Download or read book Custom and Government in the Lower Congo written by Wyatt MacGaffey and published by Berkeley : University of California Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gesture and Power written by Yolanda Covington-Ward and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gesture and Power Yolanda Covington-Ward examines the everyday embodied practices and performances of the BisiKongo people of the Lower Congo to show how their gestures, dances, and spirituality are critical in mobilizing social and political action. Conceiving of the body as the center of analysis, a catalyst for social action, and as a conduit for the social construction of reality, Covington-Ward focuses on specific flash points in the last ninety years of Congo's troubled history, when embodied performance was used to stake political claims, foster dissent, and enforce power. In the 1920s Simon Kimbangu started a Christian prophetic movement based on spirit-induced trembling, which swept through the Lower Congo, subverting Belgian colonial authority. Following independence, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko required citizens to dance and sing nationalist songs daily as a means of maintaining political control. More recently, embodied performance has again stoked reform, as nationalist groups such as Bundu dia Kongo advocate for a return to precolonial religious practices and non-Western gestures such as traditional greetings. In exploring these embodied expressions of Congolese agency, Covington-Ward provides a framework for understanding how embodied practices transmit social values, identities, and cultural history throughout Africa and the diaspora.
Download or read book African Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry written by Ras Michael Brown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry examines perceptions of the natural world revealed by the religious ideas and practices of African-descended communities in South Carolina from the colonial period into the twentieth century. Focusing on Kongo nature spirits known as the simbi, Ras Michael Brown describes the essential role religion played in key historical processes, such as establishing new communities and incorporating American forms of Christianity into an African-based spirituality. This book illuminates how people of African descent engaged the spiritual landscape of the Lowcountry through their subsistence practices, religious experiences and political discourse.
Download or read book Catholic Women of Congo Brazzaville written by Phyllis M. Martin and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville explores the changing relationship between women and the Catholic Church from the establishment of the first mission stations in the late 1880s to the present. Phyllis M. Martin emphasizes the social identity of mothers and the practice of motherhood, a prime concern of Congolese women, as they individually and collectively made sense of their place within the Church. Martin traces women's early resistance to missionary overtures and church schools, and follows their relationship with missionary Sisters, their later embrace of church-sponsored education, their participation in popular Catholicism, and the formation of women's fraternities. As they drew together as mothers and sisters, Martin asserts, women began to affirm their place in a male-dominated institution. Covering more than a century of often turbulent times, this rich and readable book examines an era of far-reaching social change in Central Africa.
Download or read book The Democratic Republic of the Congo La R publique D mocratique du Congo written by Julien Bobineau and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2016 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume brings together English and French language contributions that add to an in-depth picture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's current state of affairs. The authors from various academic fields who research and teach at universities in Africa, Asia and Europe focus on political and economic perspectives, education and civil society, health and environment, the country's international relations as well as historical foundations. They analyse the problems the country is facing but also point out where progress has been made, where possibilities lie - and how these possibilities can come to fruition.
Download or read book Black Africa written by Robert C. Mitchell and published by Springer. This book was released on 1989-07-17 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Africa presents political, economic and social data for 41 black African nations. The first edition was published in 1972 and included only data on 32 countries - which was the total number of independent African nations at that time. Enlarging on the first edition, this second edition covers in detail important aspects of the countries included, from demography to political development and social mobilization to a modern comparative analysis of African states. Black Africa is a complete and comprehensive handbook. The first edition of Black Africa won a Book of the Year Award from the American Library Association.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Africa written by J. D. Fage and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 1052 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighth and final volume of The Cambridge History of Africa covers the period 1940-75. It begins with a discussion of the role of the Second World War in the political decolonisation of Africa. Its terminal date of 1975 coincides with the retreat of Portugal, the last European colonial power in Africa, from its possessions and their accession to independence. The fifteen chapters which make up this volume examine on both a continental and regional scale the extent to which formal transfer of political power by the European colonial rulers also involved economic, social and cultural decolonisation. A major theme of the volume is the way the African successors to the colonial rulers dealt with their inheritance and how far they benefited particular economic groups and disadvantaged others. The contributors to this volume represent different disciplinary traditions and do not share a single theoretical perspective on the recent history of the continent, a subject that is still the occasion for passionate debate.
Download or read book The Politics of Governance written by Lucy Koechlin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do government arrangements emerge? When and how does individual agency turn into collective agency? How do sensory experiences of violence, instability, etc affect the configuration of governance arrangements? When, why, and how are governance arrangements institutionalized? This book seeks to contribute to a non-normative conceptualization of the emergence and transformation of government arrangements, and addresses the under-theorization of actors and agency in conventional governance theories. The editors and contributors theorize the concept of governance more concretely by analyzing the key actors and arrangements that define states of governance across different places and by examining its performance and development in particular settings and time periods. Each contribution to the edited volume is based on a case-study drawn from Africa, though the book argues that the core issues identified remain the same across the world, though in different empirical contexts. The contributions also range across key disciplines, from anthropology to sociology to political science. This ground-breaking volume addresses governance arrangements, discusses how social actors form such arrangements, and concludes by synthesizing an actor-centered understanding of political articulation to a general theory of governance. Scholars across disciplines such as political science, development studies, African studies, and sociology will find the book insightful.
Download or read book Kongo Power and Majesty written by Alisa LaGamma and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of the effects of turbulent history on one of Africa’s most storied kingdoms, Kongo: Power and Majesty presents over 170 works of art from the Kingdom of Kongo (an area that includes present-day Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola). The book covers 400 years of Kongolese culture, from the fifteenth century, when Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian merchants and missionaries brought Christianity to the region, to the nineteenth, when engagement with Europe had turned to colonial incursion and the kingdom dissolved under the pressures of displacement, civil war, and the devastation of the slave trade. The works of art—which range from depictions of European iconography rendered in powerful, indigenous forms to fearsome minkondi, or power figures—serve as an assertion of enduring majesty in the face of upheaval, and richly illustrate the book’s powerful thesis.
Download or read book Africa the West written by James W. Fernández and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1972 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book offers some exciting examples of the insights to be gained from studies of the intellectual responses of Africans to the West. In six case studies, anthropologists, historians, and a literary critic study the impact of the West on African patterns of thought."--Library Journal
Download or read book Tropical Cowboys written by Ch. Didier Gondola and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-10 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An innovative and original study that sheds light on masculinity, youth culture, performative violence, and the circuit of global imagery.” —Stephan F. Miescher, author of Making Men in Ghana During the 1950s and 60s in the Congo city of Kinshasa, there emerged young urban male gangs known as “Bills” or “Yankees.” Modeling themselves on the images of the iconic American cowboy from Hollywood film, the Bills sought to negotiate lives lived under oppressive economic, social, and political conditions. They developed their own style, subculture, and slang and as Ch. Didier Gondola shows, engaged in a quest for manhood through bodybuilding, marijuana, violent sexual behavior, and other transgressive acts. Gondola argues that this street culture became a backdrop for Congo-Zaire’s emergence as an independent nation and continues to exert powerful influence on the country’s urban youth culture today. “Aligns social banditry with popular cultural formations and subcultures. This has been a longstanding feature of Didier Gondola’s scholarship that is of great interest.” —Peter J. Bloom, University of California, Santa Barbara “Its approach in terms of poverty and unemployment combined with a subtle interest in performance and the creation of an original culture makes this book an eye-opener. Both the dramatic subject and the author’s vivid style make it a pleasure to read and also food for thought regarding issues that haunt not only Africa but also the world at large.” —American Historical Review
Download or read book Africa Sub Sahara written by Harlan D. Robinson and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Kongo Kingdom written by Koen Bostoen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kongo kingdom, which arose in the Atlantic Coast region of West-Central Africa, is a famous emblem of Africa's past yet little is still known of its origins and early history. This book sheds new light on that all important period and goes on to explain the significance of its cosmopolitan culture in the wider world. Bringing together different new strands of historical evidence as well as scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, archaeology, art history, history and linguistics, it is the first book to approach the history of this famous Central African kingdom from a cross-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are written by distinguished and/or upcoming experts of Kongo history with a focus on political space, taking us through processes of centralisation and decentralisation, the historical politics of extraversion and internal dynamics, and the geographical distribution of aspects of material and immaterial Kongo culture.
Download or read book Kimbanguism 100 Years On written by Adrien Nginamau Ngudiankama and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its genesis in 1921, Kimbanguism has constituted one of the most fascinating socio-cultural movements of the Kongo region. This interdisciplinary collection covers the socio-cultural dynamics of the Kimbanguist church and its contribution to African studies over the past hundred years. Scholars renowned for their Kongo studies work, such as Wyatt MacGaffey, John M. Janzen, and John K. Thornton, contributed to this collection.
Download or read book African Voices in the African American Heritage written by Betty M. Kuyk and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The survival of African belief systems and social structures in contemporary African American culture
Download or read book Historical Transformations written by Kajsa Ekholm Friedman and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2008 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Historical Transformations represents the work of two distinguished anthropologists over three decades on the history and importance of global thinking in the social sciences. The authors consider numerous examples for which local phenomena can only be understood within the contexts of global systems. Their multidisciplinary work touches on many aspects of social and individual life as well as long-term historical process."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Bushmeat written by Theodore Trefon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In much of Central Africa, eating wildlife is seen as a normal, desirable and common-sense practice. Almost all wild animals, from the largest mammals to the smallest invertebrates, are hunted, traded and consumed, providing vital income and nutrition for millions of people. But as demand for bushmeat grows, animal populations are being decimated, directly impacting biodiversity, local economies and public health. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Bushmeat explores questions ranging from deforestation and conservation strategies to infectious diseases, urban street food and law enforcement. It explains how the popularity of wild meat consumption has spread from rural areas into major cities, fueled by rapid urbanization, poorly defined regulations, and developing trade networks-whether small-scale and informal, or commercial and politically connected. While unsustainable hunting practices pose clear problems for wildlife conservation, they also increase the risk of rural food insecurity and of new infectious diseases emerging-as HIV, Ebola and Covid-19 have shown. But cultural attachment to wild meat, and its dietary importance for many communities, make the "bushmeat crisis" difficult to solve. Based on extensive interviews and a comprehensive review of secondary literature, Bushmeat presents a startling account of one of the Anthropocene's catastrophes in the making.
