Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire. By Monica BIackmun Visona. Burlington, VT, and Farnam, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. xiii, 201; maps, charts, photographs, bibliography, index. $99.95. Written a quarter of a century after receiving her Ph.D. in the history of art, Monica BIackmun Visona' s "Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire," combines the high energy of early research that included extensive work in Africa with a mature reflection based on years spent teaching, writing, and continuing research during a time when the theoretical frameworks for topics in African studies and art history were changing. The result is a palimpsest of a book, with intersecting layers of experience and theory providing a multi-textured view of the arts, the author herself, and changeespecially in the way we understand "art" since what we carry to Africa in our cultural baggage has changed, or in today's terminology, our paradigms have shifted. In Visona' s exploration of the artworks of the Lagoon cultures, she not only takes the time to reflect upon the validity of western art historical discourse to frame the study of the art of other cultures, but also provides a review of the scholarly work critiquing this approach and a trenchant synopsis of the arguments. She then looks at the way multiple disciplines (geography, linguistics, history, archaeology, anthropology, and such spin-offs as visual culture) have intersected in her own work. She goes on to describe her research methods- the review of the literature and archival material, discussions with art merchants and collectors, and field work- and then to deconstruct them, observing errors made, paths not taken, and new perspectives. In the body of the book, Visona addresses first the figurai sculpture that attracted her to this area, then arts of leadership and prestige (incorporating commentary on theories of wealth and commodification), and finally the richness of age-set festivals seen through the lens of Performance Studies. A final chapter addresses the ironies surrounding the parallels linking the reception of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century African art works in the West to the reception of European art by Africans as well as how this has evolved in the postmodem moment- with the dramatic and voluptuous female statuary of Emile Guebehi as a case study. Looking at the figures that have been documented in Western collections since the late nineteenth century, Visona notes that local artists and patrons experience them quite differently from Western connoisseurs, resulting in distinctive historical narratives. The former engage with the statuary as part of their religious practice; the latter respond to them on the basis of aesthetic impact and style. …
{"title":"Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d'Ivoire","authors":"Jean M. Borgatti","doi":"10.4324/9781315095448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315095448","url":null,"abstract":"Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire. By Monica BIackmun Visona. Burlington, VT, and Farnam, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. xiii, 201; maps, charts, photographs, bibliography, index. $99.95. Written a quarter of a century after receiving her Ph.D. in the history of art, Monica BIackmun Visona' s \"Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire,\" combines the high energy of early research that included extensive work in Africa with a mature reflection based on years spent teaching, writing, and continuing research during a time when the theoretical frameworks for topics in African studies and art history were changing. The result is a palimpsest of a book, with intersecting layers of experience and theory providing a multi-textured view of the arts, the author herself, and changeespecially in the way we understand \"art\" since what we carry to Africa in our cultural baggage has changed, or in today's terminology, our paradigms have shifted. In Visona' s exploration of the artworks of the Lagoon cultures, she not only takes the time to reflect upon the validity of western art historical discourse to frame the study of the art of other cultures, but also provides a review of the scholarly work critiquing this approach and a trenchant synopsis of the arguments. She then looks at the way multiple disciplines (geography, linguistics, history, archaeology, anthropology, and such spin-offs as visual culture) have intersected in her own work. She goes on to describe her research methods- the review of the literature and archival material, discussions with art merchants and collectors, and field work- and then to deconstruct them, observing errors made, paths not taken, and new perspectives. In the body of the book, Visona addresses first the figurai sculpture that attracted her to this area, then arts of leadership and prestige (incorporating commentary on theories of wealth and commodification), and finally the richness of age-set festivals seen through the lens of Performance Studies. A final chapter addresses the ironies surrounding the parallels linking the reception of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century African art works in the West to the reception of European art by Africans as well as how this has evolved in the postmodem moment- with the dramatic and voluptuous female statuary of Emile Guebehi as a case study. Looking at the figures that have been documented in Western collections since the late nineteenth century, Visona notes that local artists and patrons experience them quite differently from Western connoisseurs, resulting in distinctive historical narratives. The former engage with the statuary as part of their religious practice; the latter respond to them on the basis of aesthetic impact and style. …","PeriodicalId":45676,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"44 1","pages":"355"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2011-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70630082","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}
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":"44 1","pages":"336"},"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":"44 1","pages":"357"},"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":"44 1","pages":"141"},"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":"44 1","pages":"178"},"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":"44 1","pages":"180"},"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":"44 1","pages":""},"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":"41 1","pages":"128"},"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":"41 1","pages":"149"},"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":"41 1","pages":"131"},"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}
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