The International African Library (IAL) is a major monograph series from the IAI. Theoretically informed ethnographies, and studies of social relations 'on the ground' which are sensitive to local cultural forms, have long been central to the institute's publications programme. The IAL maintains this strength and extends it into new areas of contemporary concern, both practical and intellectual. It includes works focused on the linkages between local, national and global levels of society; writings on political economy and power; studies at the interface of the socio-cultural and the environmental; analyses of the roles of religion, cosmology and ritual in social organisation; and historical studies, especially those of a social, cultural or interdisciplinary character.
The International African Library series complements the quarterly journal Africa.
International African Library series 40
Obafemi Awolowo and the Making of Remo: the local politics of a Nigerian nationalist
Insa Nolte
This book examines the evolution of a distinctive Yoruba community, Remo, and the central role played in this process by the Remo-born Nationalist politician and Yoruba leader Obafemi Awolowo (1909–87). Based on a subtle analysis of local-level politics, this book argues that participatory structures play an important role both in Yoruba politics and in the African postcolonial state. At the same time, it is an important contribution to the scholarly debate on one of Nigeria’s most important politicians.
This admirable and richly textured book should be widely read not only by those interested in Yoruba history and modern Nigeria but by all those who seek a mature understanding of the intricate connections between local and national politics. Nolte provides powerful insights on the towering stature of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the preeminent politician of the era, along with the social dimensions of power, the richness of political networks, institutional conflicts, the construction of mythologies of power and popular loyalty, and many more crucial topics, all ably analyzed with clarity and precision. – Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
(...) one of the most important books in Nigerian Studies in the last decade. – Olufemi Vaughan, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine
(... ) provides a fascinating tapestry of Remo life, as well as the single best portrait available of Awolowo’s background and personality (...) a model study of Africa’s past and present (...) proclaims the arrival of a scholar of formidable gifts. – Tom C. McCaskie, Professor of the History of Africa, School of Oriental and African Studies
This study is not just about Obafemi Awolowo and Remo, it is a timely, rich and erudite addition to contemporary Yoruba socio-cultural and political history – Olukoya Ogen, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and British Academy Visiting Fellow, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham
Provides powerful insights on the towering stature of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the preeminent politician of the era … the construction of mythologies and popular loyalty. – Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
The single best portrait available of Awolowo’s background and personality … a model study of Africa’s past and present.– T.C. McCaskie, School of Oriental and African Studies
Insa Nolte is a lecturer at the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham.
ISBN 9780748638956 296pp. June 2009
International African Library series 39
Beyond the State in Rural Uganda
Ben Jones
In this innovative study, Ben Jones argues that scholars too often assume that the state is the most important force behind change in local political communities in Africa. Studies look to the state, and to the impact of government reforms, as ways of understanding processes of development and change. Using the example of Uganda, regarded as one of Africa's few ‘success stories’, Jones chronicles the insignificance of the state and the marginal impact of Western development agencies. He offers a new anthropological perspective on how to think about processes of social and political change in poorer parts of the world.
Ben Jones is an anthropologist and lecturer in social policy at the University of East Anglia.
Ben Jones is providing in-depth background analysis to the Guardian’s ‘Katine’ development project in Uganda. For more information, and to read his articles, click here . Or read his remarks on the relationship between the development project and the media here.
ISBN 978-0748635191, 224pp. 2008, hardback
International African Library series 38
The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast: iconoclasm done and undone
Ramon Sarro
Based on research spanning over twelve years, this id an in-depth analysis of an iconoclastic religious movement initiated by a Muslim preacher among coastal Baga farmers in the French colonial period. With an ethnographic approach that listens as carefully to those who suffered iconoclastic violence as to those who wanted to 'get rid of custom', Sarro discusses the extent to which iconoclasm produces a rupture of religious knowledge and identity, and analyses its relevance in the making of modern nations and citizens. The book will appeal to readers with an interest in the anthropology of religion, iconoclasm, the history and anthropology of West Africa, or the politics of heritage.
...represents a distinguished contribution to the historical sociology of the State in Africa, and in particular to an understanding of the origins of the Guinean nationalist movement... Ramon Sarro brings us a page-turner on the social history of one of the least well known states in West Africa...this is how political sociology, specifically comparative political sociology, should be written...that leads to a more general statement not only about the origin of the State but also about iconoclasm. - Jean-François Bayart, Sociétés politiques comparées
Ramon Sarro is at the University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Sciences.
ISBN 9780748635153, 256pp. 2008, hardback
International African Library series 37
Masquerades of Modernity: power and secrecy in Casamance, Senegal
Ferdinand de Jong
The Jola and Mandinko people of the Casamance region in Senegal have always used their rituals and performances to incorporate the impact of Islam, colonialism, capitalism, and contemporary politics. Their performances of secrecy have accommodated these modern powers and continue to do so today. The performers incorporate the modern and redefine modernity through secretive practices. Their traditions are not modern inventions, but traditional ways of dealing with modernity. How do those on the margins of modernity face the challenges of globalization? This book demonstrates that secrecy is one of the means by which a society on the fringe of modernity produces itself as locality. Focusing on initiation rituals, masked performances and modern art, this study shows that rituals and performances long deemed obsolete, serve the insertion of their performers in the world at their own terms.
The book will interest anthropologists, historians, political scientists and all those studying how globalisation affects peripheral societies. It shows that secrecy, performed as a weapon of the weak, empowers their performers. Secrecy serves to mark boundaries and define the local in the global.
…a solid and thought-provoking engagement with contemporary theoreticians; affording the study of masking its rightful place at the forefront of contemporary anthropological thinking. – Social Anthropology.
…constitutes a major contribution to anthropological and art historical literature about rituals, masquerades, and identity in postcolonial West Africa.’ – African Studies Review.
Weaving together different domains and social spaces in which politics, gender, kinship, identity, economy and religion(s) meet, Ferdinand de Jong has written a rich, stimulating and nuanced text that provides a kaleidoscopic view. – Politique africaine
Ferdinand de Jong is a lecturer at the University of East Anglia.
ISBN 9780748633197, 256pp. 2007, hardback.
International African Library series 36
Art, Performance and Ritual in Benin City
Charles Gore
This book explores the roles of contemporary urban shrines and their visual traditions in Benin City. It focuses on the charismatic priests and priestesses who are possessed by a pantheon of deities, the communities of devotees, and the artists who make artifacts for their shrines. The visual arts are part of a wider configuration of practices that include song, dance, possession and healing. These practices provide the means for exploring the relationships of the visual to both the verbal and performance arts that feature at these shrines. The analysis in this book raises fundamental questions about how the art of Benin, and non-Western art histories more generally, are understood. The book throws critical light on the taken-for-granted assumptions which underpin current interpretations and presents an original and revisionist account of Benin art history.
Charles Gore is Lecturer in the History of African Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
ISBN 9780748633166, 256pp. 2007, hardback.
International African Library series 35
Philosophizing in Mombasa: knowledge, Islam and intellectual practice at the Swahili coast
Kai Kresse
Philosophising in Mombasa provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an 'anthropology of philosophy'.
This book won an honorable mention in the African Studies Association 2008 Melville J. Herskovits Award.
Kai Kresse is a research fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews.
ISBN 9780748627868, 288pp. 2007, hardback.
International African Library series 34
The Man-Leopard Murders: history and society in colonial Nigeria
David Pratten
This book is an account of murder and politics in Africa, and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria attributed to the 'man-leopard society'. These murder mysteries, reported as the 'biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world', were not just forensic but also related to the broad historical impact of commercial, Christian and colonial aid relations on Annang society.
…provides a fascinating insight into a relatively under-researched colonial society… a masterpiece of reflection on the interwoven strands of Annang history and society…it will surely stand the test of time.
– H-Africa
This book won the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology 2007, awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute.
David Pratten is University Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Africa at the University of Oxford.
ISBN 780748625536, 448pp. 2007, hardback.
International African Library series 33
Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana
Carola Lentz
Drawing on two decades of research this social and political history of North-Western Ghana traces the creation of new ethnic and territorial boundaries, categories and forms of self-understanding, and represents a major contribution to debates on ethnicity, colonialism and the ‘production of history’. It explores the creation and redefinition of ethnic distinctions and commonalities by African and European actors, showing that ethnicity’s power derives from a contradiction: while ethnic identities purport to be non-negotiable, creating permanent bonds, stability and security, the boundaries of the communities created and the associated traits and practices are malleable and adaptable to specific interests and contexts.
…provides one of the most significant contributions in recent years to understanding the intersection of notions of belonging and conceptions of power common among Africans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries… The book’s actor-oriented perspective of African history and politics provides a fuller understanding of African experiences in colonial and postcolonial Africa than the more common top-down approaches…
– H-Net Reviews
Carola Lentz is professor at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.
ISBN ISBN 9780748624010, 384pp. 2006, hardback.
International African Library series 32
Islam and the Prayer Economy: history and authority in a Malian town
Benjamin Soares
At a time when so-called fundamentalism has become the privileged analytical frame for understanding Muslim societies past and present, this study offers an alternative perspective on Islam. Soares provides a richly detailed discussion of Sufism, Islamic reform, and other contemporary ways of being Muslim in Mali and offers an original analytical perspective for understanding changes in the practice of Islam more generally.
‘A quite remarkable work, based on extensive well informed field work’ – David Robinson, Professor of History and African Studies Michigan State University
‘This is a well-written book that provides an insightful analysis of a Muslim society undergoing profound change’ – Louis Brenner, Emeritus Professor of the History of Religion School of Oriental and African Studies
Benjamin F. Soares is an anthropologist and senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands.
ISBN ISBN 9780748623587, 320pp. 2005, hardback. ISBN: 9780748623587, paperback.
International African Library series 31
Medicine Murders in Colonial Lesotho: the anatomy of a moral crisis
Colin Murray and Peter Sanders
Medicine murder involved the cutting of body parts from victims, usually while they were still alive, to be used for the preparation of medicines intended to enhance the power of the perpetrators. A ‘very startling’ increase in cases of medicine murder apparently took place in Basutoland (now Lesotho) in southern Africa in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. It gave rise to a dramatic crisis of late colonial rule. Was this increase a real one? If so, why did it happen? How far does if explain the crisis? What other factors contributed?
‘A stunning contribution to studies which seek to get under the skin of the relationship between violence and political power in Africa... This book is destined to be one of the classics of African historical and anthropological studies.’ – Richard Rathbone, formerly Professor of African History, School of Oriental and African Studies.
Colin Murray has a background in anthropology and intensive experience of field research over many years in Lesotho and the Free State (South Africa).
Peter Sanders served as an administrative officer in Basutoland (now Lesotho) from 1961 to 1966.
ISBN 9780748622849, xvi + 494 pp, 2005, hardback.
International African Library series 30
Islam and Caste Knowledge Practices among Haalpulaar’en in Senegal
Roy Dilley
This book examines in historical perspective the hitherto little-studied relationship between Islam and caste among the Haalpulaar'en of Senegal. The Islamic uprising of the 1770s, which established a class of Islamic clerics in positions of authority in the Senegal river valley, had long-term consequences for the social relations between clerics and caste groups. The book examines how at different historical junctures attempts were made to negotiate the equalitarian claims of a universalist faith with the expression of social differentiation lying at the heart of caste inequality. While the existing literature focuses on those who established Islam within the region, this present work provides insights into how marginalised artisans, poets and musicians understood themselves and how they responded to a faith which had become the cornerstone of social prestige and status. It analyses the knowledge practices of clerics and cultural distinction. This involves a synthesis of historical sources and ethnography and provides an innovative approach to the study of religious identity and specialist practitioners.
Roy Dilley is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, Scotland.
ISBN ISBN 9780748619900, 270pp. 2004, paperback.
International African Library series 29
Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Belinda Bozzoli
This is a compelling study of the origins and trajectory of a legendary black uprising against apartheid - the Alexandra Rebellion of 1986. Using insights from the literature on collective action and social movements, it delves deep into the rebellion’s inner workings. It examines how the residents of Alexandra - a poverty-stricken, segregated township in Johannesburg - manipulated and overturned the meanings of space, time and power in their sequestered world; how they used political theatre to convey, stage and dramatise their struggle; and how young and old residents generated differing ideologies and tactics, giving rise to a distinct form of generational politics. Theatres of Struggle asks the reader to enter into the world of the rebels, and to overcome the moral complexity and social duress they experienced as they invented new social forms and violently attacked old ones.
Belinda Bozzoli is a Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
ISBN 9780748619412, 336pp. 2004, paperback.
International African Library series 28
Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town
Elisha Renne
This study of local perceptions of population and development in a rural south-western Nigerian town questions some of the underlying assumptions of the demographic theory of fertility transition. Fertility transition theory, along with modernity theory from which it derives, have not explained why fertility remains high, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, despite the fact that some Westernising preconditions have been met nor why development, despite a plethora of projects, has failed to ‘take-off’. As this study demonstrates, neither fertility change nor development follows a universal trajectory. Whether lower fertility or Western models of development are viewed as possible or advantageous reflects cultural ideas about proper social relations as well as political economic conditions, which hinder or facilitate these changes.
Elisha P. Renne is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michigan.
ISBN ISBN 9780748618156, 256pp. 2004, paperback.
International African Library series 27
‘Half-London’ in Zambia: contested identities in a Catholic mission school
Anthony Simpson
‘Half-London’ describes and analyses life in ‘St Antony’s’, a Zambian Catholic boys’ mission boarding school in the 1990s, using the context-sensitive methods of social anthropology. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s notion of the panoptic gaze, Anthony Simpson demonstrates how students are both drawn to mission education as a ‘civilising process’, yet also resist many of the lessons that the official institution offers, particularly with respect to claims of ‘true’ Christian identity and educated masculinity. The book offers unparalleled detail and insight into the contributions of mission schooling to the processes of postcolonial identity formation in Africa. Its rich and compelling ethnography enables readers to get a real sense of everyday life within the school and raises compelling questions about identity in plural societies beyond the confines of St Antony’s.
This is an outstanding ethnography of an African school. The reader is taken into the life-world of St Antony’s, and made to feel right there, moving within the distinctive cultural geography of the school.’ – Paul Willis, author of Learning to Labour
Anthony Simpson taught at the Zambian Catholic mission boys’ boarding school from 1974 to 1997. He arrived in Zambia as an English teacher, but his involvement in the day-to-day life of St Antony’s led him to an interest in anthropology and psychology.
ISBN 9780748618040, 224pp. 2003, paperback.
International African Library series 26
From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland
Harri Englund
The first full-length ethnography to tell villagers' stories from war to peace in Mozambique. Extended case studies of particular villages and families on the Mozambique-Malawi borderland form the core of the book. The detailed study takes the reader beyond the stereotypes which often accompany interventions into humanitarian catastrophes. The villagers in this book are not nameless victims but persons with social relationships, participants, in their own ways, in the histories of colonialism, nationalism, labour migration, guerrilla war, exile, repatriation and, most recently, liberal democracy. Those interested in humanitarian catastrophes, African politics, refugee studies and development studies will be inspired by its detailed rebuttal of stereotypes which continue to represent Africans as helpless victims.
Harri Englund is a Reader at the University of Cambridge.
ISBN 9780748615773 232pp. 2001, paperback.
International African Library series 25
Asante Identities: history and modernity in an African village, 1850-1950
T.C. McCaskie
This study of the people of the Asante village of Adeebeba - now part of Kumase, Ghana's second city - over the century 1850 to 1950 is unparalleled in its wealth of detail about the concerns of ordinary African men and women in a period of tumultuous change. In exploring their testmony in all its rich diveristy, McCaskie draws out its larger implications for the understanding of Asante identities in a world overtaken by colonialism and modernity. Community and belonging, politics and belief, rural and urban lifestyles, money, mobility and sex, and all the other daily concerns of Adeebeba villagers are discussed in depth. The result is a book that is unequalled in its recuperation of the African past through African voices.
Tom C. McCaskie is Professor of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
ISBN 9780748615100, 288pp. 2000, paperback.
International African Library series 24
Serving Class: masculinity and the feminisation of domestic labour in Tanzania
Janet Budjra
This is a book about contradictions: about the men who were better at housework than women and still retained their view of themselves as real men. In colonial Tanganyika, when housework for some was transformed into wage labour for others, the only available labour force was predominantly male, so men became servants, even nursemaids to babies. Even today men are preferred over women as servants.
And equally contradictory: how did an institution so sharply expressing class differences persist in a period when the Tanzanian state was proclaiming 'socialism' and the end of class exploitation? Exploring the institution of domestic service discloses processes of postcolonial class formation both as exploitation and cultural elaboration. It also uncovers gender struggles amongst workers and those who employ them.
ISBN 9780748614844, 288pp. 2000, paperback.
International African Library series 23
Death in Abeyance: illness and therapy among the Tabwa of Central Africa
Christopher O. Davis
This is a comprehensive survey, in both its theory and its practice, of the medical system of the Tabwa who live on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). Based on four years of fieldwork, Dr Davis's book is the most complete study so far of an African therapeutic system. In contrast to most ethnographies of medicine, which take social structure as primary and treat medical knowledge as an extension or reflection of it, this study focuses on the medical system itself. When medicine is thus considered first as an indigenous or vernacular science, it is soon seen that much of what passes for an understanding of ritual, magic and religion in Africa is thin and misconceived.
Christopher Davis is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London
ISBN 9780748613052 342pp. 2000, paperback.
International African Library series 22
Songs of the Women Migrants: performance and identity in South Africa
Deborah James
Kiba is a genre of `traditional' music in South Africa. This book is about its performance and social meaning. Women migrants from the country's Northern Province have developed the genre, formerly an exclusively male one, in vibrant and stimulating ways. Through an exploration of the richness and variety of the songs, the social background to their performance, the life-histories of female performers, and the women's own running commentaries, Deborah James opens up novel pathways of interpretation of the significance of such music.
As working migrants - and mothers - who have experienced poverty, the subordination of `custom' and the harsh constraints of apartheid, the women express the realities of their lives in distinct cultural idiom. Through the dual role of musical expert and family breadwinner, they have charted their own paths through the difficulties of everyday life in an oppressive environment. The author offers new perspectives on the experience of domestic service on the urban Witwatersrand in recent decades: on changing relationships between town and country; and on the ways in which the women define themselves as ethnic subjects through their performance of kiba. A major strength of the analysis is the vigour and liveliness with which women reflect on their own experiences.
Deborah James is professor in social anthropology at the London School of Economics.
ISBN 9780748613045, 248pp. 1999, paperback.
International African Library series 21
Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana
Birgit Meyer
This book offers an ethnography of the emergence of local Christianity and its relation to changing social, political and economic formations among the Peki Ewe in Ghana. The main argument is that, for the Ewe, involvement with modernity goes hand in hand with new enchantment, rather than disenchantment, of the world. Comparing discourses and ritual practices of mission as well as Pentecostal churches, the study reveals that the latter pay much more attention to Satan – especially through `deliverance' rituals. With its emphasis on the hybrid image of the Devil and people's obsession with occult forces as a way to mediate the attractions and discontents of modernity, this book sheds light on a hitherto neglected dimension in studies of African Christianity.
Birgit Meyer is a professor at the University of Amsterdam.
ISBN 9780748613038, 288pp. 1999, paperback.
International African Library series 20
Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: a social history of the Hwesa People, 1870s-1990s
David Maxwell
This social history of a remote chiefdom in north-east Zimbabwe advances local level studies of African Christianity and politics. The book also analyses the historical roots of chieftaincy's current importance. It explores the role of chiefs in the invention of tradition, the imagination of ethnicity and the defence of local interests against an interventionist state. The doctoral dissertation on which this book is based won the Audrey Richards Prize awarded by the African Studies Association of the UK for the best African Studies thesis, 1994-96.
David Maxwell is Professor of African History at Keele University.
ISBN 9780748611300, 288pp. 1999, paperback.
International African Library series 19
Land, Ecology and Resistance in Kenya, 1880–1952
Fiona McKenzie
The book examines the gender and class dimensions of resistance to colonial rule in the context of struggles over the control and use of land in Murang'a (then Fort Hall) District in Kenya between 1880 and 1952. The objective is, first, to expose the process through which colonial rule was effected through the creation of discourses of `betterment' and `environmentalism'. The author demonstrates how, by this means, the state attempted to remove the deeply political issue of land distribution between African and European from the realm of politics, and recast it in what was claimed to be the neutral language of legal regimes and of western science and technology. The second objective is to recvoer the gender and class dimensions of counternarratives which challenged the colonial administration. Drawing on the stories of elderly people still living in Murang'a, in the mid 1980s, in order to challenge the discourse of colonial documents, the author shows how both public and veveryday forms of resistance were an integral part of the politics of resistance to colonial rule.
ISBN 9780748610204, 256pp. 1998, hardback.
International African Library series 18
An African Niche Economy: farming to feed Ibadan 1868-88
Jane Guyer
Of the several forces reshaping West African rural societies and economies in the post-colonial period one of the most pervasive is the rapid growth of urban demand. This case study of a Yoruba community in the food supply hinterland of Ibadan tells the social and agricultural history of its various producers over twenty years: from the Nigerian civil war, via the oil boom and bust, to structural adjustment. The final section draws together all the threads and discusses the interplay amongst the technical repertoire for production in a savanna ecology, forces emanating from the political economy of the urban hinterland, and the tenets of Yoruba occupational culture.
Jane Guyer is a professor of anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.
ISBN ISBN 9780748609314, 1997, 224pp. hardback. ISBN: 9780748610334, paperback.
International African Library series 17
The Politics of Cultural Difference in Northern Cameroon
Philip Burnham
Northern Cameroon is a region of great cultural diversity - populated by the politically dominant Fulbe, the pastoral Mbororo, and by farming populations such as the Gbaya. This study, based on research spanning 25 years, focuses on the shifting patterns of social assimilation and exclusion that have characterised the inter-ethnic relations of this region for almost two centuries. The analysis is brought up to the 1990s, when the decline of the Cameroon state, linked with World Bank structural adjustment policies as well as the growing importance of ethnic associations, NGOs, and international bodies (including Islamic reformist movements and Christian missions), has had a major impact on ethnic conflicts and political mobilisation in the region. Engaging in debates on the `invention' of tradition, the deconstruction of ethnicity, and the nature of the modern African state, this book makes a major contribution to the analyses of ethnic politics, and the risks and possibilities of democratisation, in Africa.
Philip Burnham is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at University College London.
ISBN 9780748608126, 272pp. 1996, hardback.
International African Library series 16
Poetry, Prose and Popular Culture in Hausa
Graham Furniss
Introducing poetry, prose, songs and theatre from Nigeria, this engaging volume blends translated extracts with a rich commentary on the historical development and modern context of this creative culture. Examines imaginative prose-writing, the tale tradition, popular song, Islamic religious poetry and modern TV drama.
978-0-7486-0786-0 368pp. 1996, paperback
International African Library series 15
Permanent Pilgrims: the role of pilgrimage in the lives of West African Muslims in Sudan
C. Bawa Yamba
West African pilgrims in Sudan believe that walking across the savannas and desert, with all the hardships that such a journey entails, is the only proper way of performing the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Their journey, however, appears to stop halfway in Sudan, where most of them reside in stranger enclaves as fourth- and fifth-generation immigrants. Yet these pilgrims define themselves as transients, and see these villages as temporary stations on their way to Mecca. This book examines life in a set of West African pilgrim villages in Sudan to show how such a pilgrimage is maintained. It examines why these people allow themselves to live in a state of permanent transition, and argues that here pilgrimage is a symbolic journey analogous to life itself.
C. Bawa Yamba is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of International Health and Social Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.
ISBN 9780748605927, 240pp. 1995, hardback.
International African Library series 14
The Advance of African Capita: the growth of Nigerian private enterprise
Tom Forrest
Combining ethnographic and historical perspectives, this study examines the strategies and patterns of development employed by business people from the colonial period to the present day. Not only an invaluable digest of Nigeria's business activity, this important study also challenges existing views about African enterprise and is highly relevant to policy-makers concerned with economic development.
ISBN 9780748604920, 256pp. 1994, hardback.
International African Library series 13
Rainforest Relations: gender and resource use among the Mende of Gola, Sierra Leone
Melissa Leach
With environmental change and conservation in West Africa's tropical rainforests being topics of political and academic attention, Rainforest Relations brings the perspective of the forest dwellers themselves to the debate.
Based on detailed research in the Mende communities around Gola North Forest Reserve in Sierra Leone, this innovative book examines the different relationships women and men have with their environment. Surveying the recent debates and literature concerning forest conservation in this area, as well as current analytical approaches to gender and the environment, Melissa Leach examines the importance of rainforest resources to the local economy and social relations, and shows that neither an understanding of forest use and change, nor adequate conservation policies, can be achieved without a concern for gender.
Melissa Leach is Professorial Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
ISBN 9780748604937, 304pp. 1994, hardback.
International African Library series 12
Ranching and Enterprise in Eastern Botswana: a case study of black and white farmers
Isaac N. Mazonde
While Botswana's economic development has been extraordinary, little is known about how different social groups have adapted to the new economic opportunities. This comprehensive account studies a key group of the ranchers. It describes their changing lifestyles, their construction of personal and social space, and the way they have adapted to state-initiated political and economic change, showing through a series of case studies how ranching has grown from being the preserve of white settlers to include Botswana and other African farmers as well.
978-0-7486-0467-8 224pp. 1994, hardback.
International African Library series 11
Strangers and Traders: Yoruba migrants, markets and the state in Ghana
Jeremy Eades
In the inter-war years, groups of enterprising Yoruba traders from a few towns in Western Nigeria established a successful trading network throughout the Gold Coast (Ghana). Then, in 1969, they were abruptly ordered to leave the country. At the time of the exodus, Jerry Eades followed the traders back to Nigeria. There, on the basis of extensive interviews and archival sources, he reconstructed the history of the migration from four Yorubu towns to northern Ghana. The result is one of the fullest and most detailed accounts of chain migration and its implications for economic development ever written.
ISBN 9780748603862, 234pp. 1993, hardback.
International African Library series 10
Black Mountain: land, class and power in the Orange Free State 1880s-1980s
Colin Murray
A remarkable chronicle of the struggles of many people – black and white – whose lives were rooted in the largest slum in South Africa, Botshabelo – a massive concentration of poverty and unemployment. The stories told by the inhabitants of the slum in 1980 led to this book. Detailed archival evidence and contemporary oral history illuminate all the important themes of the political economy of the rural highveld of South Africa from the mineral revolution of the late nineteenth century to the erosion of apartheid in the late twentieth century.
978-0-7486-0344-2 340pp. 1992, hardback.
International African Library series 9
Tears of the Dead: the social biography of an African family
Richard Werbner
Illuminating 100 years of family history in Western Zimbabwe, from the colonial period to the present, this social biography is the first account of its kind for southern Africa. At the heart of the book are the life histories of several generations of Kalanga men and women in a single extended family. Together they chronicle the family's endurance and empowerment in the face of large scale eviction, displacement from home, the threat of imposed resettlement, guerrilla war, and near starvation in a food blockade.
ISBN 9780748603312, 212pp. 1991, paperback.
International African Library series 8
Between God, Dead and the Wild: Chamba interpretations of ritual and Religion
Richard Fardon
Based on observations in two West African villages – one a traditionally uncentralised community in contemporary Nigeria, the other a small chiefdom in Cameroon - this study shows that despite basic presuppositions regarding various types of being, the beliefs of the two groups manifest themselves in quite different ways. Focusing particularly on Chamba conceptions of people, masks and cults, Richard Fardon applies contemporary social theory to Chamba religion and shows how particular individuals integrate their concerns with notions of human purpose, the agricultural cycle and the values of the wilds.
Richard Fardon is Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
ISBN 9780748602223, 288pp. 1990, hardback. ISBN: 9780748602841, paperback.
International African Library series 7
I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, women and the past in a Yoruna town
Karin Barber
In Yoruba culture oriki, or oral praise poetry, is a major part of both traditional performance and daily life, and as such reflects social change and structure both past and present. Karin Barber studies the oriki poetry of Okuku, a small town in the Oyo state of Nigeria. She shows how women, the main performers of the oriki, interpret the poems and examines the links it gives them between living and dead, human and spiritual, and present and past.
Karin Barber is a professor at the Centre for West African Studies, University of Birmingham.
ISBN 9780748602100, 432pp. 1991, hardback. ISBN: 9780748602872, paperback.
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