Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution. By Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy. Syracuse Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010. Pp. xxxvii, 319; maps, bibliography, glossary, index. $49.95. In the autumn of 2010, several thousand Western Saharans (known as Saharawis) set up an encampment at the settlement of Gdaim Izik, a few kilometers east of the territorial capital of El-Ayoun, in order to protest the actions of Morocco, which has occupied the former Spanish colony since late 1975 and whose disputed status has produced a diplomatic impasse of over three decades' duration. The Gdaim Izik camp was designed by its organizers to be a nonviolent way of resisting the political repression, economic corruption and favoritism, and general lack of development and opportunities by Morocco, which has characterized the occupation. News of the camp- as well as the conditions that led to its establishment- spread rapidly by means of electronic social media unheard of only a decade ago, including Facebook and Twitter as well as cell phones and Internet videos. All of this publicity had been steadily restricting- probably permanently- the ability of Morocco to control which information about the territory was accessible to outsiders. But on November 8, Rabat's formidable security forces struck back, forcibly dismantling the camp and injuring and arresting perhaps hundreds of protesters. At least two dozen persons on both sides were killed, and rioting soon spread to the center of El-Ayoun in what was the worst outbreak of unrest in Western Sahara in many years. The actions at Gdaim Izik also captured the attention, however temporarily, of the international mainstream news media, focusing renewed attention on the struggle between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which has always advocated an independent Western Sahara. Gdaim Izik was also an eerie forerunner of the massive unrest in North Africa that toppled Tunisia's dictatorship in January 2011 and Egypt's a month later, and put several other North African and Middle Eastern regimes, including those in Libya, Syria and Bahrain, under severe popular pressure. With the situation in Western Sahara and the region as a whole in such flux, it is essential for interested persons to have a one-volume history and analysis of this long conflict that is both factually correct and takes account of not only Morocco and Polisario, but also other regional and external actors, including France and the United States. The authors of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution largely succeed in giving the reader a comprehensive tour d'horizon of the dispute, one that begins with the 1975-91 war between Morocco and Polisario and continues with chapters describing the political rivalries in North Africa, which strongly affected the conflict, the policies of external actors, the development of Saharawi nationalism, and the "expressions" of that natio
{"title":"Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution","authors":"Anthony G. Pazzanita","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-4131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-4131","url":null,"abstract":"Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution. By Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy. Syracuse Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010. Pp. xxxvii, 319; maps, bibliography, glossary, index. $49.95. In the autumn of 2010, several thousand Western Saharans (known as Saharawis) set up an encampment at the settlement of Gdaim Izik, a few kilometers east of the territorial capital of El-Ayoun, in order to protest the actions of Morocco, which has occupied the former Spanish colony since late 1975 and whose disputed status has produced a diplomatic impasse of over three decades' duration. The Gdaim Izik camp was designed by its organizers to be a nonviolent way of resisting the political repression, economic corruption and favoritism, and general lack of development and opportunities by Morocco, which has characterized the occupation. News of the camp- as well as the conditions that led to its establishment- spread rapidly by means of electronic social media unheard of only a decade ago, including Facebook and Twitter as well as cell phones and Internet videos. All of this publicity had been steadily restricting- probably permanently- the ability of Morocco to control which information about the territory was accessible to outsiders. But on November 8, Rabat's formidable security forces struck back, forcibly dismantling the camp and injuring and arresting perhaps hundreds of protesters. At least two dozen persons on both sides were killed, and rioting soon spread to the center of El-Ayoun in what was the worst outbreak of unrest in Western Sahara in many years. The actions at Gdaim Izik also captured the attention, however temporarily, of the international mainstream news media, focusing renewed attention on the struggle between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which has always advocated an independent Western Sahara. Gdaim Izik was also an eerie forerunner of the massive unrest in North Africa that toppled Tunisia's dictatorship in January 2011 and Egypt's a month later, and put several other North African and Middle Eastern regimes, including those in Libya, Syria and Bahrain, under severe popular pressure. With the situation in Western Sahara and the region as a whole in such flux, it is essential for interested persons to have a one-volume history and analysis of this long conflict that is both factually correct and takes account of not only Morocco and Polisario, but also other regional and external actors, including France and the United States. The authors of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution largely succeed in giving the reader a comprehensive tour d'horizon of the dispute, one that begins with the 1975-91 war between Morocco and Polisario and continues with chapters describing the political rivalries in North Africa, which strongly affected the conflict, the policies of external actors, the development of Saharawi nationalism, and the \"expressions\" of that natio","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2011-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71132764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Politics of Necessity: Community Organizing and Democracy in South Africa","authors":"Richard W. Hull","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-1114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-1114","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2011-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71134812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa. By J. Michael Williams. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. Pp. viii, 282; maps, bibliography, index, list of abbreviations. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. "One of the most vivid political reminders of the apartheid past, the institution of chieftaincy" (p. 1), has maintained its legitimacy in a country where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has dedicated itself since 1994 to eradicating that past. J. Michael Williams explores how the "conflicting worldviews about the nature of authority and the right to rule" (p. 2) between chieftaincy and the post-apartheid state have produced an inevitable struggle about political legitimacy. To understand how this struggle plays out at the local level, he focuses on three chieftaincies in KwaZulu-Natal in order to "tell the stories of real South Africans dealing with the everyday struggles that exist in the postapartheid dispensation" (p. 31). Utilizing "the multiple legitimacies framework," he argues "that even though both the democratic state institutions and the chieftaincy seek to exercise exclusive political control in the rural areas" (p. 19), neither is able to dominate. Instead, the outcome is a "syncretism of authority relations" in which "the different sources of legitimacy overlap" (p. 19). Having introduced his overall argument in the Introduction, Williams uses the next six chapters to understand how and why the chieftaincy in each of his three study areas remains "a central pillar to the local populations" (p. 38). The second chapter, "The Binding Together of the People," examines chieftaincy in historical perspective and how through the changing circumstance of colonial and apartheid rule the principle of the unity of the community through the chieftaincy persevered. This was in large part due to the chiefs and izinduna ("headmen") learning "to selectively invoke particular principles and ideas in different circumstances" (p. 79). The third chapter "examines the national debates concerning the chieftaincy in the 1990s" (p. 80), and the official integration of the institution into the new constitutional order, which resulted in the creation of a mixed polity. With the passage of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (TLGF Act) in 2003, the ANC seemingly came to recognize "the unique qualities of the chieftaincy and that it indeed occupies a space distinct from the state or civil society" (p. 106). The next chapters focus on the local level to gain insight into how the TLGF Act was largely reactive to events unfolding from the early 1990s. …
{"title":"Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa","authors":"R. H. Davis","doi":"10.5860/choice.47-7109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.47-7109","url":null,"abstract":"Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa. By J. Michael Williams. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. Pp. viii, 282; maps, bibliography, index, list of abbreviations. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. \"One of the most vivid political reminders of the apartheid past, the institution of chieftaincy\" (p. 1), has maintained its legitimacy in a country where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has dedicated itself since 1994 to eradicating that past. J. Michael Williams explores how the \"conflicting worldviews about the nature of authority and the right to rule\" (p. 2) between chieftaincy and the post-apartheid state have produced an inevitable struggle about political legitimacy. To understand how this struggle plays out at the local level, he focuses on three chieftaincies in KwaZulu-Natal in order to \"tell the stories of real South Africans dealing with the everyday struggles that exist in the postapartheid dispensation\" (p. 31). Utilizing \"the multiple legitimacies framework,\" he argues \"that even though both the democratic state institutions and the chieftaincy seek to exercise exclusive political control in the rural areas\" (p. 19), neither is able to dominate. Instead, the outcome is a \"syncretism of authority relations\" in which \"the different sources of legitimacy overlap\" (p. 19). Having introduced his overall argument in the Introduction, Williams uses the next six chapters to understand how and why the chieftaincy in each of his three study areas remains \"a central pillar to the local populations\" (p. 38). The second chapter, \"The Binding Together of the People,\" examines chieftaincy in historical perspective and how through the changing circumstance of colonial and apartheid rule the principle of the unity of the community through the chieftaincy persevered. This was in large part due to the chiefs and izinduna (\"headmen\") learning \"to selectively invoke particular principles and ideas in different circumstances\" (p. 79). The third chapter \"examines the national debates concerning the chieftaincy in the 1990s\" (p. 80), and the official integration of the institution into the new constitutional order, which resulted in the creation of a mixed polity. With the passage of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (TLGF Act) in 2003, the ANC seemingly came to recognize \"the unique qualities of the chieftaincy and that it indeed occupies a space distinct from the state or civil society\" (p. 106). The next chapters focus on the local level to gain insight into how the TLGF Act was largely reactive to events unfolding from the early 1990s. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71130374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950. By Tosha Grantham. Charlottesville and London: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2009. Distributed by the University of Virginia Press. Pp. 160. $35.00 paper. When Tosha Grantham decided to curate "a brief survey" of South Africa's postwar photographic culture, she took on a daunting task. South Africa may be a relatively small country, but it has produced several distinct generations of photographers and visual artists, working in a variety of traditions. Deciding who to include in Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950, the catalog and touring exhibition, and how to interpret their work presented challenges that Grantham only partly overcomes. The eighteen artists and photographers included in Darkroom represent a cross-section of practitioners- young and old, black and white, male and female. Some have long since established global reputations; others deserve wider recognition outside of South Africa. The book's weaknesses have to do with exclusion, rather than inclusion. Too many important photographers and photographic movements have been left out, and that prevents Darkroom from being the overview it aspires to be. The roots of the problem are both practical and theoretical. First, over a third of the plates in the book (35 out of 110) are devoted to the work of just two men- David Goldblatt and Jurgen Schadeberg. This gives their output undue weight and occupies space that would have been better used by opening the door to more photographers. Second, the book misreads South African photography's history, constructing an implicit narrative of movement from documentary photography to fine art photography. This storyline rests on a sharp but unsustainable dichotomy between documentary practice and art, a point to which I shall return. Whatever its weaknesses, Darkroom is full of superb photographs. The deeply saturated color portraits of urban and urbanizing Africans that Sukhdeo Bobson Mohanlall made in the 1960s and 1970s will be a fascinating discovery, even for people who know something about South African photography. Nontsikelelo Veleko's contemporary portraits of young Johannesburg hipsters show how both South Africans' identities and photographic styles have become less local and more globalized. Readers get a tantalizing, but far too brief glimpse of Santu Mofokeng's "Black Photo Album" series, in which he has rephotographed and reimagined nineteenth- and early twentieth-century studio portraits of the black middle class. They will also want to see more of Sue Williamson's "Better Lives" project, a sensitive and angry response to recent outbreaks of xenophobia in South Africa. …
{"title":"Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950","authors":"J. Mason","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-0089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-0089","url":null,"abstract":"Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950. By Tosha Grantham. Charlottesville and London: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2009. Distributed by the University of Virginia Press. Pp. 160. $35.00 paper. When Tosha Grantham decided to curate \"a brief survey\" of South Africa's postwar photographic culture, she took on a daunting task. South Africa may be a relatively small country, but it has produced several distinct generations of photographers and visual artists, working in a variety of traditions. Deciding who to include in Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950, the catalog and touring exhibition, and how to interpret their work presented challenges that Grantham only partly overcomes. The eighteen artists and photographers included in Darkroom represent a cross-section of practitioners- young and old, black and white, male and female. Some have long since established global reputations; others deserve wider recognition outside of South Africa. The book's weaknesses have to do with exclusion, rather than inclusion. Too many important photographers and photographic movements have been left out, and that prevents Darkroom from being the overview it aspires to be. The roots of the problem are both practical and theoretical. First, over a third of the plates in the book (35 out of 110) are devoted to the work of just two men- David Goldblatt and Jurgen Schadeberg. This gives their output undue weight and occupies space that would have been better used by opening the door to more photographers. Second, the book misreads South African photography's history, constructing an implicit narrative of movement from documentary photography to fine art photography. This storyline rests on a sharp but unsustainable dichotomy between documentary practice and art, a point to which I shall return. Whatever its weaknesses, Darkroom is full of superb photographs. The deeply saturated color portraits of urban and urbanizing Africans that Sukhdeo Bobson Mohanlall made in the 1960s and 1970s will be a fascinating discovery, even for people who know something about South African photography. Nontsikelelo Veleko's contemporary portraits of young Johannesburg hipsters show how both South Africans' identities and photographic styles have become less local and more globalized. Readers get a tantalizing, but far too brief glimpse of Santu Mofokeng's \"Black Photo Album\" series, in which he has rephotographed and reimagined nineteenth- and early twentieth-century studio portraits of the black middle class. They will also want to see more of Sue Williamson's \"Better Lives\" project, a sensitive and angry response to recent outbreaks of xenophobia in South Africa. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71130431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. By Toyin Falola and Ann Genova. Historical Dictionaries of Africa. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2009. Pp. xlii, 423; map, bibliography. $120.00. There are few comprehensive, up-to-date, country-specific historical dictionaries, so one would be forgiven for not having had to consult one in the course of one's scholarly or pedagogical activities. For Africa, the dearth of good reference materials is especially acute and well known among specialists. Because the "Historical Dictionary" genre is defined by chronological and geographical exclusivity, it places a special burden on author-compilers. Authoring this reference text was thus a challenging task for Falola and Genova to take on. They deserve commendation for tackling it with grace and subtlety and for producing this gem. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria is a text that performs the traditional role of a subject/area dictionary while also providing very useful contextual information and analysis that ground the entries and deepen our understanding of the larger orbits in which they thrive(d). The introduction accomplishes this important task, which is necessary for a successful navigation of the text by the reader. It explores the historical, geographical, and sociological contexts and underpinnings of Nigeria's existence, identity, and on-going evolution. It provides a valuable point of entry into the text especially for non-specialist audiences and those encountering the country at a methodical, academic, or systematic level for the first time. The section titled "chronology" complements the analytical introduction nicely. It provides a useful guide and facilitates quick referencing and cross-referencing. This section builds on the strength of Falola's other reference work, Key Events in African History, whose rich chronological coverage of events is already a treasure for Africanists. The authors continue with their context-setting, reader-friendly style in the "Reader's Note" section. Here they pay commendable attention to orthographic accuracy, authenticity, and variation, announcing important disclaimers and caveats regarding names of people, places, and objects. This helps the reader sift through and make sense of the various nomenclatural mutations and variations in the dictionary. One important innovation in the text is the coverage of historical and contemporary figures and phenomena in the same structural frame of reference. …
{"title":"Historical Dictionary of Nigeria","authors":"Moses Ochonu","doi":"10.5860/choice.38-3670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.38-3670","url":null,"abstract":"Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. By Toyin Falola and Ann Genova. Historical Dictionaries of Africa. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2009. Pp. xlii, 423; map, bibliography. $120.00. There are few comprehensive, up-to-date, country-specific historical dictionaries, so one would be forgiven for not having had to consult one in the course of one's scholarly or pedagogical activities. For Africa, the dearth of good reference materials is especially acute and well known among specialists. Because the \"Historical Dictionary\" genre is defined by chronological and geographical exclusivity, it places a special burden on author-compilers. Authoring this reference text was thus a challenging task for Falola and Genova to take on. They deserve commendation for tackling it with grace and subtlety and for producing this gem. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria is a text that performs the traditional role of a subject/area dictionary while also providing very useful contextual information and analysis that ground the entries and deepen our understanding of the larger orbits in which they thrive(d). The introduction accomplishes this important task, which is necessary for a successful navigation of the text by the reader. It explores the historical, geographical, and sociological contexts and underpinnings of Nigeria's existence, identity, and on-going evolution. It provides a valuable point of entry into the text especially for non-specialist audiences and those encountering the country at a methodical, academic, or systematic level for the first time. The section titled \"chronology\" complements the analytical introduction nicely. It provides a useful guide and facilitates quick referencing and cross-referencing. This section builds on the strength of Falola's other reference work, Key Events in African History, whose rich chronological coverage of events is already a treasure for Africanists. The authors continue with their context-setting, reader-friendly style in the \"Reader's Note\" section. Here they pay commendable attention to orthographic accuracy, authenticity, and variation, announcing important disclaimers and caveats regarding names of people, places, and objects. This helps the reader sift through and make sense of the various nomenclatural mutations and variations in the dictionary. One important innovation in the text is the coverage of historical and contemporary figures and phenomena in the same structural frame of reference. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71085348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Introduction 1. The Portuguese in Morocco 2. The early voyages to West Africa 3. The Atlantic islands 4. The upper Guinea coast and Sierra Leone 5. Elmina and Benin 6. Discovery of the kingdom of Kongo 7. Angola, Paulo Dias and the founding of Luanda 8. The slave trade 9. Conflict in the kingdom of Kongo in the 1560s 10. Christianity in the Kongo 11. The Angolan wars 12. People and places.
{"title":"The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415-1670: A Documentary History","authors":"J. Thornton","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-1839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-1839","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction 1. The Portuguese in Morocco 2. The early voyages to West Africa 3. The Atlantic islands 4. The upper Guinea coast and Sierra Leone 5. Elmina and Benin 6. Discovery of the kingdom of Kongo 7. Angola, Paulo Dias and the founding of Luanda 8. The slave trade 9. Conflict in the kingdom of Kongo in the 1560s 10. Christianity in the Kongo 11. The Angolan wars 12. People and places.","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2010-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71131157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Telling Stories, Making Histories: Women, Words, and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland and the Sokoto Caliphate","authors":"Rachel Jean-Baptiste","doi":"10.5860/choice.45-3336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-3336","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71119044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization","authors":"K. Smythe","doi":"10.5860/choice.46-2233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.46-2233","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71122875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The African City: A History. By Bill Freund. New Approaches to African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 214; 27 illustrations. $55.00 cloth, $19.99 paper. Urban formations are indigenous to and characteristic of the African continent, and have long been sites of dynamic innovation and interaction with foreign populations. This is the underlying premise of Bill Freund's sophisticated yet accessible book. It adds to the recent growth of interest in urbanism in its multiple forms in Africa. It is alone, however, in discussing cities across the continent, rather than separating sub-Saharan and North Africa, and in including everything from the Bronze Age through modern case studies. In tone the author blends research from the social sciences and history with a frank humanism about changing quality of life. Freund is not quick to generalize, but rather steadily underscores the diversity of origins, organizing principles, and trajectories in numerous, well-integrated examples. Each chapter ends with a generous annotated bibliography. The first chapters, "Urban Life Emerges in Africa and African Cities" and "The Emergence of a World Trading Economy," focus on spatially and culturally disparate, yet sometimes surprisingly similar, urban forms that are found in places such as ancient Egypt and Aksum, Roman North Africa, the early West African savannah, Mbanza Kongo, the Zimbabwe Plateau, and the East, North, and West African regions influenced by conversion to Islam in the late first millennium. Freund handles questions of indigenous and foreign contributions to the emergence of urbanism in such regions, sifting through debates in the literature with an even hand. As regional populations enter into increasingly larger world systems in the first and early second millennia A.D., older African cities grew and new ones were founded in the context of trade and foreign immigration. In Chapter 3, "Colonialism and Urbanisation," Freund discusses older cities that were transformed through colonialism, and those newly founded to serve colonial exploits. He discusses how cities and rural areas were linked together through the traditional model of the urban-rural continuum, but also illuminates the ways in which individuals defied expectations, moving between life in cities and far-flung villages with rapidity and ease, and between the colony and metropole as well. Also explored here are the social strategies people used in the unevenly gendered colonial cities, including the re-formation of ethnic allegiances, the creation of voluntary associations, and the forms of resistance developed in the tension between colonial authorities and the vast urban populations. …
{"title":"The African City: A History","authors":"A. LaViolette","doi":"10.5860/choice.45-1613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-1613","url":null,"abstract":"The African City: A History. By Bill Freund. New Approaches to African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 214; 27 illustrations. $55.00 cloth, $19.99 paper. Urban formations are indigenous to and characteristic of the African continent, and have long been sites of dynamic innovation and interaction with foreign populations. This is the underlying premise of Bill Freund's sophisticated yet accessible book. It adds to the recent growth of interest in urbanism in its multiple forms in Africa. It is alone, however, in discussing cities across the continent, rather than separating sub-Saharan and North Africa, and in including everything from the Bronze Age through modern case studies. In tone the author blends research from the social sciences and history with a frank humanism about changing quality of life. Freund is not quick to generalize, but rather steadily underscores the diversity of origins, organizing principles, and trajectories in numerous, well-integrated examples. Each chapter ends with a generous annotated bibliography. The first chapters, \"Urban Life Emerges in Africa and African Cities\" and \"The Emergence of a World Trading Economy,\" focus on spatially and culturally disparate, yet sometimes surprisingly similar, urban forms that are found in places such as ancient Egypt and Aksum, Roman North Africa, the early West African savannah, Mbanza Kongo, the Zimbabwe Plateau, and the East, North, and West African regions influenced by conversion to Islam in the late first millennium. Freund handles questions of indigenous and foreign contributions to the emergence of urbanism in such regions, sifting through debates in the literature with an even hand. As regional populations enter into increasingly larger world systems in the first and early second millennia A.D., older African cities grew and new ones were founded in the context of trade and foreign immigration. In Chapter 3, \"Colonialism and Urbanisation,\" Freund discusses older cities that were transformed through colonialism, and those newly founded to serve colonial exploits. He discusses how cities and rural areas were linked together through the traditional model of the urban-rural continuum, but also illuminates the ways in which individuals defied expectations, moving between life in cities and far-flung villages with rapidity and ease, and between the colony and metropole as well. Also explored here are the social strategies people used in the unevenly gendered colonial cities, including the re-formation of ethnic allegiances, the creation of voluntary associations, and the forms of resistance developed in the tension between colonial authorities and the vast urban populations. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71118084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Women Writing Africa: The Eastern Region. Edited by Amandina Lihamba, Fulata L. Moyo, M.M. Mulokozi, Naomi L. Shitemi, and Saida Yahya-Othman. The Women Writing Africa Project, vol. 3. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2007. Pp. xiv, 478. $75.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. As with the two previously published volumes from The Women Writing Africa Project1 (The Southern Region, and West Africa and the Sahel, 2003), this remarkable work features women's voices in a variety of genres that includes fiction, poetry, letters, speeches, songs, lullabies, tales, and riddles. The selected texts represent 300 years of history (1711-2004) and five countries that experienced British rule, listed here with the number of authors from each: Kenya (35), Malawi (10), Tanzania (24), Uganda (26), and Zambia (12). This well-documented volume, with excellent explanatory and historical materials, is a promising addition to the body of resources for teaching about Africa; it is suitable for courses in literature, history, women's studies, and cultural studies, at the upper-class undergraduate and the graduate levels. The anthology opens with "A Note on the Women Writing Africa Project" from project co-directors Tuzyline Jita Allan, Abena Busia, and Florence Howe, who guided the making of this volume. A Preface by Austin Bukenya follows, in which he introduces the country committees and coordinators-including men as well as women-who planned, collected, and prepared texts and accompanying information over a period of more than ten years. He explains that the collectors in the field focused especially on oral texts, and that selections for the volume were made according to two criteria: "women's emancipation and sociohistorical significance" (p. xxi). The anthology editors Lihamba, Moyo, Mulokozi, Shitemi, and Yahya-Othman have authored a substantial Introduction (67 pages), which examines the background of the texts in a well researched, easy to read, and interesting discussion. Focusing on the status of Eastern African women over time, they include references to individual texts, scholarly notes, and a seven-page Works Cited and Select Bibliography. The goal of the anthology, they explain, is "to conect distortions characteristic of Eastern African historiography and anthologizing," as well as to celebrate women's achievements (p. 1). They treat the following topics in chronological order: the cultural functions of oral literature in the precolonial period; Mother Earth as a theme in traditional African religions; variety in forms of slavery; the impact of Islam; colonialism and Christianity; beginning writing and publishing; the influence of settler women; the effects of capitalism; women and independence; women in Parliament; conflicts and women fighters; the late twentieth century; prostitution and HIV/AIDS; the presence of women writers (including East Africans of Indian descent); and the struggle for women's rights in the twenty-first centu
妇女书写非洲:东部地区。编辑:Amandina Lihamba, Fulata L. Moyo, M.M. mullokozi, Naomi L. Shitemi和Saida Yahya-Othman。妇女写作非洲项目，第3卷。纽约:纽约城市大学女权主义出版社，2007。第14页，478页。布75美元，纸29.95美元。与《非洲妇女写作项目》之前出版的两卷(《南部地区》和《西非和萨赫勒》，2003年)一样，这部杰出的作品以各种类型的女性声音为特色，包括小说、诗歌、信件、演讲、歌曲、摇篮曲、故事和谜语。所选文本代表了300年的历史(1711-2004)和经历过英国统治的五个国家，这里列出了每个国家的作者人数:肯尼亚(35人)，马拉维(10人)，坦桑尼亚(24人)，乌干达(26人)和赞比亚(12人)。这本文献详实的书，有出色的解释和历史材料，是非洲教学资源的一个有希望的补充;它适用于文学、历史、妇女研究和文化研究等课程，适用于高年级本科生和研究生。选集以“非洲妇女写作项目注释”开头，由项目联合主任Tuzyline Jita Allan、Abena Busia和Florence Howe指导编写。奥斯丁·布肯亚(Austin Bukenya)在前言中介绍了国家委员会和协调员(包括男性和女性)，他们在十多年的时间里计划、收集和编写了文本和相关信息。他解释说，该领域的收集者特别关注口头文本，并根据两个标准进行选择:“妇女解放和社会历史意义”(第21页)。选集编辑Lihamba, Moyo, Mulokozi, Shitemi和Yahya-Othman撰写了大量的介绍(67页)，其中以深入研究，易于阅读和有趣的讨论来检查文本的背景。关注东非妇女在历史上的地位，包括对个别文本的参考，学术笔记，以及七页的作品引用和参考书目选择。他们解释说，这本选集的目标是“将东非史学和选集的扭曲特征联系起来”，并庆祝妇女的成就(第1页)。他们按时间顺序处理以下主题:前殖民时期口头文学的文化功能;大地母亲是非洲传统宗教的主题;奴役形式的多样性;伊斯兰教的影响;殖民主义和基督教;开始写作和出版;移民妇女的影响;资本主义的影响;妇女和独立;议会中的妇女;冲突与女性战士;20世纪后期;卖淫和艾滋病;女性作家(包括有印度血统的东非人)的出现;以及在21世纪为争取妇女权利而进行的斗争。选集中的文本按时间顺序分为五个部分:“十八和十九世纪”(六个文本);《二十世纪初(1900-1935)》(15个文本);《二十世纪中期(1936-1969)》(四十文本);“20世纪末(1970-1995)”(19文本);《进入二十一世纪(1996-2004)》(64篇文章，其中近50篇是歌曲和诗歌选集)。…
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