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This collection of essays documents the formative decades of African history across two countries by following the career of a British historian-cum-archivist Paul Jenkins (born 1938 in Sutherland) from West Africa to Central Europe. It retraces his academic path from Ghana to Switzerland while engaging his curiosities in, contributions to, and impact on the development of African history since the 1960s. The volume reflects on Paul’s academic services throughout the 1960s and 1970s, mainly at the University of Ghana (1965–1972) and subsequently at the Basel Mission Archive and University of Basel (1972–2003) in Switzerland – as key sites where he established himself as a teacher and...
Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.
Have Your Yellowcake and Eat It is a story of men, monsters and uranium in Swakopmund, a small coastal city in the west of Namibia. Founded by German settlers in the late nineteenth century, Swakopmund remains a popular holiday destination for Namibians and international visitors alike. How do young African men make their home in this peculiar town of pretty beaches and luxury hotels, a brutal colonial history and a large uranium mining industry? Are their close relations affected by global changes in the price of uranium? And how do we describe their life worlds which straddle many homes, neighbourhoods, and establishments – sometimes even existing beyond the limits of the post-colonial city? Employing a reflexive narrative and based on two year’s fieldwork, Jack Boulton explores the myriad ways in which intimacy develops and manifests for men in a city defined predominantly by racialised difference and local and global forces of inequality.
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Writing Namibia: Literature in Transition is a cornucopia of extraordinary and fascinating material which will be a rich resource for students, teachers and readers interested in Namibia. The text is wide ranging, defining literature in its broadest terms. In its multifaceted approach, the book covers many genres traditionally outside academic literary discourse and debate. The 22 chapters cover literature of all categories in Namibia since independence: written and performance poetry, praise poetry, Oshiwambo orature, drama, novels, autobiography, women’s writing, subaltern studies, literature in German, Ju|’hoansi and Otjiherero, children’s literature, Afrikaans fiction, story-telling through film, publishing, and the interface between literature and society. The inclusive approach is the book’s strength as it allows a wide range of subjects to be addressed, including those around gender, race and orature which have been conventionally silenced.
Recurrent clamours by students and academics for universities in Africa and elsewhere, to imbibe and exude a spirit of inclusion are a continual reminder that universities can and need to be much more convivial. Processes of knowledge production that champion delusions of superiority and zero-sum games of absolute winners and losers are elitist and un-convivial. Academic disciplines tend to encourage introversion and emphasise exclusionary fundamentalisms of heartlands rather than highlight inclusionary overtures of borderlands. Frequenting crossroads and engaging in frontier conversations are frowned upon, if not prohibited. The scarcity of conviviality in universities, within and between d...
This collection of essays documents the growth of African history as a discipline at the University of Basel since 2001. It thus pays tribute to fourteen years of research and teaching by Patrick Harries at the Department of History and the Centre for African Studies Basel. The Festschrift covers a broad range of topics from mine labour to missionary endeavour and the production of knowledge, reflecting some of his core research interests. The contributions engage with Patrick Harries oeuvre with reference to the authors own scholarship or vice-versa. Some directly address his publications while others take his teaching, correspondence, remarks or intellectual life more broadly as a point of reference. They all pay tribute to a brilliant and inspiring scholar, a great teacher and a kind person.
In 1950, William Büttiker-Otto, a parasitologist, participated in one of the so-called Carp scientific expeditions that surveyed plant and animal life for museums and botanical gardens in various southern African colonies. The expeditions also documented aspects of rural African life such as food production and local handcrafts. This booklet brings together William Büttiker-Otto's recollections and a selection of his materials, including photographs and a short DVD film of the expedition. His reminiscences are complemented by those of his wife Sonya Büttiker-Otto on family life as Swiss emigrants in Harare between 1949 and 1952.--Back cover.
Why does Namibia’s economy look the way it does today? Was the reliance on raw materials for exports and on the service sector for employment an inevitability? And for what reasons has the manufacturing sector – the vehicle for economic development for many now-high income countries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries – seen its growth held back? With these questions in mind, this book offers an extensive analysis of industrial development and economic change in Namibia since 1900, exploring their causes, trajectory, vicissitudes, context, and politics. Its focus is particularly on the motivations behind the economic decisions of the state, arguing that power relations – both internationally and domestically – have held firm a status quo that has resisted efforts towards profound economic change. This work is the first in-depth economic study covering both the colonial and independence eras of Namibia’s history and provides the first history of the country’s manufacturing sector.
This volume investigates the development of biographical study in African history and historiography. Consisting of 10 case studies, it is preceded by an introductory prologue, which deals with the relationship between historiography and different forms of biographical study in the context of Western history-writing but especially African (historical and anthropological) studies. The first three case studies deal with the methodological insights of biographical studies for African history. This is followed by three case studies dealing with personas living through fundamental societal transitions, and four case studies focusing on the discursive dimensions of biographical subjects (including religion, cosmology and ideology). Countries or regions discussed include South Africa, Zambia, Gold Coast, Cameroon, Tanganyika, Congo-Kinshasa and the Central African Republic in colonial times. Contributors are Lindie Koorts, Elena Moore, Iva Peša, Paul Glen Grant, Jacqueline de Vries, Duncan Money, Morgan Robinson, Eve Wong, Klaas van Walraven, Erik Kennes.