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In Histories of Independence in Cote d'Ivoire: an Ethnography of the Past, Konstanze N'Guessan deals with memory work in Cote d'Ivoire and bridges an ethnographic approach with the insights of newer theoretical approaches in historiography. Adopting a long-term perspective from the late 1950s to the present, she attempts to disentangle the condensation of meanings of the lieu de memoire "Ivorian independence" and explores how different practices of recalling the past complement and/or contradict each other. Histories of independence in Cote d'Ivoire looks at national-day celebrations, academic historiography, oral tradition and memory politics in order to understand how (political) actors mobilize the past in order to produce pleasant presents and futures.
In Histories of Independence in Côte d’Ivoire: an Ethnography of the Past, Konstanze N’Guessan deals with memory work in Côte d’Ivoire and bridges an ethnographic approach with the insights of newer theoretical approaches in historiography. Adopting a long-term perspective from the late 1950s to the present, she attempts to disentangle the condensation of meanings of the lieu de mémoire “Ivorian independence” and explores how different practices of recalling the past complement and/or contradict each other. Histories of independence in Côte d’Ivoire looks at national-day celebrations, academic historiography, oral tradition and memory politics in order to understand how (political) actors mobilize the past in order to produce pleasant presents and futures.
This multidisciplinary volume offers unique perspectives, across the globe and throughout the centuries, on the complexity of the nexus between work and the life course. For industrialized regions, from Germany and Western Europe to China and Japan, it questions the widespread notion of an overall growing working life course instability, since the 1970s. For unindustrialized or industrializing regions, from West Africa to state socialist East Central Europe, as well as for transnational and transcontinental labour migrations, it shows the enormous influence of the extended family and wider kin on individual pathways into and out of work. For early modern Europe, India, and China, and up to t...
A comprehensive history of Uganda, examining its political, economic and social development from its precolonial origins to the present day.
As climate change becomes an increasingly important part of public discourse, the relationship between time in nature and history is changing. Nature can no longer be considered a slow and immobile background to human history, and the future can no longer be viewed as open and detached from the past. Times of History, Times of Nature engages with this historical shift in temporal sensibilities through a combination of detailed case studies and synthesizing efforts. Focusing on the history of knowledge, media theory, and environmental humanities, this volume explores the rich and nuanced notions of time and temporality that have emerged in response to climate change.
What keeps a family together? In Imagining Futures, authors Carola Lentz and Isidore Lobnibe offer a unique look at one extended African family, currently comprising over five hundred members in Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso. Members of this extended family, like many others in the region, find themselves living increasingly farther apart and working in diverse occupations ranging from religious clergy and civil service to farming. What keeps them together as a family? In their groundbreaking work, Lentz and Lobnibe argue that shared memories, rather than only material interests, bind a family together. Imagining Futures explores the changing practices of remembering in an African family and offers a unique contribution to the growing field of memory studies, beyond the usual focus of Europe and America. Lentz and Lobnibe explore how, in an increasingly globalized, postcolonial world, memories themselves are not static accounts of past events but are actually malleable and shaped by both current concerns and imagined futures.
This study follows green tea from China to Mali along its historical trade routes halfway around the world, examining the circumstances of its introduction, the course of the tea ritual, the equipment to prepare and consume it, and the meanings that it assumed.
Jan Beek’s book explores everyday police work in an African country and analyses how police officers, despite prevailing stereotypes about failed states and African police, produce stateness. Drawing on highly readable ethnographic descriptions, the book shows that Ghanaian police practices often involve the exchange of money (bribes), the use of violence and the influence of politicians. However, such informal practices allow police officers to deal with the inconsistent necessities and the social context of their work. Ultimately, Ghanaian police officers are also inspired by a bureaucratic ethos and their practices are guided by it. Stateness, the book argues, is a quality of organizations, gradually emerging out of such everyday encounters. Producing Stateness allows a close look at the realities of police work in Africa and provides surprising insights into the rationalities of policing and state bureaucracies everywhere.
Paseo La Estación, a mall in Buenos Aires, is as much a place of transit as a place of encounter, where long-term residents and newcomers, people with and without jobs, homeowners and those without housing meet. In the process, social tensions emerge, especially when classist, migrantizing, and moralizing distinctions become relevant in conflict-laden negotiations of belonging. In an ethnography of the mall, Franziska Reiffen explores how people find opportunities for social, economic, and political participation in precarious conditions, and shows how people create socially meaningful places in a city characterized by diversity, inequality, and mobility.
This study highlights the agency of African economic actors in the green tea trade between China and West Africa, their unique tea brand designs, their challenges and successes, and the social and cultural context in which they conduct their work.