{"title":"Symbolic Confrontations: Muslims imagining the state in Africa (review)","authors":"L. Villalón","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0065","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126252435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
religious encounter. As it stands, Religious Traditions is much closer to a work of reference than a work of interpretation. This may have been Isichei’s intention, but, given the availability of a growing number of encyclopaedias with short essays on much of her subject matter, an interpretative essay would have been more useful. Nevertheless, Isichei should be commended for attempting such a difficult task, and for writing a series of books that make African religions accessible to undergraduates – a service of great importance to Africanists.
{"title":"Tongnaab: the history of a West African god (review)","authors":"Jeff D Grischow","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0051","url":null,"abstract":"religious encounter. As it stands, Religious Traditions is much closer to a work of reference than a work of interpretation. This may have been Isichei’s intention, but, given the availability of a growing number of encyclopaedias with short essays on much of her subject matter, an interpretative essay would have been more useful. Nevertheless, Isichei should be commended for attempting such a difficult task, and for writing a series of books that make African religions accessible to undergraduates – a service of great importance to Africanists.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122429287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
related to the Ngoni penetration and later Maji Maji struggles than to Mkwawa and the Hehe hegemonic expansionism that is characteristic of the pre-colonial history of northern Njombe. It is due to this omission that A History of the Excluded fails to explain in convincing detail the Maji Maji struggles in southern Ubena – especially so for the battles at Yakobi Mission and the Nyikamtwe (the Valley of the Skull). The same is true of the downplayed role of the military school of the Wanyikongwe so well described by Ndembwela Ngunangwa in Indigenous African Education (1988). Narratives of the descendants of people who fought those battles could have provided a more rounded picture of the Bena’s early colonial resistance and social history. The theme of ‘exclusion within incorporation’ permeates the book. It is argued that Njombe District was ‘marginalized even as it was incorporated into the colonial economy’. Under the two colonial regimes the district provided migrant labour for the mines and plantations, while being effectively excluded from ‘agricultural markets, from access to medical services, from schooling – from all opportunity . . . to escape the impoverishing trap of migrant labour’ (p. 1). One would like to query whether the creation of a labour reserve in Njombe devoid of other development initiatives was really an act of exclusion or one of incorporation by ‘proletarianization’. I would argue this was an attempt at ‘proletarianization’ of a district that proved abortive. Colonial capitalism penetrated, but did not significantly alter, the traditional familyoriented, resource-based, subsistence-level ‘peasant mode of production’. By remaining with their land and other ‘means of production’, the peasantry had an ‘exit option’ within the so-called ‘private family sphere’ which they pitched against the local development goals posed by the state, both colonial and post-colonial. These doubts notwithstanding, the author(s) have done an excellent job in reconstructing and describing the process of social change from the perspective of struggling individuals. The result has been an illuminating social history of a group of people that would later come to form a dynamic middle class in a locally sourced political economy in Tanzania. It is a worthy present by one of the authors to a nation that has given him a wife.
{"title":"Farmers and Townspeople in a Changing Nigeria: Abakaliki during colonial times (1905–1960) (review)","authors":"D. V. D. Bersselaar","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0047","url":null,"abstract":"related to the Ngoni penetration and later Maji Maji struggles than to Mkwawa and the Hehe hegemonic expansionism that is characteristic of the pre-colonial history of northern Njombe. It is due to this omission that A History of the Excluded fails to explain in convincing detail the Maji Maji struggles in southern Ubena – especially so for the battles at Yakobi Mission and the Nyikamtwe (the Valley of the Skull). The same is true of the downplayed role of the military school of the Wanyikongwe so well described by Ndembwela Ngunangwa in Indigenous African Education (1988). Narratives of the descendants of people who fought those battles could have provided a more rounded picture of the Bena’s early colonial resistance and social history. The theme of ‘exclusion within incorporation’ permeates the book. It is argued that Njombe District was ‘marginalized even as it was incorporated into the colonial economy’. Under the two colonial regimes the district provided migrant labour for the mines and plantations, while being effectively excluded from ‘agricultural markets, from access to medical services, from schooling – from all opportunity . . . to escape the impoverishing trap of migrant labour’ (p. 1). One would like to query whether the creation of a labour reserve in Njombe devoid of other development initiatives was really an act of exclusion or one of incorporation by ‘proletarianization’. I would argue this was an attempt at ‘proletarianization’ of a district that proved abortive. Colonial capitalism penetrated, but did not significantly alter, the traditional familyoriented, resource-based, subsistence-level ‘peasant mode of production’. By remaining with their land and other ‘means of production’, the peasantry had an ‘exit option’ within the so-called ‘private family sphere’ which they pitched against the local development goals posed by the state, both colonial and post-colonial. These doubts notwithstanding, the author(s) have done an excellent job in reconstructing and describing the process of social change from the perspective of struggling individuals. The result has been an illuminating social history of a group of people that would later come to form a dynamic middle class in a locally sourced political economy in Tanzania. It is a worthy present by one of the authors to a nation that has given him a wife.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129867168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chapters 3 and 4 shift the focus to the south, establishing the ritual terrain of southern Ghana and following Tongnaab’s diffusion from the north. In the south, Tongnaab became ‘Nana Tongo’, a gendered transformation wherein the Talensi god developed into a source of protection against witchcraft. Chapter 3 establishes the importance of anti-witchcraft cults between the 1870s and 1920s, in Asante and the colony, against bayi (an Akan term for witchcraft). Chapter 5 charts the diffusion of Tongnaab, as southern elites searched for protection against bayi’s threats to health and financial welfare. As Nana Tongo, Tongnaab provided spiritual protection, a sort of ‘medicine’, for chiefs and elites as they struggled with the modernization of the southern economy through cocoa production. Nana Tongo thus was not a relic of the past, as colonial officials presumed, but rather a modern response to a modernizing world. Allman and Parker conclude their book by challenging the notion that Talensi tradition and agency have been destroyed by colonialism and modernization. The Tongnaab shrines have been developed into a tourist attraction (with the help of the authors), but they are not relics of a bygone era. Instead, Tongnaab’s survival illustrates the ongoing efforts of the Talensi to ‘modernize tradition’ and to make their own history within a modernizing world. It is a passionate conclusion to an excellent book, one which should be widely read.
{"title":"Les Dieux du territoire: penser autrement la généalogie (review)","authors":"Carol Lentz","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0053","url":null,"abstract":"Chapters 3 and 4 shift the focus to the south, establishing the ritual terrain of southern Ghana and following Tongnaab’s diffusion from the north. In the south, Tongnaab became ‘Nana Tongo’, a gendered transformation wherein the Talensi god developed into a source of protection against witchcraft. Chapter 3 establishes the importance of anti-witchcraft cults between the 1870s and 1920s, in Asante and the colony, against bayi (an Akan term for witchcraft). Chapter 5 charts the diffusion of Tongnaab, as southern elites searched for protection against bayi’s threats to health and financial welfare. As Nana Tongo, Tongnaab provided spiritual protection, a sort of ‘medicine’, for chiefs and elites as they struggled with the modernization of the southern economy through cocoa production. Nana Tongo thus was not a relic of the past, as colonial officials presumed, but rather a modern response to a modernizing world. Allman and Parker conclude their book by challenging the notion that Talensi tradition and agency have been destroyed by colonialism and modernization. The Tongnaab shrines have been developed into a tourist attraction (with the help of the authors), but they are not relics of a bygone era. Instead, Tongnaab’s survival illustrates the ongoing efforts of the Talensi to ‘modernize tradition’ and to make their own history within a modernizing world. It is a passionate conclusion to an excellent book, one which should be widely read.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"160 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133711846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
women’s status or on gender relations? Unfortunately we do not learn much. While young men show agency in the contestation over custom and power, women remain largely reified, soulless or absent, while gender relations remain undefined throughout. Apart from the fact that the book does not live up to its promise of gender analysis, the central chapter presents a detailed and contextually rich account of the tenant labour system in Natal, which is useful for those interested in the rural historiography of Southern Africa. If women fail to feature much, at least male labour tenants, young and old, and their white masters, come to life.
{"title":"A History of the Excluded: making family a refuge from state in twentieth-century Tanzania (review)","authors":"C. Mung’ong’o","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0056","url":null,"abstract":"women’s status or on gender relations? Unfortunately we do not learn much. While young men show agency in the contestation over custom and power, women remain largely reified, soulless or absent, while gender relations remain undefined throughout. Apart from the fact that the book does not live up to its promise of gender analysis, the central chapter presents a detailed and contextually rich account of the tenant labour system in Natal, which is useful for those interested in the rural historiography of Southern Africa. If women fail to feature much, at least male labour tenants, young and old, and their white masters, come to life.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125572302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
problem, Walley argues, is that tourism developers are not only attracted to Mafia because of its ‘pristine’ environment, but also because labour is cheap. Wages in the tourism sector in developing countries can hardly ever replace income from other livelihood strategies. Interesting though this book is, a few critical remarks can be made. Each chapter starts with a theoretical introduction, and these sections disrupt the flow of the book somewhat; nor are they all up to date. Walley has a slight tendency to caricature her opponents in the debates she engages in. For instance, her rendition of globalization theories ignores the fact that many scholars before her have concluded that globalization is not new. The same applies to the presentation of the different views on the islands’ history and the concept of development. All earlier cautions about the need to acknowledge the heterogeneous character of ‘the state’ and international environmental/development organizations seem forgotten, and a coherent, simplistic view of development is ascribed to them. While the views of residents about tourism and the islands’ history are presented in quite personalized accounts, these are confronted with the views of anonymous, abstracted tourists. Not all ‘stakeholders’ are equally represented in the book. The voices we hear are mainly those of residents and the technical adviser. I can imagine that the Park Warden was less accessible, but Walley did have ample opportunities for discussions with the tourism developers, given that she was hosted by them. It would have been interesting to have some more detailed, less generalized, information about their views as well. Lastly, some of the comparisons of ‘Western’ and ‘local’ ideas of development are quite shallow – fewer versus more children, for example – though the contrast in religious ideas about the end of time is interesting. A lot has been written about anti-modernist discourses, not only in tourism, but also in conservation where there is a tendency to privilege ‘primitive’ indigenous peoples; references to this extensive literature are largely missing. Nevertheless, I recommend Walley’s book to anyone interested in community-based natural resource management, scholars and practitioners alike, as well as to anyone interested in the Swahili coast.
{"title":"Gender and Generations Apart: labor tenants and customary law in segregation-era South Africa, 1920s to 1940s (review)","authors":"G. Geisler","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0050","url":null,"abstract":"problem, Walley argues, is that tourism developers are not only attracted to Mafia because of its ‘pristine’ environment, but also because labour is cheap. Wages in the tourism sector in developing countries can hardly ever replace income from other livelihood strategies. Interesting though this book is, a few critical remarks can be made. Each chapter starts with a theoretical introduction, and these sections disrupt the flow of the book somewhat; nor are they all up to date. Walley has a slight tendency to caricature her opponents in the debates she engages in. For instance, her rendition of globalization theories ignores the fact that many scholars before her have concluded that globalization is not new. The same applies to the presentation of the different views on the islands’ history and the concept of development. All earlier cautions about the need to acknowledge the heterogeneous character of ‘the state’ and international environmental/development organizations seem forgotten, and a coherent, simplistic view of development is ascribed to them. While the views of residents about tourism and the islands’ history are presented in quite personalized accounts, these are confronted with the views of anonymous, abstracted tourists. Not all ‘stakeholders’ are equally represented in the book. The voices we hear are mainly those of residents and the technical adviser. I can imagine that the Park Warden was less accessible, but Walley did have ample opportunities for discussions with the tourism developers, given that she was hosted by them. It would have been interesting to have some more detailed, less generalized, information about their views as well. Lastly, some of the comparisons of ‘Western’ and ‘local’ ideas of development are quite shallow – fewer versus more children, for example – though the contrast in religious ideas about the end of time is interesting. A lot has been written about anti-modernist discourses, not only in tourism, but also in conservation where there is a tendency to privilege ‘primitive’ indigenous peoples; references to this extensive literature are largely missing. Nevertheless, I recommend Walley’s book to anyone interested in community-based natural resource management, scholars and practitioners alike, as well as to anyone interested in the Swahili coast.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123975112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
formations – post-colonial studies, cultural studies, Third World studies, African and Africana studies, comparative anthropological and sociological studies of modernity – that are restructuring, problematizing, and enriching our understandings of cultural (self)-conceptions and categories’ (pp. 6–7). I suspect that some readers will have already decided from this taster whether they want to read the book or not. The topic is vast, important and contentious; the prose dense. To suggest the broad range of reference, it is enough to remark that E. W. Blyden’s name is joined in the book by those of writers and thinkers from across the world and across disciplines. Other names in the index include Chinua Achebe, Kwegyir Aggrey, Benedict Anderson, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwame Arhin, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ahuma Attoh and Nnamdi Azikiwe – to stray no further than surnames beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. Korang is at ease with many of those he draws into his argument. In view of the broad sweep of the discussion, it is not surprising to find in the Acknowledgements references to fellow intellectuals from various disciplines whose support was important in seeing through this hugely ambitious project. The list includes Stephen Slemon, Biodun Jeyifo, Zohreh Sullivan, Toyin Falola and Paul Zeleza. The last two were particularly involved, it seems, in getting a ‘sizeable manuscript approved for publication’ and out in the distinguished series of which Falola is the Senior Editor. There are indications in the text, including the reference to 1997 as ‘recently’ (p. 305), that this process took some time. The research on which the book is based is very impressive, but sometimes ‘improvised’ and incomplete. I particularly appreciate the indication that relatives had helped by visiting archives in London (‘Colingdale’, sic) and West Africa on Korang’s behalf. In the real world this is what happens and projects of this magnitude involve many. It may be that the items recovered in Cape Coast Archive included articles by Kobina Sekyi. I was happy to see Kofi Baku’s annotated bibliography of Sekyi’s work listed among the works consulted, sorry not to see use had been made of the same historian’s thesis, ‘An Intellectual in Nationalist Politics’. That important study examines some of the myths about Sekyi’s life that Korang repeats uncritically. With such a vast topic, so many ‘stories’ to tell and such an interdisciplinary approach, it was, perhaps, inevitable that there would be areas around the edge of Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa that would be inadequately investigated, swept up into the thesis. This said, it should be recognized that the central interests of the volume, those described in the quotation with which I began, have been vigorously pursued. Readers prepared to grapple with the laborious prose in which Korang has expressed his ideas will be exhausted, irritated and rewarded by his book.
{"title":"Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera (review)","authors":"Drew Shaw","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0036","url":null,"abstract":"formations – post-colonial studies, cultural studies, Third World studies, African and Africana studies, comparative anthropological and sociological studies of modernity – that are restructuring, problematizing, and enriching our understandings of cultural (self)-conceptions and categories’ (pp. 6–7). I suspect that some readers will have already decided from this taster whether they want to read the book or not. The topic is vast, important and contentious; the prose dense. To suggest the broad range of reference, it is enough to remark that E. W. Blyden’s name is joined in the book by those of writers and thinkers from across the world and across disciplines. Other names in the index include Chinua Achebe, Kwegyir Aggrey, Benedict Anderson, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwame Arhin, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ahuma Attoh and Nnamdi Azikiwe – to stray no further than surnames beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. Korang is at ease with many of those he draws into his argument. In view of the broad sweep of the discussion, it is not surprising to find in the Acknowledgements references to fellow intellectuals from various disciplines whose support was important in seeing through this hugely ambitious project. The list includes Stephen Slemon, Biodun Jeyifo, Zohreh Sullivan, Toyin Falola and Paul Zeleza. The last two were particularly involved, it seems, in getting a ‘sizeable manuscript approved for publication’ and out in the distinguished series of which Falola is the Senior Editor. There are indications in the text, including the reference to 1997 as ‘recently’ (p. 305), that this process took some time. The research on which the book is based is very impressive, but sometimes ‘improvised’ and incomplete. I particularly appreciate the indication that relatives had helped by visiting archives in London (‘Colingdale’, sic) and West Africa on Korang’s behalf. In the real world this is what happens and projects of this magnitude involve many. It may be that the items recovered in Cape Coast Archive included articles by Kobina Sekyi. I was happy to see Kofi Baku’s annotated bibliography of Sekyi’s work listed among the works consulted, sorry not to see use had been made of the same historian’s thesis, ‘An Intellectual in Nationalist Politics’. That important study examines some of the myths about Sekyi’s life that Korang repeats uncritically. With such a vast topic, so many ‘stories’ to tell and such an interdisciplinary approach, it was, perhaps, inevitable that there would be areas around the edge of Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa that would be inadequately investigated, swept up into the thesis. This said, it should be recognized that the central interests of the volume, those described in the quotation with which I began, have been vigorously pursued. Readers prepared to grapple with the laborious prose in which Korang has expressed his ideas will be exhausted, irritated and rewarded by his book.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":" 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132124855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Smith claims it was based on factual data, the authors approached the topic already committed to a belief that God universally reveals himself in order that the Christian message will be recognized and accepted when it is preached. In Smith’s words: ‘When the Christian missionary comes with the Good News of God revealed in Jesus Christ as a loving Father – whatever else in his teaching they find it hard to accept, this [belief in God] at least they readily take to their hearts.’ Young concludes rightly that on the whole non-theological studies have ignored Smith’s contributions to the study of African cultures and religions. He cites Brian Morris’s Anthropological Studies of Religion (1987) as an example, where Morris reviews the history of the relationship between anthropology and religion but, in Young’s words, does so ‘without mentioning Smith at all’. If Young’s book lacks a certain critical distance, it does redress such an oversight. After reading Young’s account, if nothing else, the reader will be forced to evaluate the significance of Edwin Smith as an Africanist, whose skills extended to a wide range of academic disciplines and whose impact on African studies Young convincingly demonstrates.
{"title":"Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment (review)","authors":"R. Waller","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0040","url":null,"abstract":"Smith claims it was based on factual data, the authors approached the topic already committed to a belief that God universally reveals himself in order that the Christian message will be recognized and accepted when it is preached. In Smith’s words: ‘When the Christian missionary comes with the Good News of God revealed in Jesus Christ as a loving Father – whatever else in his teaching they find it hard to accept, this [belief in God] at least they readily take to their hearts.’ Young concludes rightly that on the whole non-theological studies have ignored Smith’s contributions to the study of African cultures and religions. He cites Brian Morris’s Anthropological Studies of Religion (1987) as an example, where Morris reviews the history of the relationship between anthropology and religion but, in Young’s words, does so ‘without mentioning Smith at all’. If Young’s book lacks a certain critical distance, it does redress such an oversight. After reading Young’s account, if nothing else, the reader will be forced to evaluate the significance of Edwin Smith as an Africanist, whose skills extended to a wide range of academic disciplines and whose impact on African studies Young convincingly demonstrates.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126347351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Quiet Wise Spirit: Edwin W Smith 1876-1957 and Africa (review)","authors":"J. Cox","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133331218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
as the simple product of European influence. The argument is persuasive, and is certainly in line with much recent Africanist scholarship, but it is worth noting that the material record he has uncovered is by itself probably insufficient to sustain the point. Throughout the work, DeCorse makes considerable and necessary use of the work of historians, though he has not himself examined the original documentary record in a systematic way. That record is extremely large and exists in multiple languages; there is much that the historians whose work he cites have not yet studied, and a fuller examination of the archival documentation might well change our understanding of the historical context within which DeCorse seeks to interpret the archeological data. The author might also have provided more comparative material drawn from historical archaeological investigations elsewhere on the continent to help put the Elmina case in continental perspective. Despite these shortcomings, there is no doubt that DeCorse’s work constitutes a important contribution to the historical literature on Ghana and West Africa.
{"title":"Land, Labor and Capital in Ghana: From Slave to Free Labor in Asante, 1807-1956 (review)","authors":"Benjamin N. Lawrance","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0030","url":null,"abstract":"as the simple product of European influence. The argument is persuasive, and is certainly in line with much recent Africanist scholarship, but it is worth noting that the material record he has uncovered is by itself probably insufficient to sustain the point. Throughout the work, DeCorse makes considerable and necessary use of the work of historians, though he has not himself examined the original documentary record in a systematic way. That record is extremely large and exists in multiple languages; there is much that the historians whose work he cites have not yet studied, and a fuller examination of the archival documentation might well change our understanding of the historical context within which DeCorse seeks to interpret the archeological data. The author might also have provided more comparative material drawn from historical archaeological investigations elsewhere on the continent to help put the Elmina case in continental perspective. Despite these shortcomings, there is no doubt that DeCorse’s work constitutes a important contribution to the historical literature on Ghana and West Africa.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123977557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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