Download or read book Tradition Culture and Development in Africa written by Ambe J. Njoh and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By linking culture and tradition with socio-economic development, this book breaks new ground in the discourse on development. It highlights the differences between Euro-centric and African culture, where concepts such as capital accumulation, entrepreneurial attitudes and material wealth are not top priority. In doing so, it dispels popular myths, stereotypes and distortions, as well as discounting misleading accounts about major aspects of African culture and traditional practices.
Download or read book Tradition and Change in Africa written by J. F. Ade Ajayi and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa written by Terence Ranger and published by Springer. This book was released on 1993-06-15 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes as its theme the ways in which governments legitimate their rule, both to themselves and to their subjects. Its introduction explores legitimacy and pre-colonial states, but the three sections of the book deal with colonial legitimacy, the question of legitimation in the transition from colonialism to majority rule, and the contemporary debate about accountability.
Download or read book Searching for Africa in Brazil written by Stefania Capone Laffitte and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-17 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Searching for Africa in Brazil is a learned exploration of tradition and change in Afro-Brazilian religions. Focusing on the convergence of anthropologists’ and religious leaders’ exegeses, Stefania Capone argues that twentieth-century anthropological research contributed to the construction of an ideal Afro-Brazilian religious orthodoxy identified with the Nagô (Yoruba) cult in the northeastern state of Bahia. In contrast to other researchers, Capone foregrounds the agency of Candomblé leaders. She demonstrates that they successfully imposed their vision of Candomblé on anthropologists, reshaping in their own interest narratives of Afro-Brazilian religious practice. The anthropological narratives were then taken as official accounts of religious orthodoxy by many practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions in Brazil. Capone draws on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro as she demonstrates that there is no pure or orthodox Afro-Brazilian religion. Challenging the usual interpretations of Afro-Brazilian religions as fixed entities, completely independent of one another, Capone reveals these practices as parts of a unique religious continuum. She does so through an analysis of ritual variations as well as discursive practices. To illuminate the continuum of Afro-Brazilian religious practice and the tensions between exegetic discourses and ritual practices, Capone focuses on the figure of Exu, the sacred African trickster who allows communication between gods and men. Following Exu and his avatars, she discloses the centrality of notions of prestige and power—mystical and religious—in Afro-Brazilian religions. To explain how religious identity is constantly negotiated among social actors, Capone emphasizes the agency of practitioners and their political agendas in the “return to roots,” or re-Africanization, movement, an attempt to recover the original purity of a mythical and legitimizing Africa.
Download or read book Gender and Language in Sub Saharan Africa written by Lilian Lem Atanga and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-27 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change is the first book to bring together the topics of language and gender, African languages, and gender in African contexts, and it does so in a descriptive, explanatory and critical way. Including fascinating new work and new, often challenging data from Botswana, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this collection looks at some ‘traditional’ uses of language in relation to the gender of its speakers and the gendered nature of the languages themselves; it also identifies and explores social change in terms of both gender and sexuality, as reflected in and constructed by language and discourse. The contributions to this volume are accessibly written and will be of interest to students and established academics working on African sociolinguistics and discourse, as well as those whose interest is language, gender and sexuality.
Download or read book African Religions written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.
Download or read book Being and Becoming written by Chinyere Ukpokolo and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illuminates the complex and constantly shifting social and cultural dynamics that shape peoples identity. Specifically, the volume focuses on the intersections of gender with, culture and identity, and at different historical epochs; on the way men and women define themselves and are defined by diverse peoples and cultures across time and space in sub-Saharan Africa. The discussions presented in this anthology primarily focus on being as a state or condition, defined by sex identity, and how this identity shifts, and hence becoming, assuming diverse meanings in disparate societies, contexts, and time. The discourse, therefore, moves from how the perception of the self in cultural and historical contexts has informed actions and at some other times shaped interpretations given to historical facts, to how changing economic realities also shape the definitions and constructions of social and relational issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. The historical trajectories of Islamic religion, colonialism and Christian missionary activities in sub-Saharan Africa have shaped the worlds of the peoples of the region and impacted on gender relations.
Download or read book Ori Oke Spirituality and Social Change in Africa written by Nathanael Yaovi and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dynamic nature of Christianity has necessitated its movement from the cathedral to the mountain top. This has occasioned a proliferation of Prayer Mountains throughout Africa. In Yorubaland of southwestern Nigeria, Prayer Mountain is known as Ori-Oke. Like many communities in Africa, the Yoruba are confronted with fundamental challenges in life for which people do not rest until they find solutions. Within the praxis of Nigerian Christian lexicon Ori-Oke is synonymous with the enactment of a sacred space on a mountain top characterised by various prayer regimes, rituals, exorcism and religious practices, aimed at eliciting the help of the divine to alleviate the existential challenges of devotees. This book explores the resacralisation of space on the mountains, highlighting how humans and the divine interact in Yorubaland. It brings into conversation 35 empirically rich scholarly essays on the role of Ori-Oke to those seeking divine intervention in their lives. Today, Ori-Oke have become centres of pilgrimage as a result of the lived experiences of devotees, creating unique religious value quite distinct from the aesthetic value of these mountain tops. The spirituality of Ori-Oke is anchored on the absolute belief in God and the infusion of traditional African worldview sensibilities in religious rites and worship. Ori-Oke spirituality employs resources of Christian tradition, introduced by the formal agents of Christianity, synthesised with traditional culture, to develop a life based on the precepts of an African Christianity. The book is an intellectual discourse on Ori-Oke spirituality, reflecting its contemporary relevance in a context of religious innovation and competition.
Download or read book Wines of the New South Africa written by Tim James and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sought after by European aristocrats and a favorite of Napoleon Bonaparte, the sweet wines of Constantia in the Cape Colony were considered to be among the worldÕs best during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the first democratic elections in 1994, South Africa began to re-emerge onto the international wine scene. Tim James, an expert on South African wines, takes the reader on an information-packed tour of the region, showing us how and why the unique combination of terroir and climate, together with dramatic improvements in winemaking techniques, result in wines that are once again winning accolades. James describes important grape varieties and wine stylesÑfrom delicate sparkling, to rich fortified, and everything in betweenÑincluding the varietal blends that produce some of the finest Cape wines. Anchoring his narrative in a rich historical context, James discusses all the major wine regions, from Cederberg to Walker Bay, complete with profiles of more than 150 of the countryÕs finest producers.
Download or read book Hip Hop Africa written by Eric Charry and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Eric Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa, the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, ragga, and gospel music, and the continued vitality of drumming. Covering Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa, this volume offers unique perspectives on the presence and development of hip hop and other music in Africa and their place in global music culture.
Download or read book Themes in West Africa s History written by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-15 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has long been a need for a new textbook on West Africa’s history. In Themes in West Africa’s History, editor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and his contributors meet this need, examining key themes in West Africa’s prehistory to the present through the lenses of their different disciplines. The contents of the book comprise an introduction and thirteen chapters divided into three parts. Each chapter provides an overview of existing literature on major topics, as well as a short list of recommended reading, and breaks new ground through the incorporation of original research. The first part of the book examines paths to a West African past, including perspectives from archaeology, ecology and culture, linguistics, and oral traditions. Part two probes environment, society, and agency and historical change through essays on the slave trade, social inequality, religious interaction, poverty, disease, and urbanization. Part three sheds light on contemporary West Africa in exploring how economic and political developments have shaped religious expression and identity in significant ways. Themes in West Africa’s History represents a range of intellectual views and interpretations from leading scholars on West Africa’s history. It will appeal to college undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in the way it draws on different disciplines and expertise to bring together key themes in West Africa’s history, from prehistory to the present.
Download or read book Funerals in Africa written by Michael Jindra and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across Africa, funerals and events remembering the dead have become larger and even more numerous over the years. Whereas in the West death is normally a private and family affair, in Africa funerals are often the central life cycle event, unparalleled in cost and importance, for which families harness vast amounts of resources to host lavish events for multitudes of people with ramifications well beyond the event. Though officials may try to regulate them, the popularity of these events often makes such efforts fruitless, and the elites themselves spend tremendously on funerals. This volume brings together scholars who have conducted research on funerary events across sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions offer an in-depth understanding of the broad changes and underlying causes in African societies over the years, such as changes in religious beliefs, social structure, urbanization, and technological changes and health.
Download or read book The Dialectical Tradition in South Africa written by Andrew Nash and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-16 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings into view the most enduring and distinctive philosophical current in South African history—one often obscured or patronized as Afrikaner liberalism. It traces this current of thought from nineteenth-century disputes over Dutch liberal theology through Stellenbosch existentialism to the prison writings of Breyten Breytenbach, and examines related themes in the work of Olive Schreiner, M. K. Gandhi, and Richard Turner. At the core of this tradition is a defence of free speech in its classical sense, as a virtue necessary for a good society, rather than in its modern liberal sense as an individual right. Out of this defence of free speech, conducted in the face of charges of heresy, treason, and immorality, a range of philosophical conceptions developed—of the self constituted in dialogue with others, of freedom as transcendence of the given, and of a dialectical movement of consciousness as it is educated through debate and action. This study shows the Socratic commitment to "following the argument where it leads," sustained and developed in the storm and stress of a peculiar modernity.
Download or read book New Testament Eschatology in an African Background written by John S. Mbiti and published by London : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1971 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tradition Culture and Development in Africa written by Ambe J Njoh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fact that Africa continues to lag behind all regions of the world on every indicator of development is hardly contentious. However, there is fierce debate on why this should be the case, despite national and international efforts to reverse this situation. While this book does not attempt to answer this question per se, it addresses a largely ignored, but important issue, which might provide some insights into the matter. This issue is the link between culture/tradition and socio-economic development in Africa. By weaving a common thread through these concepts, this book breaks new ground in the discourse on development. It highlights the differences between Euro-centric culture, which is rooted in capitalist ideology and Protestant ethic, and traditional African culture, where concepts such as capital accumulation, entrepreneurial attitudes and material wealth are not of top priority. In doing so, it dispels popular myths, stereotypes and distortions, as well as discounting misleading accounts about major aspects of African culture and traditional practices.
Download or read book Bodies Politics and African Healing written by Stacey A. Langwick and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how healers generate new therapies and shape the bodies of their patients as they address devils and parasites, anti-witchcraft medicine, and child immunization. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics. This important work bridges postcolonial theory, science, public health, and anthropology.
Download or read book West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals written by Raphael Chijioke Njoku and published by Rochester Studies in African H. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revisionist account of African masquerade carnivals in transnational context that offers readers a unique perspective on the connecting threads between African cultural trends and African American cultural artifacts
