerment in a world where "modernity" has failed to deliver on its promises? Some of the essays in Modernity and Its Malcontents address familiar anthropological issues—like witchcraft, myth, and the politics of reproduction—but treat them in fresh ways, situating them amidst the polyphonies of contemporary Africa. Others explore distinctly nontraditional subjects—among them the Nigerian popular press and soul-eating in Niger—in such a way as to confront the conceptual limits of Western social science. Together they demonstrate how ritual may be powerfuly mobilized in the making of history, present, and future. Addressing challenges posed by contemporary African realities, the authors subject such concepts as modernity, ritual, power, and history to renewed critical scrutiny. Writing about a variety of phenomena, they are united by a wish to preserve the diversity and historical specificity of local signs and practices, voices and perspectives. Their work makes a substantial and original contribution toward the historical anthropology of Africa. The contributors, all from the Africanist circle at the University of Chicago, are Adeline Masquelier, Deborah Kaspin, J. Lorand Matory, Ralph A. Austen, Andrew Apter, Misty L. Bastian, Mark Auslander, and Pamela G. Schmoll.

Postcolonial Images of Spiritual Care

Postcolonial Images of Spiritual Care PDF Author: Emmanuel Y. Lartey
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532685572
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This anthology is about caring for all persons as a part of the revolutionary struggle against colonialism in its many forms. In recognition of the varied ways in which different forms of oppression, injustice, and violence in the world today are traceable to the legacy and continuing effects of colonialism, various authors have contributed to the volume from diverse backgrounds including differing ethnic identities, religious and cultural traditions, gender and sexual orientations, as well as communal and personal realities. As a postcolonial critique of spiritual care, it highlights the plurality of voices and concerns that have been overlooked or obscured because of the politics of race, religion, sexuality, nationalism, and other structures of power that have shaped what discursive spiritual care entails today. Postcolonial Images of Spiritual Care presents voices of practical and pastoral theologians, academics, spiritual care providers, religious leaders, students, and activists working to provide greater intercultural spiritual care and awareness in the areas of healthcare, community work, and education. The volume, as such, expands the discourse of spiritual care and participates in the ongoing paradigm shifts in the field of pastoral and practical theology.