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Conspiracy Narratives from Postcolonial Africa
Decoding conspiracy thinking at the nexus of sexuality, Freemasonry, and the occult. In this book, anthropologists Rogers Orock and Peter Geschiere examine the moral panic over a perceived rise in homosexuality that engulfed Cameroon and Gabon beginning in the early twenty-first century. As they uncover the origins of the conspiratorial narratives that fed this obsession, they argue that the public’s fears were grounded in historically situated assumptions about the entanglement of same-sex practices, Freemasonry, and illicit enrichment. This specific panic in postcolonial Central Africa fixated on high-ranking Masonic figures thought to lure younger men into sex in exchange for profession...
Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa
Studying elites through the framework of accountability
Everyday State and Democracy in Africa
Bottom-up case studies, drawn from the perspective of ordinary Africans’ experiences with state bureaucracies, structures, and services, reveal how citizens and states define each other. This volume examines contemporary citizens’ everyday encounters with the state and democratic processes in Africa. The contributions reveal the intricate and complex ways in which quotidian activities and experiences—from getting an identification card (genuine or fake) to sourcing black-market commodities to dealing with unreliable waste collection—both (re)produce and (re)constitute the state and democracy. This approach from below lends gravity to the mundane and recognizes the value of conceiving...
A Prophet of the People
In 1910 Isaiah Shembe was struggling. He had left his family and quit his job as a sanitation worker to become a Baptist evangelist, but he ended his first mission without much to show. Little did he know that he would soon establish the Nazaretha Church as he began to attract attention from people left behind by industrial capitalism in South Africa. By his death in 1935, Shembe was an internationally known prophet and healer, described by his peers as “better off than all the Black people.” In A Prophet of the People: Isaiah Shembe and the Making of a South African Church, historian Lauren V. Jarvis provides a fascinating and intimate portrait of one of South Africa’s most famous religious figures, and in turn the making of modern South Africa. Following Shembe from his birth in the 1860s across many environments and contexts, Jarvis illuminates the tight links between the spread of Christianity, strategies of evasion, and the capacious forms of community that continue to shape South Africa today.
Conspicuous Consumption in Africa
From early department stores in Cape Town to gendered histories of sartorial success in urban Togo, contestations over expense accounts at an apartheid state enterprise, elite wealth and political corruption in Angola and Zambia, the role of popular religion in the political intransigence of Jacob Zuma, funerals of big men in Cameroon, youth cultures of consumption in Niger and South Africa, queer consumption in Cape Town, middle-class food consumption in Durban and the consumption of luxury handcrafted beads, this collection of essays explores the ways in which conspicuous consumption is foregrounded in various African contexts and historical moments. The essays in Conspicuous Consumption i...
Social Movements and Digital Activism in Africa
This book analyses social movements, digital activism and protest actions in Africa using a de-colonial approach, with selected case studies of #BringBackOurGirls, #OurMumuDonDo, #FeesMustFall, and #OccupyGhana from Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana. This book examines the ideological background of social movements and the broader micro/macro structures that exist within these movements and how these structures shape their engagement with state and non-state actors The author argues that the ideological orientation of movement founders influenced the broader belief of each movement, which in turn shaped the micro and macro structure and relationships of the movements and their engagement with the state. Furthermore, the author argues that not all movement members aligned with the movement's ideological belief, thus the disconnect and contestation within these movements. This book provides much-needed systematic, critical review and cutting-edge research into the ideology, practices, performance, and trends of social and digital movements in Sub-Saharan African countries.
Argonauts of West Africa
"Argonauts of West Africa examines the paradoxes of kinship in the lives of unauthorized African migrants as they struggle for mobility, employment, and citizenship in Europe. In a rapidly changing and highly precarious context, migrants turn to kinship in search of security, stability, and predictability. Through the exchange of identity documents, assistance in obtaining such documentation, marriage, or cohabitation, new kinship dynamics are continually made and remade to navigate the shifting demands of European states. These new kinship relations, however, often prove unreliable, taking on new, unexpected dynamics in the face of codependency; they become more difficult to control than th...
The Blinded City
‘One of the best works of narrative non-fiction to emerge from the country in years. Quite simply brilliant.’ – NIREN TOLSI Amid evictions, raids, killings, the drug trade, and fire, inner-city Johannesburg residents seek safety and a home. A grandmother struggles to keep her granddaughter as she is torn away from her. A mother seeks healing in the wake of her son’s murder. And displaced by the city’s drive for urban regeneration, a group of blind migrants try to carve out an existence. The Blinded City recounts the history of inner-city Johannesburg from 2010 to 2019, primarily from the perspectives of the unlawful occupiers of spaces known as hijacked buildings, bad buildings or ...
Conspicuous Consumption in Africa
This volume grapples with contemporary conspicuous consumption in Africa, its history and how it relates to the project of African modernity. The essays delve into the pleasures, stresses and challenges of consuming in its religious, gendered and racialised aspects, revealing conspicuous consumption as a layered set of practices and relations.
