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First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
How do women in Niger experience pregnancy and childbirth differently from women in the United States or Europe? Barbara M. Cooper sets out to understand childbirth in a country with the world's highest fertility rate and an alarmingly high rate of maternal and infant mortality. Cooper shows how the environment, slavery and abolition, French military rule, and the rapid expansion of Islam have all influenced childbirth and fertility in Niger from the 19th century to the present day. She sketches a landscape where fear of infertility generates intense competition between communities, ethnicities, and co-wives and creates a culture where concerns about infertility dominate concerns about overpopulation, where illegitimate children are rejected, and where the education of girls is sacrificed in the name of avoiding shame. Given a medical system poorly adapted to women's needs, a precarious economy, and a political context where it is impossible to address sexuality openly, Cooper discovers that it is little wonder that pregnancy and birth are a woman's greatest pride as well as a source of grave danger.
Part I: Incontinence and inequalities -- Living incontinence -- Laraba's story -- Fistula stigma -- Liminal wives -- Part II: Clinical encounters -- Beds, sixty minutes -- The "worst place to be a mother"--The indeterminable wait -- Part III: The marketplace of victimhood -- Arantut's story -- Superlative sufferers -- Costs and consequences -- The threshold of continence
With more than two thousand languages spread over its territory, multilingualism is a common reality in Africa. The main official languages of most African countries are Indo-European, in many instances Romance. As they were primarily brought to Africa in the era of colonization, the areas discussed in this volume are thirty-five states that were once ruled by Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, or Spain, and the African regions still belonging to three of them. Twenty-six states are presented in relation to French, four to Italian, six to Portuguese, and two to Spanish. They are considered in separate chapters according to their sociolinguistic situation, linguistic history, external language policy, linguistic characteristics, and internal language policy. The result is a comprehensive overview of the Romance languages in modern-day Africa. It follows a coherent structure, offers linguistic and sociolinguistic information, and illustrates language contact situations, power relations, as well as the cross-fertilization and mutual enrichment emerging from the interplay of languages and cultures in Africa.
Narratology has been flourishing in recent years thanks to investigations into a broad spectrum of narratives, at the same time diversifying its theoretical and disciplinary scope as it has sought to specify the status of narrative within both society and scientific research. The diverse endeavors engendered by this situation have brought narrative to the forefront of the social and human sciences and have generated new synergies in the research environment. Emerging Vectors of Narratology brings together 27 state-of-the-art contributions by an international panel of authors that provide insight into the wealth of new developments in the field. The book consists of two sections. "Contexts" i...
This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.
A dangerous man, a strong willed woman . . . and her feminist movement. Sounds like a party to me.
"Bringing together a wide diversity of authors based on three continents and from different disciplinary backgrounds, this book offers analyses of a wide range of factors that characterize and that are shaping the future of the African Sahel. In forty chapters, organized in nine sections, the book examines this complex and rapidly changing region on multiple dimensions. Collectively, the book attempts to offer an understanding of the specificity of the Sahel, and to examine its core characteristics as shaped by the geographic, cultural, and political parameters that define it. Following a series of chapters focused on the shaping of the Sahelian space as a region, six chapters explore the di...
Niger is a crossroad, the gate to the outside for West Africans, and the port of entry into West Africa for cross-Saharan tidings and travelers. It remained for centuries the largely uncontrolled periphery of the large empires of the western Sudan and the market cities of the central Sudan. In these two ways, the land forged a very distinctive identity, a fluid blend of diverse communities which make up a nation of marginal cosmopolitans – a paradox illuminated in this book. This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of Niger contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Niger.
The fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of Niger covers the history of the peoples of the Republic of Niger from medieval times to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries covering elements of pre-colonial and colonial history, recent politics, cinema, literature, religion, economics, and finance. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Niger.