Marshall Sahlins claims that individuals with personal power, influence, networks, and control over their followers within the political sphere are actually “big-men” rather than “chiefs.” Big-men derive their authority from personal maneuvering, whereas “chiefs” obtain their authority from semi-hierarchical, formalized, and de-personalized rule. De Bruijne argues that those individuals who are perceived as “big men” in post-war Sierra Leone might be better understood as “chiefs.”
{"title":"Chief or Big-Man Politics in Post-War Sierra Leone?","authors":"Kars de Bruijne","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.9","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Marshall Sahlins claims that individuals with personal power, influence, networks, and control over their followers within the political sphere are actually “big-men” rather than “chiefs.” Big-men derive their authority from personal maneuvering, whereas “chiefs” obtain their authority from semi-hierarchical, formalized, and de-personalized rule. De Bruijne argues that those individuals who are perceived as “big men” in post-war Sierra Leone might be better understood as “chiefs.”","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49523096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pamela Reynolds. The Uncaring, Intricate World: A Field Diary, Zambezi Valley 1984–1985. Edited by Todd Meyers. Duke University Press, 2019. xiii +193 pp. Acknowledgments. Foreword. Introduction. Afterword. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $25.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-1-478-004677.","authors":"Rory Pilossof","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.40","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":"66 1","pages":"842 - 844"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47099725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Susanne Verheul. Performing Power in Zimbabwe: Politics, Law, and the Courts since 2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Vii + 265pp. Photographs and diagrams. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $110.00. Hardback. ISBN: 978-1316515860.","authors":"K. D. Thompson","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.44","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":"66 1","pages":"845 - 846"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43101381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dorothea E. Schulz. Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali. Suffolk: James Currey, 2021. 236 pp. List of Illustrations. Abbreviations. Glossary. Bibliography. $105.00. Cloth format. ISBN: 978-1-84701-268-5.","authors":"K. Green","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.45","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":"66 1","pages":"847 - 849"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44989034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jide Tom Akinleminu, director. When a Farm Goes Aflame. 2021. 112 minutes. Danish, English, Yoruba, with English subtitles. Germany. Film Five GmbH. No price reported.","authors":"Daniela Ricci","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.34","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":"66 1","pages":"861 - 863"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48964996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya—a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion—plays a role in the silencing of victims. We examine how kunya contributes to the invisibility of victims and influences their silence, as well as how victims use silence to gain social tolerability and/or protect themselves from re-victimization. We argue that an attentiveness to such community-specific cultural precepts and norms can further our understanding of the silence (and silencing) of victims and survivors.
{"title":"Gendering Counter-Terrorism: Kunya and the Silencing of Male Victims of CRSV in Northeastern Nigeria","authors":"E. Njoku, I. Dery","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.27","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya—a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion—plays a role in the silencing of victims. We examine how kunya contributes to the invisibility of victims and influences their silence, as well as how victims use silence to gain social tolerability and/or protect themselves from re-victimization. We argue that an attentiveness to such community-specific cultural precepts and norms can further our understanding of the silence (and silencing) of victims and survivors.","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47792004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
My first academic job in 1962 involved teaching a course on History of Civilization. We had a text that essentially involved Western Civilization with chapters on India, China, and Japan interspersed. Two years later, when I returned from my doctoral thesis research in Africa, my thesis supervisor, William Halperin, recommended me for a ten-week adult education group discussing William McNeill’s Rise of the West. I was stunned that in a history of Eurasia, McNeill devoted only five pages to Africa. The incorporation of Africa in world history has been slow. For many of us in that first generation to study African history in Europe and North America, the marginality of Africa in the study of history was sometimes what drew us to study it. (There were a small number of African-American historians who wrote about Africa, but they had little impact on history curricula outside the small world in which they operated.) As a graduate student, I did a field on the Expansion of Europe and was struck by the inferior quality of much that had been written about Africa, largely by missionaries and colonial administrators. Until the Foreign Area Fellowship Program sent me to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to “tool up” with Jan Vansina, I was oblivious to the work that scholars like Vansina, Oliver, and Curtin were doing. Once I began researching Africa, the excitement was that of creating a new field of historical research.
{"title":"Africa in World History","authors":"Martin Klein","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.22","url":null,"abstract":"My first academic job in 1962 involved teaching a course on History of Civilization. We had a text that essentially involved Western Civilization with chapters on India, China, and Japan interspersed. Two years later, when I returned from my doctoral thesis research in Africa, my thesis supervisor, William Halperin, recommended me for a ten-week adult education group discussing William McNeill’s Rise of the West. I was stunned that in a history of Eurasia, McNeill devoted only five pages to Africa. The incorporation of Africa in world history has been slow. For many of us in that first generation to study African history in Europe and North America, the marginality of Africa in the study of history was sometimes what drew us to study it. (There were a small number of African-American historians who wrote about Africa, but they had little impact on history curricula outside the small world in which they operated.) As a graduate student, I did a field on the Expansion of Europe and was struck by the inferior quality of much that had been written about Africa, largely by missionaries and colonial administrators. Until the Foreign Area Fellowship Program sent me to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to “tool up” with Jan Vansina, I was oblivious to the work that scholars like Vansina, Oliver, and Curtin were doing. Once I began researching Africa, the excitement was that of creating a new field of historical research.","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":"66 1","pages":"801 - 813"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44512061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Berihun Adugna Gebeye. A Theory of African Constitutionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. ix + 243 pp. Table of cases. Table of legislation. Index. $99.00. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780192893925.","authors":"Claire B. Wofford","doi":"10.1017/asr.2023.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.33","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7618,"journal":{"name":"African Studies Review","volume":"66 1","pages":"819 - 820"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41406073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}