You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book is an ethnographic study of a HIV/AIDS choir who use music to articulate their individual and collective experiences of the disease. The study interrogates as to understand the bigger picture of HIV/AIDS using the approach of microanalysis of music event. It places the choir, and the cultural and political issues addressed in their music in the broader context of South Africa’s public health and political history, and the global culture and politics of AIDS.
Ubuntu is an African philosophical tradition that embodies the ability of one human being to empathize with another. It is the quintessence of African humanism, communalism, and belonging. As the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu anticipated, Ubuntu resonated with the moral intuition of the majority of black South Africans in the 1990s. As a result, it became the foundational ethical basis for articulating a new post-apartheid era of reconciliation and forgiveness in the face of a history marked by brutal racial violence. Yet Ubuntu, as a philosophy or ethical practice which has arguably come to represent African humanism and communalism, has not been sufficiently assimilated into contemporary philosophical scholarship. This anthology weaves interdisciplinary perspectives into the discourse on African relational ethics in dialogue with Western normative ideals across a wide range of issues, including justice, sustainable development, musical culture, journalism, and peace. It explains the philosophy of Ubuntu to both African and non-African scholars. Comprehensively written, this book will appeal to a broad audience of academic and non-academic readers.
The Culture of AIDS in Africa presents 30 chapters offering a multifaceted, nuanced, and deeply affective portrait of the relationship between HIV/AIDS and the arts in Africa, including source material such as song lyrics and interviews.
Pandemic Re-Awakenings offers a multi-level and multi-faceted exploration of a century of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, arguably the greatest catastrophe in human history. Twenty-three researchers present original perspectives by critically investigating the hitherto unexplored vicissitudes of memory in the interrelated spheres of personal, communal, medical, and cultural histories in different national and transnational settings across the globe. The volume reveals how, even though the Great Flu was overshadowed by the commemorative culture of the Great War, recollections of the pandemic persisted over time to re-emerge towards the centenary of the 'Spanish' Flu and burst into public consciousness following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapters chart historiographical neglect (while acknowledging the often-unnoticed dialogues between scientific and historical discourses), probe silences, and trace vestiges of social and cultural memories that long remained outside of what was considered collective memory.
60 years after independence, African nations still find it difficult to face a number of challenges, from establishing meaningful democratic institutions to establish social structures centered on the advancement of gender equality. This volume approaches these contemporary African challenges while combating a reflexive and facile Afro-Pessimism.
Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning examines the educational experiences of adults as cultural practice. These practices take place in diverse settings from formal educational contexts to institutionally interstitial realms to fluid and explicitly contested everyday spaces. This edited collection includes twelve richly rendered ethnographic case studies written from the perspective of practitioner-ethnographers who straddle the roles of educator and ethnographic researcher. Drawing on distinct theoretical framings, these contributors illuminate the ways in which adults engaged in teaching and learning participate in cultural practices that intersect with other dimensions of social life, such as work, recreation, community engagement, personal development, or political action. By juxtaposing ethnographic inquiries of formal and informal learning spaces, as well as intentional and unintended challenges to mainstream adult teaching and learning, this collection provides new understandings and critical insights into the complexities of adults’ educational experiences.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture presents key concepts in the study of music in its cultural context and provides an introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, its methods, concerns, and its contributions to knowledge and understanding of the world's musical cultures, styles, and practices. The diverse voices of contributors to this encyclopedia confirm ethnomusicology's fundamental ethos of inclusion and respect for diversity. Combined, the multiplicity of topics and approaches are presented in an easy-to-search A-Z format and offer a fresh perspective on the field and the subject of music in culture. Key features include: Approximately 730 signed articles, authored by pro...
The book examines the meaning of justice in African political philosophy, building on the use-theoretical approach. Currently, most of the philosophical works in this context advocate for a communal interpretation of the meaning of justice, such as the 'relational theory of justice' and 'Ubuntu justice as fairness.' The author argues that this foundation of justice in the community undermines the self, which is a major problem with these theories. As an attempt to go beyond communitarianism in African thought, the book recognizes other philosophical frameworks for elaborating the meaning of justice in ordinary people's experience, such as vitalism, theism, ubuntuism, and semantic framework. The author opts for a reconstructed ubuntu-based theory of the meaning of justice that reflects the traditional African experience and recuperates 'valuing self-existence' and 'valuing other-existence' as its foundations. The book further identifies the centrality of rights in defining justice in traditional African communities.
A collection of essays and reviews, both favourable and negative, about the Igbo poet. The book begins with a memorial essay by Chinua Achebe. Other contributors examine the imagery that Okigbo drew from nature, history and politics, exploring the surrealistic qualities of his work.