Sub-Saharan Africa encompasses all countries in the African continent south of the Sahara Desert. This includes a wide range of countries, including Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Animals and Ancestors : an ethnography by
Ever since the emergence of human culture, people and animals have co-existed in close proximity. Humans have always recognized both their kinship with animals and their fundamental differences, as animals have always been a threat to humans' well-being. The relationship, therefore, has been complex, intimate, reciprocal, personal, and -- crucially -- ambivalent. It is hardly surprising that animals evoke strong emotions in humans, both positive and negative. This companion volume to Morris' important earlier work, The Power of Animals, is a sustained investigation of the Malawi people's sacramental attitude to animals, particularly the role that animals play in life-cycle rituals, their relationship to the divinity and to spirits of the dead. How people relate to and use animals speaks volumes about their culture and beliefs. This book overturns the ingrained prejudice within much ethnographic work, which has often dismissed the pivotal role animals play in culture, and shows that personhood, religion, and a wide range of rituals are informed by, and even dependent upon, human-animal relations.
Bunyoro: an African kingdom by
Chapters: Introductory -- Myth and history -- The king -- The chiefs -- Relatives -- Neighbors -- The supernatural -- Conclusion
Capoeira Connections : a memoir in motion by
This ethnographic memoir weaves together the history ofcapoeira, recent transformations in the practice, and personal insights fromauthor Katya Wesolowski's thirty years of experience as a capoeirista.
The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army : The Role of Social Process and Routinised Violence in South Sudan's Military by
This book examines the role of social process and routinised violence in the use of underaged soldiers in the country now known as South Sudan during the twenty-one-year civil war between Sudan’s northern and southern regions. Drawing on accounts of South Sudanese who as children and teenagers were part of the Red Army—the youth wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—the book sheds light on the organised nature of the exploitation of children and youth by senior adult figures within the movement. The book also includes interviews with several of the original Red Army commanders, all of whom went on to hold senior positions within the military and government of South Sudan. The author chronicles the cultural transformation experienced by members of the Red Army and considers whether an analysis of the processes involved in what was then Africa’s longest civil war can aid our understanding of South Sudan’s more recent descent into ethnicised conflict. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and political science with interests in ethnography, conflict, and the military exploitation of children.
Chisungu : A Girls' Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia by
Audrey Richards (1899-1984) was a leading British anthropologist of the twentieth century and the first woman president of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Based on fieldwork conducted at a time when the discipline was dominated by male anthropologists, Chisungu: A Girl's Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia is widely hailed as a classic of anthropology and African and gender studies.
Underpinned by painstaking research carried out by Richards among the Bemba people in northern Zambia in the 1930s, Chisungu focuses on the initiation ceremonies for young Bemba girls. Pioneering the study of women's rituals and challenging the prevailing theory that rites of passage served merely to transfer individuals from one status to another, Richards writes about the incredibly rich and diverse aspects of ritual that characterised Chisungu: its concern with matriliny; deference to elders; sex and reproduction; the birth of children; ideas about the continuity between past, present and future; and the centrality of emotional conflict.
On a deeper level, Chisungu is a crucial work for the role it accords to the meaning of symbolism in explaining the structure of society, paving the way for much subsequent understanding of the role of symbolic meaning and kinship.
Cities of Entanglements: social life in Johannesburg and Maputo through ethnographic comparison by
How do people live together in cities shaped by inequality? This comparative ethnography of two African cities, Maputo and Johannesburg, presents a new narrative about social life in cities often described as sharply divided. Based on the ethnography of entangled lives unfolding in a township and in a suburb in Johannesburg, in a bairro and in an elite neighborhood in Maputo, the book includes case studies of relations between domestic workers and their employers, failed attempts by urban elites to close off their neighborhoods, and entanglements emerging in religious spaces and in shopping malls. Systematizing comparison as an experience-based method, the book makes an important contribution to urban anthropology, comparative urbanism and urban studies.
The Dobe! Kung by
Chapters:
The!Kung -- The people of the Dobe area -- Environment and settlement -- Subsistence : foraging for a living -- Kinship and social organization -- Marriage and sexuality -- Conflict, politics, and exchange -- Coping with life : religion, world view, and healing -- The!Kung and their neighbors -- Perceptions and directions of social change -- Postscript : The!Kung of Namibia -- Appendix : Eating Christmas in the Kalahari.
Enculturation and Socialization in an Ijaw Village by
Chapters: Introduction -- Ebiama -- The Prenatal Setting -- Childhood from Birth to Four: The Age of Dependence -- Childhood from Five to Eight: The Age of Transition -- Childhood from Nine to Thirteen: The Age of Responsibility -- Adolescence from Fourteen to Seventeen: Consolidation for Adulthood -- Cultural and Social Change -- Conclusion
Global outlaws : crime, money, and power in the contemporary world by
Carolyn Nordstrom explores the pathways of global crime in this stunning work of anthropology that has the power to change the way we think about the world. To write this book, she spent three years traveling to hot spots in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States investigating the dynamics of illegal trade around the world--from blood diamonds and arms to pharmaceuticals, exotica, and staples like food and oil. Global Outlaws peels away the layers of a vast economy that extends from a war orphan in Angola selling Marlboros on the street to powerful transnational networks reaching across continents and oceans. Nordstrom's extraordinary fieldwork includes interviews with scores of informants, including the smugglers, victims, power elite, and profiteers who populate these economic war zones. Her compelling investigation, showing that the sum total of extra-legal activities represents a significant part of the world's economy, provides a new framework for understanding twenty-first-century economics and economic power. Global Outlaws powerfully reveals the illusions and realities of security in all areas of transport and trade and illuminates many of the difficult ethical problems these extra-legal activities pose.
Igbo of Southeast Nigeria by
Chapters: The Igbo world -- How the Igbo make their living -- Helping the town "To get up" -- Igbo ways in government -- Founding a new family -- Growing up in an Igbo village -- The kinship network -- Igbo hospitality -- Nonkinship associations -- Status placement among Igbo -- Igbo gods and oracles -- The Igbo and culture contact -- Orthography.
The Lugbara of Uganda by
Written by one of the most distinguished ethnographers of African cultures, this edition updates 30 years of research and writing. Middleton's sensitive account dramatizes how this complex sociopolitical society, once reliant on feud or warfare to control competition, became refugees of harassment and victims of famine.
Making Refuge : Somali Bantu refugees and Lewiston, Maine by
How do people whose entire way of life has been destroyed and who witnessed horrible abuses against loved ones construct a new future? How do people who have survived the ravages of war and displacement rebuild their lives in a new country when their world has totally changed? In Making Refuge Catherine Besteman follows the trajectory of Somali Bantus from their homes in Somalia before the onset in 1991 of Somalia's civil war, to their displacement to Kenyan refugee camps, to their relocation in cities across the United States, to their settlement in the struggling former mill town of Lewiston, Maine. Tracking their experiences as "secondary migrants" who grapple with the struggles of xenophobia, neoliberalism, and grief, Besteman asks what humanitarianism feels like to those who are its objects and what happens when refugees move in next door. As Lewiston's refugees and locals negotiate coresidence and find that assimilation goes both ways, their story demonstrates the efforts of diverse people to find ways to live together and create community. Besteman's account illuminates the contemporary debates about economic and moral responsibility, security, and community that immigration provokes.
The Mbuti Pygmies: change and adaptation by
This case focuses on the Mbuti pygmy hunter/gatherers of Zaire and their adaptation to change both before and after independence.
Police Work and Identity: a south african ethnography. by
This is a book about the men and women who police contemporary South Africa. Drawing on rich, original ethnographical data, it considers how officers make sense of their jobs and how they find meaning in their duties. It demonstrates that the dynamics that lead to police abuses and scandals in transitional and neo-liberalising regimes such as South Africa can be traced to the day-to-day experiences and ambitions of the average police officer. It is about the stories they tell themselves about themselves and their social worlds, and how these shape the order they produce through their work. By focusing on police officers, this book positions the individual in primacy over the organisation, asking what policing looks like when motivated by the pursuit of ontological security in precarious contexts. It acknowledges but downplays the importance of police culture in determining officers' attitudes and behaviour, and reminds readers that most officers' lives are entangled in, and shaped by a range of social, political and cultural forces. It suggests that a job in the South African Police Service (SAPS) is primarily just that: a job. Most officers join the organisation after other dreams have slipped beyond reach, their presence in the Service being almost accidental. But once employed, they re-write their self-narratives and enact carefully choreographed performances to ease managerial and public pressure, and to rationalize their coercive practices. In an era where 'evidence' and 'what works' reigns supreme, and where 'cop culture' is often deemed a primary socializing force, this book emphasises how officers' personal histories, ambitions, and vulnerabilities remain central to how policing unfolds on the street. ed by a range of social, political and cultural forces. It suggests that a job in the South African Police Service (SAPS) is primarily just that: a job. Most officers join the organisation after other dreams have slipped beyond reach, their presence in the Service being almost accidental. But once employed, they re-write their self-narratives and enact carefully choreographed performances to ease managerial and public pressure, and to rationalize their coercive practices. In an era where 'evidence' and 'what works' reigns supreme, and where 'cop culture' is often deemed a primary socializing force, this book emphasises how officers' personal histories, ambitions, and vulnerabilities remain central to how policing unfolds on the street.
Recolonizing Africa : an ethnography of land acquisition, mining, and resource control by
Explaining how the legacy of colonialism and the nature of the liberal economy play a significant role in the development of Africa today, keeping Africa poor and dependent, this book explains how trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization had opened doors for the New Scramble for Africa. Green technology and the high demand for electronics have intensified Africa's role as a supplier of raw materials, natural resources, and cheap labor and as a large market of more than one billion people in the global economy. This unique ethnographic study, with elements of autoethnography, starts with the author's journey to Bulyanhulu, Tanzania, one of the largest gold mines in Africa, and moves to a broader analysis that reveals the systemic violence of resource extraction. Focus groups, interviews, and observations demonstrate the lack of distributive justice and intersectional equality in the process of land acquisition and resource extraction, described by villagers in racialized and gendered terms as exploitative and part of a racist system that fails to provide a fair distribution of benefits to local people. Recolonizing Africa examines resource conflicts among local people, governments, and transnational corporations from Europe, North America, and Asia, revealing how global systemic violence and irresponsible business practices precipitate economic inequality between African and financially rich nations - threatening peace and security, indigenous rights, and the environment.
The Swazi: a south African kingdom by
Based upon information collected during half a century of field research in Swaziland, this case study presents rare insight into the dynamics of the country's independence, problems facing traditional leaders, and conflicts of interest and personalities.