Perspectives on Africa

by Roy Grinker (George Washington University); Christopher Steiner (Connecticut College)

• ISBN13: 9781557866868
• ISBN10: 1557866864
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Perspectives on Africa brings key works in African studies to a wide range of readers. Forty-four articles have been selected either because they have proved to be classic and influential, or because of their significance to the current development of the field. The book's combined focus on ethnography and theory gives the student the means to link theory with data, and perspective with practice. The book is at once an introduction to the cultures of Africa, and a history of how those cultures have been perceived and interpreted. After a general introduction to contemporary issues in African studies, the volume is organized into ten parts, each introduced by the editors and organized around major debates and central issues. The articles illustrate the dynamic processes by and through which scholars have described and understood African history and culture, and show how profoundly the ethnography of Africa has influenced the direction and development of anthropological and social theory. The authors include anthropologists, historians, philosophers and critics. Collectively they show the multiplicities of voice in African studies, and reveal the interpenetration of ideas and concepts within and across disciplines, regions and historical periods. The book is illustrated with maps and photographs, and includes guides to further reading on all main issues and subjects. It will be welcomed by all students of African history and culture.

Author Biography

Roy Richard Grinker is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, DC. He has written widely on Zaire and Korea and is the author of Houses in the Rainforest: Ethnicity and Inequality among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa (1994).

Christopher B. Steiner is Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies at Connecticut College. He is the author of African Art in Transit (1994), which was awarded the 1993-94 Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology and co-editor (with Ruth B Phillips) of Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds (1998). He has taught anthropology and art history at Harvard University, UCLA, University of Southern California and the University of East Anglia.

Table of Contents

Preface	x
Acknowledgments	xiv
Introduction: Africa in Perspective	xvii
PART I FROM TRIBE TO ETHNICITY: KINSHIP AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION	1	(86)
Introduction	2	(9)
The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups	11	(13)
Meyer Fortes
The Nuer: Time and Space	24	(14)
E. E. Evans-Pritchard
The Illusion of Tribe	38	(14)
Aidan W. Southall
Ethnicity in Southern African History	52	(17)
Leroy Vail
Of Totemism and Ethnicity: Consciousness, Practice and the Signs of Inequality	69	(18)
John L. Comaroff
PART II ECONOMICS AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM	87	(124)
Introduction	88	(13)
Lele Economy Compared with the Bushong	101	(18)
Mary Douglas
Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv	119	(10)
Paul Bohannan
Research on an African Mode of Production	129	(13)
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch
Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana	142	(21)
Keith Hart
Bitter Money: Forbidden Exchange in East Africa	163	(27)
Parker Shipton
The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer	190	(21)
Sharon Hutchinson
PART III HUNTER-GATHERER STUDIES IN AFRICA: THE MBUTI, THE! KUNG SAN, AND CURRENT DEBATES	211	(82)
Introduction	212	(6)
The Lesson of the Pygmies	218	(10)
Colin M. Turnbull
Houses in the Rainforest: Gender and Ethnicity among the Lese and Efe in Zaire	228	(18)
Roy Richard Grinker
Land Filled with Flies: The Evolution of Illusion	246	(23)
Edwin N. Wilmsen
Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?: Situating the Kalahari San in History	269	(24)
Jacqueline S. Solway
Richard B. Lee
PART IV WITCHCRAFT, SCIENCE, AND RATIONALITY: THE TRANSLATION OF CULTURE	293	(66)
Introduction	294	(5)
Conversations on Rain-making	299	(4)
David Livingstone
The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortuate Events	303	(9)
E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Understanding a Primitive Society	312	(15)
Peter Winch
African Traditional Thought and Western Science	327	(13)
Robin Horton
Kinship, Witchraft and the Market	340	(19)
Peter Geschiere
PART V ANCESTORS, GODS, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION	359	(64)
Introduction	360	(6)
Conversations with Ogotemmeli	366	(13)
Marcel Griaule
African Philosophy, Myth and Reality	379	(13)
Paulin J. Hountondji
How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes Towards the Orisa	392	(20)
Karin Barber
Ancestors as Elders in Africa	412	(11)
Igor Kopytoff
PART VI ARTS AND AESTHETICS	423	(74)
Introduction	424	(9)
Humorous Masks and Serious Politics among Afikpo Ibo	433	(17)
Simon Ottenberg
Principles of Opposition and Vitality in Fang Aesthetics	450	(11)
James W. Fernandez
The Cycle and Stagnation of Smells: Pastoralists-Fishermen Relationships in an East African Society	461	(21)
Uri Almagor
In Township Tonight! South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre	482	(15)
David Coplan
PART VII SEX AND GENDER STUDIES IN AFRICA	497	(70)
Economy and Society
Introduction	498	(8)
The Economics of Polygamy	506	(12)
Ester Boserup
Women and Men, Cloth and Colonization: The Transformation of Production-Distribution Relations among the Baule (Ivory Coast)	518	(18)
Mona Etienne
``Sitting on a Man'': Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women	536	(14)
Judith Van Allen
Body Politics: Sexuality, Gender, and Domestic Service in Zambia	550	(17)
Karen Tranberg Hansen
PART VIII EUROPE IN AFRICA: COLONIZATION	567	(56)
Introduction	568	(6)
The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa: Methods of Ruling Native Races	574	(11)
Frederick D. Lugard
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa	585	(12)
Walter Rodney
The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa	597	(16)
Terence Ranger
Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary	613	(10)
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
PART IX NATIONS AND NATIONALISM	623	(56)
Introduction	624	(5)
Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century	629	(8)
Leopold Sedar Senghor
On National Culture	637	(16)
Frantz Fanon
Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of Mau Mau	653	(18)
Bruce J. Berman
The Invisible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and the State in Cote d'Ivoire	671	(8)
Christopher B. Steiner
PART X REPRESENTATION AND DISCOURSE	679	(53)
Introduction	680	(9)
Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination	689	(15)
Jean
John Comaroff
Ethnography of Africa: The Usefulness of the Useless	704	(20)
Maxwell Owusu
The Meaning of Our Work	724	(4)
Cheikh Anta Diop
Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism	728	(4)
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Resource Guide	732	(1)
I Journals	732	(1)
II Bibliographies	733