Anthropology
Books
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Victor N Gomia
This book draws on years of rich empirical research on radio drama production in Cameroon to offer a strikingly new perspective in Development Theatre discourse in Africa. Chronicling the history and evolution of Development Theatre practice in Anglophone Africa and arguing for literary forms that address the basic everyday realities of ordinary people in a medium they understand, the book revisits the crucial question of utilitarian literature in a continent that continues to brandish a (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Jean-Pierre Warnier
This book brings and blends together a dozen scholarly articles published by the author since the 1970s. It sketches two different yet related stories: first, that of one of the most ancient and prestigious African civilizations, the antiquity and sophistication of which are becoming more and more prominent as field research unfolds their many facets. Second, the story of the researcher himself, who has had to alter and shift his approach to that civilization as he got to meet (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Ignasio Malizani Jimu
This book explores the changing land relations in the peri-urban villages of Blantyre in Malawi. It questions and debates how and why the peri-urban villages have become the locus of the selling and buying of customary land, the practices and also the relations involved. The book provides rich ethnographic insights on the commodification of land relations, custom, practices, disputes and social relations between land sellers, land buyers, traditional leaders, and intermediaries. The (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Patrick Mbunwe Samba
This book is largely the personal account by Patrick Mbunwe Samba, of how life in his home village of Binshua has been permeated throughout by belief in witchcraft. The book not only provides a historical account informed by his reminiscences of his childhood, it shows as well that even today, belief in witchcraft is very widespread. Witchcraft exerts a profound influence on society in Binshua and in Cameroon in general.
The book also provides accounts of the experiences of others, some of (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Munyaradzi Mawere
This is a comprehensive study and erudite description of the struggle of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in an Age of Globalization, using in particular eighty-four children’s traditional games in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The book is an informative and interesting anthropological account of rare African children’s games at the risk of disappearing under globalization. The virtue of the book does not only lie in its modest philosophical questioning of those knowledge forms that consider (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Khaukanani Mavhungu
This is a comparative ethnographic study of witchcraft and associated violence between the kingdoms of Kom and Venda in Cameroon and South Africa respectively. The book shows why despite its prevalence in both societies, witchcraft does not lead to open violence in Kom, while such large-scale violence is commonplace in Venda. It reveals that this difference can be explained by factors such as the variations in local ideas on witches, differences in the role of traditional authorities, and (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Michael Stasik
This book offers an intriguing account of the complex and often contradictory relations between music and society in Freetown’s past and present. Blending anthropological thought with ethnographic and historical research, it explores the conjunctures of music practices and social affiliations and the diverse patterns of social dis/connections that music helps to shape, to (re)create, and to defy in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. The first half of the book traces back the changing social (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Philip Mutaka
Ce livre dévoile un matériel ethnographique innovant, notamment, des événements dans lesquels des individus font face au super naturel, tel la réaction à la mort d’un enfant dont l’opération chirurgicale était considérée comme la réponse aux prières à Dieu, la manière dont des étudiants Africains ont fait face à de mauvais esprits dans leurs vies, comment des Africains ont expérimenté le phénomène de « miracle » avec une toile de fond qui marie les religions importées (Christianisme et Islam) avec leurs (...)
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2012, author(s)-editor(s) Philip Mutaka
This book presents innovative material on ethnography; more specifically, it exposes events where African individuals deal with the supernatural – such as: reaction to the death of a child whose surgical operation was considered an answer to prayers to God, how African students have dealt with evil spirits in their lives, how African people have experimented the phenomenon of “miracle” with their specific religious background that merges imported religions (Christian and Islam) and their (...)
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2013, author(s)-editor(s) Francis B. Nyamnjoh,
Inge Brinkman,
Mirjam de Bruijn
Marginality does not mean isolation. In Africa where people are permanently on the move in search, inter alia, of a ‘better elsewhere’, marginality means disconnection to obvious possibilities and the invisibility of the myriad connections that make life possible for the ordinarily sidestepped. This book is about the workings of networks of the mobile in Africa, a continent usually associated with the ‘global shadows’ of the world. How do changes in the possibilities for communication, with the (...)
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