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Although the Koma are known throughout the world as a result of the so-called Komaland-terracottas, excavated in the 1980s, no extensive ethnographic publication about their culture has appeared yet. The present book comprises some of the results of author Franz Kroger's surveys during six field research trips between 1984 and 2008. It is also based on the profound knowledge of the co-author, Ben Baluri Saibu, a lawyer from the Koma village of Yikpabongo. The main focus of the book is the social, political and economic structure of the Koma, as well as their material culture, and, above all, their traditional religion and the extraordinarily dynamic history. A Konni-English word list with approximately 2400 entries might be interesting for linguists specialised in the West African Gur languages.
Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Is your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Are you curious (perhaps about this book)? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok? Or giddy with dépaysement? The Book of Human Emotions is a gleeful, thoughtful collection of 156 feelings, both rare and familiar. Each has its own story, and reveals the strange forces which shape our rich and varied internal worlds. In reading it, you'll discover feelings you never knew you had (like basorexia, the sudden urge to kiss someone), uncover the secret histories of boredom and confidence, and gain unexpected insights into why we feel the way we do. Pub...
Written by an international team of experts, this is the first work of its kind to offer comprehensive coverage of folklore throughout the African continent. Over 300 entries provide in-depth examinations of individual African countries, ethnic groups, religious practices, artistic genres, and numerous other concepts related to folklore. Featuring original field photographs, a comprehensive index, and thorough cross-references, African Folklore: An Encyclopedia is an indispensable resource for any library's folklore or African studies collection. Also includes seven maps.
Encompassing the time period from the colonial era to the present day, this book critically examines the changing nature of African politics and the factors that underpin such changes. We argue in the volume that many of the problems that plague contemporary politics (ethnicity, governance, conflict, bad economic policies, the absence of dialogue and other social issues) have their roots in the fifteen years after the Second World War, just prior to independence (1945–1960). Because these issues had been grossly mismanaged by the colonial enterprise, those fifteen years could arguably be characterized as the incubation period for the dysfunction that has stymied African politics since inde...
"Set in the pre-colonial Guinea Bissau region, Silences and Soundbytes deals with the largely ignored roles women - and men - played as traders and brokers in Afro-Atlantic trade settlements emerged after first contact in the fifteenth century. Largely based upon unpublished archival material, the book traces the evolution of these riverine settlements and their populations until the military occupation by Portugal in the early twentieth century. It holds that the formation of settlement communities that operated the relay trade along the region's many rivers between the region's hinterland and the coast created opportunities for enterprising and well-connected women. "
Nahbeziehungen, die über familiäre und verwandtschaftliche Bindungen hinausgehen, haben sich zu einem vielbeachteten Thema interdisziplinärer Forschung entwickelt. Beziehungen wie Freundschaft, Patronage und soziale Netzwerke als Variationen sozialer Bindungen sind das Ergebnis unterschiedlicher historischer wie kultureller Kontexte und stellen deshalb einen wesentlichen, aber immer noch unterrepräsentierten Gegenstand interdisziplinären Forschens dar. Fragen nach sich ändernden Freundschaftssemantiken, historischen und interkulturellen bzw. politischen Praktiken von Freundschaft, Patronage und Loyalität standen im Mittelpunkt einer internationalen Tagung, die eine kritische Diskussio...
Transforming the Prairies proposes a new understanding of Canada’s Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), complicating common views of the agency as a model of effective government environmental management. Between 1935 and 2009, the PFRA promoted agricultural rehabilitation in and beyond the Canadian Prairies with mixed and equivocal results. The promotion of strip farming as a soil conservation technique, for example, left crops susceptible to sawfly infestations. The PFRA’s involvement in irrigation development in Ghana increased the local population’s vulnerability to various illnesses. And PFRA infrastructure construction intended to serve the public good failed to account for the interests of affected Indigenous peoples. The PFRA is revealed as being a high modernist state agency that produced varied environmental outcomes and that contributed to consolidating colonialism and racism. This investigation affirms the importance of engaging historical perspectives to help ensure that contemporary environmental management efforts support more just and sustainable futures.
" This collection of seventy prose of narrative samples represents the only published record of the oral tradition of the Emai people of southern Nigeria. The narratives are presented in both Emai orthography and English translation. They tend to portray everyday cultural practices of the Emai with human characters or their animal personification. As such, they provide an initial glimpse of Emai cosmology, cultural values and social norms as well as a firm impression of how Emai grammatical resources function in spontaneous narrative discourse. Ronald P. Schaefer is Professor at the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English Language and Literature, at the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Francis O. Egbokhare teaches at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. "
Review: "Explores what state regulations mean to people in sub-Saharan Africa in the light of already existing local norms with which new regulations compete. The contributions to this volume discuss the competing local, state, and international norms in a diachronic perspective and unfold the intricate ambivalences and contradictions that often characterize these regulations."--Page [4] of cover
An ethnographic study of issues of land rights, property regimes, and ethnicity in West Africa. Focusing on an area of the savannah in northern Ghana and southwestern Burkina Faso, Land, Mobility, and Belonging in West Africa explores how rural populations have secured, contested, and negotiated access to land and how they have organized their communities despite being constantly on the move as farmers or migrant laborers. Carola Lentz seeks to understand how those who claim native status hold sway over others who are perceived to have come later. As conflicts over land, agriculture, and labor have multiplied in Africa, Lentz shows how politics and power play decisive roles in determining ac...