Africa Today articles from June 2006

Africa Today archives from June 2006

Introduction to special issue: memory and the formation of political identities in West Africa.
June 22, 2006... This collection of essays centers on the relationship between memory work and political processes in several West African nations: Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Guinca-Conakry, and Mali. (1) The authors analyze from different angles what Hagberg...

Chieftainships between past and present: from city to suburb and back in colonial Conakry, 1890s-1950s (1).
June 22, 2006... This article uses the example of Conakry (French Guinea) and its suburbs to illustrate how the past was used in administrative politics at the level of city wards and surrounding villages. The events occurring in Conakry were part of broader...

Before it is too late: constructing an archive of oral sources and a national museum in independent Gambia.
June 22, 2006... This article discusses the cultural policy of the Republic of the Gambia in the aftermath of independence. It illustrates the establishment of an archive of oral sources and a national museum, considers the institutional and intellectual vision...

Youth festivals and museums: the cultural politics of public memory in postcolonial Mali.
June 22, 2006... Public memory practices are essentially political, and in postcolonial Mali, as elsewhere in Africa, the state's cultural agenda have involved a refocusing and revalorizing of the precolonial past through both performance and material culture....

Politics of remembering and forgetting: the struggle over colonial monuments in Mali.
June 22, 2006... This paper focuses on the politics of remembering and forgetting in Mali from 1960 to 2002. It argues that in contrast to the highly selective remembering promoted by Mali's first two regimes (1960-1991), the democratic state has promoted the...

The transformation of ritual boundaries in resource-use practices in Burkina Faso.
June 22, 2006... This essay explores how people in rural Burkina Faso act upon and seek to reconcile contradictions between cosmologically grounded ritual boundaries and geographically informed natural resource-use planning. On the basis of ethnographic...

Allman, Jean, ed. 2004. Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress.
June 22, 2006... Allman, Jean, ed. 2004. FASHIONING AFRICA: POWER AND THE POLITICS OF DRESS. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 247 pp. $21.95 (paper). Jean Allman's Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress is a collection exploring the "ways...

Ashford, Adam. 2005. Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa.
June 22, 2006... Ashford, Adam. 2005. WITCHCRAFT, VIOLENCE, AND DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 396 pp. $62.50 (cloth); $25.00 (paper). This book offers a nuanced, sensitive, and compelling account of the...

Dovers, Stephen, Ruth Edgecomb, and Bill Guest, eds. 2003. South Africa's Environmental History: Cases & Comparisons.
June 22, 2006... Dovers, Stephen, Ruth Edgecomb, and Bill Guest, eds. 2003. SOUTH AFRICA'S ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY: CASES & COMPARISONS. Athens: Ohio University Press. 326 pp. $24.95 (paper). This seventeen-chapter volume emerged from a workshop at the...

Laremont, Ricardo Rene, ed. 2005. Borders, Nationalism, and the African State.
June 22, 2006... Laremont, Ricardo Rene, ed. 2005. BORDERS, NATIONALISM, AND THE AFRICAN STATE. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 351 pp. $59.95 (cloth). It probably sounded like a good idea when pitched to the Carnegie Corporation: let's compare...

Jeanne Moulton, Karen Mundy, Michel Welmond, and James Williams, eds. 2002. Educational Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa: Paradigm Lost?
June 22, 2006... Jeanne Moulton, Karen Mundy, Michel Welmond, and James Williams, eds. 2002. EDUCATIONAL REFORMS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: PARADIGM LOST? Contributions to the Study of Education, 82. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 234 pp. $95.00 (cloth). ...

Taylor, Ian. 2005. NEPAD: Toward Africa's Development or Another False Start?
June 22, 2006... Taylor, Ian. 2005. NEPAD: TOWARD AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT OR ANOTHER FALSE START? Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 212 pp. $49.95 (cloth). The dramatic reappearance of famine in Niger is a painful reminder of how little has changed in Africa...

Vansina, Jan. 2004. The Antecedents of Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom.
June 22, 2006... Vansina, Jan. 2004. THE ANTECEDENTS OF MODERN RWANDA: THE NYIGINYA KINGDOM. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 354 pp. $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). What forces shaped the formation, expansion, and workings of the Nyiginya kingdom...

Walley, Christine J. 2004. Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park.
June 22, 2006... Walley, Christine J. 2004. ROUGH WATERS: NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT IN AN EAST AFRICAN MARINE PARK. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 336 pp. $57.50 (cloth); $21.95 (paper). For more than a decade, community-based...

Books received.(Bibliography)
June 22, 2006... Adhikari, Mohamed. 2005. Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community. Athens, OH: Ohio University Research in International Studies. Annan-Yao, Elizabeth, Bashaw, Zenebe N., Ishengoma,...

Errata.(Correction notice)
June 22, 2006... Lidwien Kapteijns, in her review of Mohamed H. Mukhtar's Historical Dictionary of Somalia (Africa Today 51.3, 2005, pp. 136-138), made an error when she criticized this book somewhat sharply for not having an entry for Sayyid Mohamed Abdille...