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A rich and accessible account of Yoruba history, society and culture from the pre-colonial period to the present.
A groundbreaking interrogation of the myriad causes and effects of African migration, from the pre-colonial to the modern era.
Thirty-six chapters covering the history of Nigeria, from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century. Accessible overviews of both the political narrative as well as the deeper histories of social organization, identity formation, and inter-group relationships, cutting-edge analysis of key themes from highly respected scholars in a single, forward-facing volume. Book jacket.
In Global Yorùbá, renowned scholar Toyin Falola covers the history, people, traditions, environment, religion, spirituality, cosmology, culture, and philosophy of one of Africa's largest cultural groups, the Yorùbá, all while considering the people's relationship with their immediate and distant neighbors. Falola examines how the Yorùbán people have adapted to their environment and tapped it to (re)invent their civilization, shape their culture and traditions, and inform their socioeconomic relations with their neighbors. These interactions have guided the Yorùbá philosophy that developed over time, expressing their conviction regarding society's evolution and the place that humans occupy within it. This web of knowledge can present a more coherent account than any other text yet produced regarding Yorùbá civilization. This volume demonstrates how global dynamics have been adopted in the creation of a Yorùbá community across different times and spaces.
“Willis should be commended for penetrating a complex and socially guarded ritual resource to glean the hidden histories manifested therein.” —African Studies Review In West Africa, especially among Yoruba people, masquerades have the power to kill enemies, appoint kings, and grant fertility. John Thabiti Willis takes a close look at masquerade traditions in the Yoruba town of Otta, exploring transformations in performers, performances, and the institutional structures in which masquerade was used to reveal ongoing changes in notions of gender, kinship, and ethnic identity. As Willis focuses on performers and spectators, he reveals a history of masquerade that is rich and complex. His ...
In this holistic approach to the study of textiles and their makers, Colleen Kriger charts the role cotton has played in commercial, community, and labor settings in West Africa. By paying close attention to the details of how people made, exchanged, and wore cotton cloth from before industrialization in Europe to the twentieth century, she is able to demonstrate some of the cultural effects of Africa's long involvement in trading contacts with Muslim societies and with Europe. Cloth in West African History thus offers a fresh perspective on the history of the region and on the local, regional, and global processes that shaped it. A variety of readers will find its account and insights into the African past and culture valuable, and will appreciate the connections made between the local concerns of small-scale weavers in African villages, the emergence of an indigenous textile industry, and its integration into international networks.
In the social and cultural histories of women and feminism, Black women have long been overlooked or ignored. The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories is an impressive and comprehensive reference work for contemporary scholarship on the cultural histories of Black women across the diaspora spanning different eras from ancient times into the twenty-first century. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into five parts: A fragmented past, an inclusive future Contested histories, subversive memories Gendered lives, racial frameworks Cultural shifts, social change Black identities, feminist formations Within these section...
Since their early beginning in Africa as foragers, hunters and gatherers, humans have been on the move. In modern times, their movements have been compelled by geographical, economic, political, cultural, social and personal reasons. However, beginning in the second-half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century their reasons for and pattern of migration have been largely influenced by globalization. Globalization, by its very nature, cuts across virtually every aspect of the human life and human society. And especially in the United States, African immigrants are subject to the undercurrents of globalization – particularly in the areas of culture, religion, interpersonal ...
Blending African social history with US foreign relations, John V. Clune documents how ordinary people experienced a major aspect of Cold War diplomacy. The book describes how military-sponsored international travel, especially military training abroad and United Nations peacekeeping deployments in the Sinai and Lebanon, altered Ghanaian service members and their families during the three decades after independence in 1957. Military assistance to Ghana included sponsoring training and education in the United States, and American policymakers imagined that national modernization would result from the personal relationships Ghanaian service members and their families would forge. As an act of ...
This is the first study of slavery and its legacy in the Yoruba and incompletely Islamicised periphery of the Sokoto caliphate and of northern Nigeria. It shows the decline of slavery and the emergence of a small-scale peasantry at the end of the nineteenth century, and takes the story into the late-colonial and post-independence periods. Focusing on Ilorin, the city and emirate on the southern fringe of the caliphate, now in Nigeria, it shows how relations between the city elite and the ex-slaves and peasants they controlled have fluctuated during the long process of oppression and reaction.ANN O'HEAR is Co-ordinator of Intercultural Studies at Niagara University, New York.