Africa articles from September 1997

Africa archives from September 1997

'No condition is permanent': ethnic construction and the use of history in Akuapem. (Akuapem kingdom in south-eastern Ghana)
September 22, 1997... It is our custom that when an Omanhene [king] is placed on the stool, his people ask him to be good to them and treat them fairly... and he also confirms that he will rule peacefully, that peace may rule throughout the whole country and...

Money and respect: the changing value of old age in rural Ghana.
September 22, 1997... If you don't have money, no one visits you. Sika fr?? mmogya [Money calls blood]. [??panyin Kwaku Martin] It is poverty that has made them old. [Kwahu woman] Money, writes Plattner (1989: 175) `is something used to make payments...

Islam and popular music in Senegal: the emergence of a 'new tradition'.
September 22, 1997... The city of Dakar is a visual and verbal testament to the pervasive influence of Islam on Senegalese popular culture: ubiquitous fleets of yellow and blue cars rapides, the city's main transport system, display across their hoods the word...

Male praise-singers in Accra: in the company of women. (Hausa in Ghana)
September 22, 1997... In a classic essay M. G. Smith (1957) analysed praise-singing in northern Nigeria as an institution that regulates social behaviour, by validating status, wielding sanctions, and generally maintaining social norms. Hausa praisesinging is a...

The hearthhold in pastoral Fulbe society, central Mali: social relations, milk and drought.
September 22, 1997... To judge from the kind of set expression, haughty and distant, often seen on the women's faces, one would guess that the mystery it conceals is no easy one to pierce, and That this mask they wear is one way, not only of concealing their inmost...

The World of Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
September 22, 1997... 7-9 April 1994 saw the largest gathering an African writer has ever attracted in the United States. More than 200 scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada and the United States had come together to celebrate the work of the Kenyan writer Ngugi...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Texts and Contexts.
September 22, 1997... 7-9 April 1994 saw the largest gathering an African writer has ever attracted in the United States. More than 200 scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada and the United States had come together to celebrate the work of the Kenyan writer Ngugi...

Contemporary Egyptian Art.
September 22, 1997... This interesting and useful book is a survey of the work of Egyptian artists, particularly painters and sculptors, covering the period from the fall of King Farouk in 1952 to the present day. The underlying thesis is how politics affects art....

Religion, Myth and Magic in Tangale.
September 22, 1997... Written by John Hall, a missionary in the Tangale settlement of Kaltungo between 1917 and 1933, this is an intriguing account of ritual and belief in early colonial Nigeria. Tangale are one of a number of so-called 'pagan' communities on the...

A History of the Quaker Movement in Africa.
September 22, 1997... This is a history of the Quakers in Kenya. It begins with a brief history of the movement, particularly in the United States, from where the original missionaries to Kenya hailed in 1902. This preamble is crucial, for the American branch has been...

Terra d'Africa II and III.
September 22, 1997... This periodical continues to provide a window into the minds of Italian intellectuals and academics with regard to much of continental Africa. Writing from within Europe, where the pressure to conform to a common culture grows daily and little by...

Terra d'Africa IV and V.
September 22, 1997... Social geography is particularly useful when it brings together historical and contemporary attitudes to incomers and outgoers. Why do particular attitudes exist, are they changing? If so, why? And, if not, why not? In the light of the current...

African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits and Opportunities.
September 22, 1997... Each year the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh hosts a conference on a specific theme, and normally the proceedings are published inhouse. However, papers from the 1993 conference on African boundaries and borderlands have...

La Construction religieuse du territoire.
September 22, 1997... The central questions posed in this collection of essays are 'What relationships exist between territories and religious phenomena?' and 'In what sense do religious phenomena play a role in the construction of territories?' The book contains...

The Diary of Hamman Yaji: Chronicle of a West African Muslim Ruler.
September 22, 1997... The Diary of Hamman Yaji raises interesting issues about slavery, colonialism, and the history of everyday life during the first two decades of colonial rule over Madagali, a frontier district under Adamawa Province in northern Nigeria. Apart...

Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town: Group Identity and Social Practice: 1875-1902.
September 22, 1997... Because of its long history of colonial settlement, and its magnificent natural beauty, there is an abundance of publications about Cape Town, and pictorial and coffee-table books appear regularly. However, it is one of the anomalies of South...

Quest for Self-Esteem: State, Islam, and Mundang Ethnicity in Northern Cameroon.
September 22, 1997... Mundang are found in both northern Cameroon, where Schilder's study is located, and in south-western Chad, where we already benefit from Alfred Adler's wideranging ethnography. Aside from a general introductory consideration of theories of...

End of Kaunda Era.
September 22, 1997... This latest book on 'the man who was Zambia' also draws the curtain on an era. The subtext of Mwanakatwe's cool, detached and even-handed account of the twenty-seven-year Kaunda presidency and its demise is the unfolding tragedy of the clash...

African Images: Racism and the End of Anthropology.
September 22, 1997... This short volume of essays was published just before Peter Rigby's death in Kenya (January 1997). In such a context it is difficult not to perceive the essays as his intellectual testament, his final statement of conviction. Indeed, anger and...