Perspectives on Africa A Reader in Culture, History and Representation

by Grinker, Roy Richard; Lubkemann, Stephen C.; Steiner, Christopher B.

• ISBN13: 9781405190602
• ISBN10: 1405190604
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-05-17
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The second edition of Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation is both an introduction to the cultures of Africa and a history of the interpretations of those cultures. Key essays explore the major issues and debates through a combination of classic articles and the newest research in the field. Explores the dynamic processes by and through which scholars have described and understood African history and culture Includes selections from anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and critics who collectively reveal the interpenetration of ideas and concepts within and across disciplines, regions, and historical periods Offers a combined focus on ethnography and theory, giving students the means to link theory with data and perspective with practice Newly revised and updated edition of this popular text with 14 brand new chapters and two new sections: Conflict and Violent Transformations; and Development, Governance and Globalization

Author Biography

Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and international Affairs at George Washington University Director of the GW Institute for Ethnographic Research and Editor-in-chief of Anthropological Quartely. He is author of four other books including in the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull, and Houses in the Rainforest and Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.
Stephen C. Lubkemann is Associate Professor of Anthropology and international Affairs at George Washington University. He is author of Culture in Chaos An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War and is associate editor for Anthropological Quarterly and a co-founder of GWU's Diapora Research Program.
Christopher B. Steiner is the Lucy C. McDannel 22 Professor of Art History and Anthropology, and Director of Museum Studies at Connecticut College He is the author of the award winning book African Art in Transit, and co-editor (with Ruth Phillips) of Unpacking Culture Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds.

Table of Contents

Representation and Discourse

1991. ôAfrica Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination

1974. ôThe Meaning of Our Work,"

1993. ôEurope Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism

1988. ôDiscourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness,"

From Tribe to Ethnicity: Kinship and Social Organization

The Nuer: Time and Space

The Illusion of Tribe

Ethnicity in Southern African History

Economics as a Cultural System

Economy Compared with the Bushong

Research on an African Mode of Production

The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer, cf. Smith

Hunter-Gatherers in Africa

The Lesson of the Pygmies

Houses in the Rainforest

Filled with Flies

Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?

Witchcraft, Science and Rationality

Conversations on Rain-making

The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events

Understanding a Primitive Society

1993. ôThe Moral Economy of Witchcraft."

Ancestors, Gods, and the Philosophy of Religion

Conversations with Ogotommeli

African Philosophy, Myth and Reality

ancestors as Elders in Africa, cf. Lubkemann, West

Arts, Aesthetics, and Heritage

1972. ôHumorous Masks and Serious Politics among the Afikpo Igbo,"

1999. ôArt, Identity, Boundaries: Postmodernism and Contemporary African Art,"

As Plato Duly Warned: Music, Politics and Social Change in Costal East Africa

ôIn Place of Slavery: Fashioning Coastal Identity."

Sex and Gender Studies in Africa

The Economics of Polygamy

"Sitting on a Man"

Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic

Europe in Africa: Colonization

The Dual Mandate

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa

Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary

Nations and Nationalism

Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century

On National Culture

Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of Mau Mau

The Invisible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and the State in Cote d'Ivoire

Violent Transformations: Conflict and Displacement

Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa

"Fighting for the Rainforest"

Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994

Where to be an Ancestor

Development, Governance and Globalization

"Expectations of Modernity"

Development Aid and Structural Violence: The case of Rwanda

"Culture of Corruption"

"The Politics of the Belly."

" 'Govern Yourselves', Democracy and Carnage in Northern Mozambique"

"Nuer-American Passages"

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