Category Archives: BOOKS
Book: Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte D’ivoire
Monica Blackmun Visonà .  Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte D’ivoire.  Surrey  Ashgate, 2010.  200 pp.  $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4094-0440-8.
From Amazon: Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d’Ivoire
Reviewed by Peter Mark (Wesleyan University-Art History Department)
Published on H-AfrArts (April, 2011)
Commissioned by Jean M. Borgatti
The Fruits of Old-Fashioned Fieldwork: Making Sense of Lagunaire Arts
Monica Blackmun Visonà ’s book on the arts of the lagunaire region, ’Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte D’Ivoire,’ showcases the author’s unusual strength of understanding, summarizing, and (where appropriate) insightfully critiquing the research of her colleagues. This quality, which gives the book intellectual breadth, is abetted by the clarity of her prose. Together, these factors make her work highly accessible not only to specialists but also, potentially, to undergraduate students in the field of art history.
Visonà belongs to the generation of Africanist scholars who began their careers with substantial fieldwork. Due to financial
constraints, sometimes dicey political situations, and the appeal of (infinitely easier) archival/museum dissertations, the kind of fieldwork that we did in the 1970s and 1980s, living among the subjects of our study–remote from telephone and electricity–is no longer common practice. Visonà ’s work, however, shows a sensitivity to local lagunaire culture that can only come from the experience of long-term fieldwork. This is an important strength undergirding her scholarship.
Solidly grounded in fieldwork, this monograph provides the first comprehensive study of the arts of the lagoon region. The
bibliographical references to secondary sources are comprehensive, and the use of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionary archival records is also impressive. The history of this region cannot be written with significant chronological depth, given the relatively late (mid-nineteenth-century) arrival of European observers. One does wonder whether a careful study of oral traditions might have yielded a somewhat greater chronological depth, particularly if the author spoke at least one of the dozen distinct languages of the lagoon region. A few more primary documents might have been ferreted out of European collections as well. For example, I believe that a visit to the collections of the Société de Géographie in Paris might uncover some original materials from the explorer Parfait-Louis Monteil (1898).
I was particularly impressed by Visonà ’s discovery of the significant role played by women in age-grade initiation ceremonies. This is part of her careful coverage of the role of gender in lagoon arts. As she demonstrates, female authority plays a significant role underlying male action in an ostensibly male domain. This is a fundamental discovery. Her understanding of local concepts of time as a sort of braided rope is also masterful and praiseworthy. Likewise, I applaud her observation that local lagunaire peoples have distinct epistemological categories (sacred or not) that differ from Western categories (shape, form). I would also single out for praise the author’s coverage of other media besides wood, including the ivory carvings surrounded by oval faces that served as pommels. These ivories suggest, as she rightly hypothesizes, nineteenth-century, or even earlier, prototypes.
I have only one criticism: for the earliest travel accounts, such as Jean/John Barbot’s early eighteenth-century travel narrative, which was published in English in 1730, she should have gone to the original source, rather than simply referring to secondary citations. A fine annotated version exists (Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712 [1992], edited by P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law).
To my mind, next to her rich field data, the crowning jewel of this book is the manner in which she incorporates herself into the discussion of methodology. And this strength is further heightened by her trenchant and concise critique of poststructuralist/postcolonial theory. As she writes: “I was dismayed by [Michel] Foucault’s underlying assertion that truth is mutable and by [Jean] Baudrillard’s challenges to the notion of reality itself. If I had espoused these basic tenets of post-structuralism, why should I have traveled to Africa to gather ‘truths’ about Lagoon arts from artists and patrons?” (p. 128). To which I say: Bravo!
Her critique of decontextualized, postcolonial theory as (mis)applied to lagunaire arts, which she knows in context, is also to be applauded. And finally, her knowledge from the field enables her to deconstruct and dismiss a misguided attempt by one contemporary museum curator to argue that a particular sculpture spoke to “the rising empowerment of Ivoirien women” (p. 176). In fact, it spoke more to the desires of certain wealthy men to possess erotic sculpture. As she says, in a worthy epitaph for such poststructuralist interpretations, “this assessment would be considered ludicrous by the men who commission sculptural groups from the artist” (p. 176).
In sum, for its clear writing style and its comprehensive treatment, based on extensive fieldwork and many years of experience, of the wide range of lagunaire art forms, and its succinct articulation of the various methodologies engaged by other scholars who have dealt with the arts of West Africa, Visonà ’s monograph is to be strongly recommended.
Citation: Peter Mark. Review of Visonà , Monica Blackmun, Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte D’ivoire. H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews. April, 2011.
URL:Â https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32633
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Book: The Future of African Customary Law
Edited by Jeanmarie Fenrich, Paolo Galizzi & Tracy Higgins
www.cambridge.org/us/law
Buy from Amazon:The Future of African Customary Law
Customary laws and traditional institutions in Africa constitute comprehensive legal systems that regulate the entire spectrum of activities from birth to death. Once the sole source of law, customary rules now exist in the context of pluralist legal systems with competing bodies of domestic constitutional law, statutory law, common law and international human rights treaties. The book promotes discussion and understanding of customary law and explores its continued relevance in sub-Saharan Africa. This volume considers the characteristics of customary law and efforts to ascertain and codify customary law, and how this body of law differs in content, form and status from legislation and common law. It also addresses a number of substantive areas of customary law including the role and power of traditional authorities; customary criminal law; customary land tenure, property rights and intestate succession; and the relationship between customary law, human rights and gender equality.
For More Information Visit www.cambridge.org/9780521118538
www.cambridge.org/us/law
July 2011 | 562 Pages
Hardback | 978-0-521-11853-8
Part I. The Nature and Future of Customary Law
1. A survey of customary laws in Africa in search of lessons for the future, Gordon R. Woodman
2. The living customary law in African legal systems: where to now?, Chuma Himonga
3. The future of customary law in Africa, Abdulmumini Oba
Part II. Ascertainment, Application and Codification of Customary Law
4. The quest for customary law, Janine Ubink
5. The withering province of customary law in Kenya: a case of design or indifference, George O. Otieno Ochich
6. The Œcode of Lerotholi¹: using custom as an instrument of social and political control in Lesotho, Laurence Juma
7. Traditional authorities: custodians of customary law development?, Manfred O. Hinz
8. Engaging legal dualism: paralegal organizations and customary law in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Chi Mgbako and Kristina Scurry Baehr
9. The future of customary law in Ghana, Joseph B. Akamba and Isidore Tufuor
Part III. The Role and Power of Traditional Authorities
10. Traditional courts in the 21st century, Digby Sqhelo Koyana
11. Demise or resilience: customary law and chieftainship in Botswana in the 21st century, Wazha G. Morapedi
12. Traditional leadership and governance in modern Ghana: challenges, problems and opportunities, Ernest Kofi Abotsi and Paolo Galizzi
Part IV. Customary Land, Property Rights and Succession
13. Entrapment or freedom: enforcing customary property rights regimes in common law Africa, Sandra F. Joireman
14. Romancing customary land tenure: the neo-liberal suitor wooing the shadow, Janet Chikaya-Banda
15. Reform of customary law of inheritance and succession: the final nail in the customary law of inheritance and succession coffin?, Willemien du Plessis and Christa Rautenbach
Part V. Customary Criminal Law
16. State systems of criminal justice and customary law crimes, Thomas
Bennett
17. Gacaca in Rwanda: customary law in case of genocide, Roelof H. Haveman
Part VI. Customary Law, Human Rights and Gender Equality
18. Customary law, gender equality, and the family: the promise and limits of a choice paradigm, Tracy E. Higgins and Jeanmarie Fenrich
19. African customary law and women¹s human rights in Uganda, Ben Kiromba Twinomugisha
20. Women¹s rights, customary law and the promise of the protocol on the rights of women in Africa, Johanna Bond
21. From contemporary African customary laws to indigenous African law: identifying ancient African human rights and good governance sensitive principles as a tool to promote culturally meaningful socio-legal reforms, Fatou Kiné Camara
For More Information Visit www.cambridge.org/9780521118538
Call 1.800.872.7423
South Africa : First E-Joke Book
Technology Delivers South Africa’s First E-Joke Book: 1001 Internet Jokes II – South African Edition
Vancouver, BC -  March 14, 2011 - Open Mike Press is pleased to announce the ebook publication of “1001 Internet Jokes II – South African Editionâ€.
Being one of the first internet joke books to be published, 1001 Internet Jokes†pioneered a new era for internet humour. Consumer feedback indicated an appreciation of  the unique South African sense of humour which led to the creation of this special edition ebook.
“I am pleased with the success of the original print book, “ says 1001 Internet Jokes II editor David Moishe Schwab, “and I hope for the continued success of the 1001 Internet Jokes II – South African Edition ebook.†The first book was introduced in 2000 as a print book. In keeping with new technology, 1001 Internet Jokes II had been published as an ebook and available in several different formats for Apple ipads, PDAs, computers and e-readers.
Along with the South African Edition, there is also: 1001 Internet Jokes II – Travel Edition, 1001 Internet Jokes II – Gay and Lesbian Edition,1001 Internet Jokes II – Bathroom Reader Edition.
The book is available in ebook format with (www.ebookshop.co.za) and  (www.kalahari.net).
email:Â florvanc@gmail.com
African bookshops in England
This list of bookshops in England that stock African books is not exhaustive or complete but I hope it will be useful. Let me know of any corrections, amendments or additions.
Please consider supporting this site by also looking at SocioLingo Africa’s Amazon Shop which has only Africa Books.
The following list may also be helpful to you: Some organizations and initiatives supporting African publishing and book development
Arthur Probsthain Oriental and African Bookseller
41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1
One of the oldest bookstores in central London is just short of 100 years old and sits opposite the British Museum. It stocks African, Asian and Middle Eastern books covering languages, art and architecture, archaeology, religion and literature. Open 9.30am-5.30pm Mon-Fri; 11am-4pm Sat.
Africana
33 Whitehall Street, Shrewsbury, SY2 5AD
Specialises in rare, antiquarian and out-of-print books on Africa and the Middle East, with smaller holdings relating to Asia. Within these specialities, Africana covers all subject areas from anthropology to zoology, including scholarly books in all fields, literature criticism and periodicals.
Grant and Cutler
55-57 Great Marlborough Street, London, W1
It seems that every language is covered in the books, dictionaries, videos and DVDs at Grant and Cutler. The World Language section includes over 50 African languages including Amharic, Shona, Xhosa and Zulu. Open 9am-6pm Mon-Wed, Fri; 9am-7pm Thurs; 9.30am-6pm Sat; 12noon-6pm Sun.
Index Book Centre
16 Electric Avenue, London, SW9
Among various other topics, Index Books has a very good black literature section with books by new or established writers available. Black history is covered well, and there are usually good selections on black art and photography. Open 10am-6pm Mon-Sat.
New Beacon Books
76 Stroud Green Road, London, N4
This bookseller, distributor and publisher has been going for almost 40 years and has a healthy range of titles on Black British Culture, as well as classic and contemporary writing on fiction, poetry, politics and history from British, African and Caribbean writers. Open 10.30am-6pm Mon-Sat.
African Books Collective
Unit 13, KingÃs Meadow, Ferry Hincksey Road, Oxford, OX2
ABC has over 1500 titles that include children’s books, literature, history, language, environment and education. The shop is usually open from 9am-5.15pm or by appointment.
Harriet Tubman Bookshop
27-29 Grove Lane, Handsworth, Birmingham, B21 9ES
A specialist African bookshop with titles on education, history, language and general black or African literature.
Essays wanted on Contemporary African Literature
The following call for essays looks like a great opportunity for African academics with an interest in African literature. Please send abstracts to JKS Makokha -Â makokha@zedat.fu-berlin.de (copy tojksmakokha@yahoo.com) and Leonard Acquah -Â leoacquah@yahoo.com by February 14 2011.
Contemporary African Literature: Thematics and Criticism
Edited by J. K. S. Makokha (Free University of Berlin, Germany) & Leonard Acquah (University of Cape Coast, Ghana)
We are seeking critical essays for a new edited volume on major works of African literature by new writers emerging after 2000 or by established writers but published after 2000AD. Contemporaries of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ngugi represent the two age groups of African writers. We are interested precisely in new critical essays focusing on themes and thematics in the new works of these two writers and/or their African contemporaries across the continent or living in Diaspora.
The first decade of the 21st Century has just ended affording critics with the window for retrospection needed in order to ensure objectivity in our critical enterprise as set out in the intention of this project. The aim of this celebratory collection of new essays is to offer emergent critical perspectives on the concerns highlighted in the exciting new literary output of African writers after the fin de siècle. The works under study should be in English or in other Afrophone or Europhone languages with English translations.
The contributions should be original and couched in relevant and current theories and frameworks of literary interpretation. Essays on new African literature that are related to the broad focus of the collection (i.e. theory of literature) and move beyond specific cases in an attempt to expand the discussion within a theoretical perspective are highly encouraged; the role of African literature or writers can be two good points of such a broad focus. Contributions are invited on essays that explore any of the following topics/themes/ideas in prose, poetry or play genres. Moreover, we explicitly invite contributions on topics or thematics not mentioned below but still fitting under this book project title above:
1. Representing the Diaspora
2. Gender
3. Memory and Hybridity
4. Cultural translation
5. Borderland subjectivities
6. Translocation and multilocality
7. Migration and nomadology
8. Multicultural and/or multilingual writing (narratives)
9. Traveling Selves
10. Maps and Mapping
11. Postmodernism and Postcolonialism
12. Genre Criticism
13. Politics of Writing/Cultural Politics
14. Democracy and Governance
15. African Renaissance and new Pan-Africanism
16. Urbanization and CosmopolitanismNB: Send us a short abstract of 300 words via the email by February 14, 2011 to JKS Makokha -Â makokha@zedat.fu-berlin.de (copy tojksmakokha@yahoo.com) and Leonard Acquah -Â leoacquah@yahoo.com.
The book will be published in 2012. Kindly note the important dates below:
1. February 14 – February 28, 2011 – Assessment and Selection of Abstracts.
2. March 1, 2011 – Notification of Acceptance.
3. March 5, 2011 – July, 5 2011 – Writing and Submission of Article.
4. July 5, 2011 – August, 5 2011 – Blind Peer Review Process.
5. August 5, 2011 – October 5, 2012 – Revision of Articles in line with Peer Review Reports.
6. October 6, 2011 – Deadline of Submission of revised articles.
7. December 5, 2011 – Submission of Complete Book Manuscript to Publishers.The formatting guidelines will be sent on March 1, 2011 to the authors of the selected abstracts.
Nigeria Book Review : Oil, Politics and Violence
Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture explained
In the year that many Nigerians celebrate their 50th Anniversary of Independence, it is also an opportunity to reflect on all that has happened since 1960. If you do a search on Amazon you’ll find quite a number of Nigeria books 
One of these books, Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture 1966-1976, is by Max Siollun, a well respected Nigerian historian, who has a gift of making the history of this complex country clearer to non-specialists.
In his book 
I like the way this book sets the scene by presenting us with a series of maps at the beginning. Before the opening pages we are presented with a map of the major ethnic groups, although I’m not quite sure why that map was not included with the other maps in the preface as it would go better with the map of major Nigerian languages and the more general map locating Nigeria in Africa would have been better in its place, but that is just my preference.  The series of historical maps in the preface cover the political development  from the four regions of 1966  to the present 36 States and are worth referring back to from time to time.
It is impossible to appreciate the political complexity of Nigeria without a passing understanding of how the country came into being, its ethnic complexity and its mineral wealth and this book provides good background material in the preface and the opening chapter for those who are not so familiar with Nigeria.  The writer introduces us to these issues in the opening chapters by describing the situation leading up to independence and  introducing us to several strands - political and military – which culminate in the post-independence turmoil of 1966 which was a pivotal and dreadful year.
It is important to understand that like many African countries ‘Nigeria’ was an artificial construct.
The country was artificially constructed by a colonial power without the consent of its citizens. Over 250 ethnic groups were arbitrarily herded together into an unwieldy and non-consensual union by the UK. Nigeria was so ethnically, religiously and linguistically complex that even some of its leading politicians initially doubted it could constitute a real country.
The division of the huge area called Nigeria into the original 3 Regions by the British in the earlier part of the 20th century was largely pragmatic. The very large Northern Region was predominantly Muslim and dominated by the Hausa and Fulani, while the predominantly Christian south was dominated by two competing groups, the Yoruba and the Igbo. Among these main groups were 250 other ethnic groups of varying size. Most ethnic groups had little in common, and Siollun says that ‘The cultural differences between the ethnic groups made it virtually impossible for Nigerians to have any commonality of purpose’. It was within this artificially constructed maelstrom that political divides took on the identity and ideology of the these three geo-political regions.  The Western Region in the south was further divided into a Mid-Western region in 1963 after rising tensions and what could almost be considered the first coup plot. The antagonism between the north and south continued after independence and was further exacerbated by the fragmentation in the more numerous south and the uneven distribution of mineral wealth.
It is as a military historian that Siollun has his strength and this shows in his masterly analysis in the chapters that introduce the military background to the coups and the detailed description and analysis of the coups themselves. In some ways, although this is devastatingly real, I was reminded of a detective novel as the protagonists are revealed and their motives and actions analysed.
It would be tempting to give you a chapter by chapter summary of how the coup culture developed, but you’ll just have to read the book to understand the depth of detail that gives a fascinating insight into the way that friends can become rivals and enemies, and to see how Siollun answers the question of ‘how an apolitical professional army with less than fifty indigenous officers at independence in 1960 became politicized and overthrew its country’s government less than six years later’.
The lessons to be learnt from the critical analysis in this book are grim but necessary reading. Siollun’s final points are that ‘most of the coups …. were carried out by the same cabal of officers, and that ‘an unpunished coup will be followed by a bloodier coup’. Â It is also significant that it was only after 1999 when ‘all the serving army officers who had held political office for 6 months or more were compulsorily retired’ that the events set in motion in 1966 that lead to the military coups and military rule were able to be put to rest.
I think this book will become a seminal source for Nigerian historians and will be a fascinating read for anyone interested in Nigeria and in how coups develop.
Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture (1966-1976) by Max Siollun, Algora Publishing, New York. 2009 Â ISBN: 9780875867083
Available at Amazon:Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture 1966-1976
Disclosure: I was provided with a free copy of this book to review by Max Siollun
Book : Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success
Black Inventors, Crafting Over Two Hundred Years of Success
Brooklyn, NY. Wednesday,  Dec.. 8th - Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success, clearly highlights the work of Black inventors from over seventy countries. The author, Keith C. Holmes, has spent more than twenty years researching information on inventions by Black people from Australia, Barbados, Canada, France, Germany, Ghana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, just to name a few. Without innovations, inventions, plans, financial resorces, labor saving devices, materials and muscle, no civilization can exist and flourish.
This book documents a number of the inventions, patents and labor saving devices conceived by black inventors. Africans, before the period of their enslavement, developed: agricultural tools, building materials, medicinal herbs, cloth and weapons, among many other inventions. Though millions of black people were brought to Canada, the Caribbean, Central and South America and the United States in chains and under the yoke of slavery, it is relatively unknown that thousands of Africans and their descendents developed numerous labor saving devices and inventions that spawned companies which generated money and jobs, worldwide.
The focus of this book is to introduce readers to the facts, that inventions created by black people, both past and present, were developed and patented on a global scale. This also means that there are inventors in every culture people, although in the past the focus has been on American and European inventors. Today, new giants in the patenting process are Brazil, China, India, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa and South Korea.
Black inventors, from the very beginning of their involvement in the invention and patenting process, have had an important and earth shattering impact on the world. This book highlights the work of early black inventors from  almost all fifty states in the United States. It gives details about the first Black inventor who obtained a patent in both the Caribbean and the United States. In the United States, to date, sixteen African American men have been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Two of these inventors, Jan E, Matzeliger, (Suriname) and Elijah McCoy, (Colchester, Canada) were born outside the United States.
Recently, Dr. Patricia Bath was nominated to the National Inventors Hall of Fame; but, an African American woman  has not yet been inducted into this prestigious organization. Mr. Holmes documents the creativity of black women inventors from Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and the United States, and provides readers with a comprehensive view of the ground-breaking achievements of black inventors – both male and female.
This is one of the first books that address the diversity of black inventors and their inventions from a global perspective. The material available in this book is an introduction to the world of black inventors. It gives the reader, researcher, librarian, student, and teacher materials they needed to effectively understand that the Black inventor is not only a national phenomenon, but also a global giant.
Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success identifies black inventors from five continents, over seventy countries, including almost all fifty states in the United States. Citing a number of black inventors from 1769 – 2007, this book is one of the most comprehensive works on black Inventors since Henry E. Baker’s research on Black inventors in the early 20th century.
It is now listed with the following library systems: www.collectionscanada.ca, www.copac.ac.uk, www.loc.gov,www.nla.gov.au, www.nielsen.bookdata.co.uk, www.sabinet.co.za, www.worldcat.org. This publication is a part of the library collection of over 400 libraries including libraries in forty-four states in the United States and nineteen countries worldwide.
More information
http://www.globalblackinventor.com/
Get a copy
Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success
The Night Before Christmas in Africa, Book Review
A delight to read
The Night Before Christmas in Africa, by Jesse, Hannah and Carroll Foster, Pelican Publishing Company (2010)
Christmas is the time of the year when many of us celebrate Christ’s birth, we enjoy attending nativity plays that tell the Christmas story, singing Christmas carols in church and outside, eating a special Christmas dinner, exchanging presents and we look forward (sometimes) to snow.  In the UK at the moment everywhere you look you see a big fat guy in a red suit with white fur trim, Father Christmas. In fact he represents a very ancient tradition of personifying Christmas.  The oldest tradition, dating back to the first century, is that of Saint Nicholas, the kind saint who loved children, who developed into the better known Santa Claus. In England the tradition goes back to the 15th century at least and Father Christmas was a presenter in some of the mummers plays of the 17th century which are still performed today. In English speaking countries, the visit of Father Christmas or Santa Claus to the household bringing presents for children is eagerly anticipated.
We all have family traditions and have strong ideas about what is a ‘traditional Christmas’. But have you thought that those traditions vary across countries and cultures? I’ve spent many different Christmas’s in Africa over the years. When my children were young we tried to keep some elements of ‘our’ traditional English Christmas, but we also enjoyed sharing in the traditions of others.
A few years ago the Foster family were celebrating Christmas in South Africa when the children, Jesse and Hannah, asked why there were no stories combining African culture with the holiday season. The result of that conversation is the book  Night Before Christmas in Africa which also comes in an audio CD version (Night Before Christmas in Africa
I got my copy quite recently and look forward to reading it to my grandchildren this Christmas.
In this charming book the Foster family introduce us to an African Father Christmas. They have taken the familiar ‘Twas the Night before Christmas‘ poem which has been attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and adapted it to an African context.
It was the night before Christmas
On the African plain
And all of the Shangaan
Were longing for rain
With those words we are transported to an African village on the night before Christmas.  It is hot, the ground is dry, the cattle are thirsty and crops are dying. A Shangaan family are settling down for the night. The children are asleep and the father sits looking out at the dry arid land, longing for rain. Father Christmas arrives. Not a red-suited, white-whiskered tubby man, but a jolly man dressed in red and white African cloth who drives a donkey cart pulled by six African antelopes and a black rhino. He brings presents for all the family and then pauses by the narrator and asks what he wants for Christmas. We hear the yearning request ‘What I long for is rain’, which is answered by thunder clouds appearing. Father Christmas drives his cart off, shouting ‘Iba nokisimusi omuhle’, Happy Christmas to you!
The book cheerfully incorporates a mixture of African languages into the poem in order to symbolise the way that Father Christmas is a symbol of hope and goodwill for all. A glossary at the back gives the definitions for these words. The colourful illustrations by Jean Christodoulou perfectly illustrate the poem and give life to the story.
This imaginative book with bright cheerful illustrations would be a perfect gift for any young family at Christmas.
The Foster family have linked with the Sparrow Schools in South Africa and each book sold helps to support a disadvantaged or learning-disabled child to reach their full potential. You can hear children from the school singing traditional African songs on the accompanying CD version of the book. The CD also has ‘Gullah Night Before Christmas’ where the same poem has been adapted to traditional Gullah folklore and characters from South Carolina. I found the sociolinguistic explanations following the poem particularly of interest, although, of course, you wouldn’t want to play this to small children.
Night Before Christmas in Africa (book) by Jesse, Hannah and Carroll Foster, Pelican Publishing Company, 32 pp,
- ISBN-10: 1589808479
- ISBN-13: 978-1589808478
Night Before Christmas in Africa
- ISBN-10: 1589808525
- ISBN-13: 978-1589808522
Disclosure: I was provided with a free copy of this book by Pelican Publishing Company
CFP: African women writers
The following call for papers asks for papers on African women writers. Please respond to the editors as requested in the advert. Comments are closed for this post.
African women writers: Authors, texts, audiences RELIEF, Revue électronique de littérature française
Despite the growing interest in the West for the writings of Francophone African women writers, many areas still remain underinvestigated. The entanglement of literary criticism with feminist issues, especially, has contributed to a somewhat unifocal appreciation of African female literary production. The local reception of female-authored African literature, on the other hand, has not been extensively studied. Yet a closer look at the interaction between writer, text and audience can shed light not only on a writer’s engagement, but also on the relevance of certain works for contemporary African women.
- In what way can this literature be considered to be of social significance?
- What are the multiple strategies African women writers use to reach their public?
- What is the – local or global -Â audience these texts are (purportedly) written for?
Moving beyond the primarily feminist or womanist perspective of scholarship in the 1990s, a reception-centered approach may also help to account for the diasporic success of writers such as Fatou Diome and Chimananda Ngozie-Adichie. African writers have always demonstrated that Africa is not a fixed “elsewhere,” frozen in its traditions. How does this theme play out in the present era of globalization and transculturality? What is the role of la francophonie and the larger audience this notion implies in defining a new literary field? And how do these categories inform the relation between Anglophone and Francophone texts? Is the term national literature still useful? It is to this variety of questions raised by a reception-centered approach that the next issue of RELIEF (2011) will be dedicated.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- The diverse reception(s) of African female writing
- The local and global engagement of female writers
- The audiences of writers in the diaspora
- The relevance of la francophonie in defining new audiences for women’s texts
- The relation between Francophone and non-Francophone women’s texts
Please send a 300-word article proposal, accompanied by a short bio-biographical statement listing your institutional affiliation, before January 15, 2011 to the editors:
J.M.M.Houppermans@hum.leidenuniv.nl
M.Boeuf@rug.nl
A.C.Montoya@rug.nlAuthors of accepted proposals will be invited to submit a complete article (maximum 6000 words) before March 31, 2011.
Buganda Clanship and Public Healing
Buganda tomb
[Photo credit: Duke Human Rights Center]
Neil Kodesh.  Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda.  Charlottesville  University of Virginia Press, 2010.  Maps. xi + 264 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-2927-9.
Get a copy : Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda
Reviewed by Ed Steinhart (Texas Tech), Published on H-Africa (November, 2010), Commissioned by Brett L. Shadle
New Methods, Old Stories from Buganda
I looked forward to reading and reviewing this book with great enthusiasm. Not simply because I have respect for the previously published work of Neil Kodesh and his tools as a researcher, i.e., the application of historical linguistics and his close reading, á la Clifford Geertz, of the collected sources in rethinking the early history of Buganda. I had a personal reason. I was enthused by his hypothesis that spirit possession movements and their mediums (or ”public healing”) were at the heart of clan development and ideology, and, as he argues, of state formation in the genesis of the Ganda kingdom and the other centralized states of the Great Lakes region.
Let me state my biases up front. After a decade of thinking and writing about state formation in western Uganda, applying evolutionary and Marxist theory, based on conflict models, I came to the conclusion that the role of spirit possession movements, e.g., Bacwezi spirit veneration and their mediums, was essential to understanding the early state development in western Uganda. With the aid of archeological research directed by Peter Robertshaw, I was able to turn my attention to the collection of oral materials on the Cwezi in and around Munsa and Kasunga in Bunyoro. Untrained in historical linguistics and limited in time and “historical imagination,” I was stymied in my efforts to push my analysis back before the twentieth century. So my excitement at seeing Kodesh’s work published was palpable. Here at last was someone who would open the doors to understanding the early history of state formation in the Uganda kingdoms.
Is that what he has accomplished? Perhaps not, but I would say he has created nothing short of a paradigm shift in our understanding of the meaning of clanship; of spirit possession; and, although he might deny it, of the theories of state formation. This involved constructing a hugely complex and sometimes contentious argument and supporting it with evidence that a decade or two ago would have been considered either suspect or merely suggestive, never probative. I will try to condense and summarize the argument and discuss the evidence, but as in all such attempts it must prove less than fulsome or satisfactory to scholars who will need to read the work itself.
In the first chapter, Kodesh begins to outline his argument and define his terms. In fact, he needs to redefine terms that have rather different meanings and connotations even among members of the Africanist community. The first term is “clan,” a term that has been around since Roman times and has a hallowed tradition in the ethnological literature of the twentieth century. The author challenges the received knowledge about the genealogical nature of clanship, proposing instead to see it as an ideological device based on the emergence at the local level of spiritual specialists attached to local shrines that extend their healing powers to create and secure the well-being of the local community of adherents.
In the next two chapters, he documents this process of clan genesis, by reexamining the well-known foundational stories of Buganda kingship, the Kintu legends, through the lens of his innovative hypothesis. He argues that rather than a conquering hero, Kintu represents the collective of spirit mediums and local healers who, beginning on a small scale as local shrine figures, develop a broader following by what he terms the process of “spiritual portability.” By this, he means the ability of the spirit possession ceremonies to transcend their local limitations and develop into a “therapeutic network” capable of centralizing widespread allegiance on the shrine site and spiritual center of the nascent clans domain. In this Kodesh has benefited greatly from the advances made by Jan Jansen and Steven Feierman in refining our understanding of spiritual healing from a private and personal quest for health and physical well-being to what is termed “public healing,” or the quest for community and group well-being: health, wealth, and fertility. Although he is cautious in limiting his argument to the nature of clanship and spirit possession and mediumship to the area that was once taught at Makerere University as “Buganda and its Neighbours,” it is not difficult to see how these terms subvert the use of the terms wherever analogous experiences have been described.
For me, the argument is persuasive, given my predilection for seeing founding “ancestors” as spiritual entities and their earthly representatives as mediums. And the evidence, oral and written, in English and Luganda, has been meticulously, even exhaustively, researched over almost a decade by Kodesh. But the evidence presented is not without its shortcomings. In using the foundational stories of Ganda clans and kings, Kodesh recognizes that it is impossible to derive a fixed chronology, and thus to do this he turns to the newer, more “scientific” study of historical linguistics, subjecting the language of the stories to linguistic analysis. It is beyond my ability to judge the value and results of this analysis, but skeptics will surely call into question the chronologies based on this still novel approach despite decades of work by Christopher Ehret and David Schoenbrun. I am more concerned with the analysis of the stories themselves rather than their language in deriving chronological sequence, process, and events. One can easily be skeptical about any one of the many interpretations offered of the Kintu legend and, in later chapters, the Cwezi and Kibuuka legends and the Buddo rites. Kodesh sometimes extols these findings as resulting from “a precious glimpse” into Ganda ideology as revealed in the legends and his interpretations as the result of “historical imagination” (p. 145). These tend to raise questions about what is missing from the chance glimpse into a long process of historical change and whether another historian’s imagination might find an equally persuasive reading of the same text. Despite these limitations, Kodesh’s ability to string together from each of the “texts” he examines a coherent, unified, and consistent interpretation in keeping with what we know of “public healing” and the workings of clanship makes his argument persuasive if not probative. For that he would need to provide us with a narrative of events and human agency that his sources do not permit. Still, I am left to marvel at how much insight and thoughtful exposition of his paradigm shifting ideas Kodesh’s opus has provided for scholars of Buganda, Uganda, and beyond.
In chapter 4, Kodesh builds on his primary insights into clanship and public healing to argue his interpretation of the processes by which healers became political leaders. For this discussion, the stories of Buganda’s hero, Kimera, and the Cwezi heroes of western Uganda are put under his analytic and insightful eye. Central to his argument is the notion that spiritual mediumship contained the ability to authorize “morally legitimate violence” (p. 99). In their efforts to bring well-being to the community, now enlarged through the wide distribution of “therapeutic networks,” spirit mediums exercised military authority as well, violating the supposed monopoly of physical force possessed by secular political leadership. He sees this moral authority as perhaps laying a foundation for the attainment of physical, secular, and political powers for the ”priesthood” of spirit mediums. In chapter 5, Kodesh pushes this argument, using the analysis of the royal rites at Buddo and the stories of the emergence of the Ganda deity (lubaale), Kibuuka, as his evidence for the reconciliation and transformation of Ganda clan ideology of public healing into the expansionist ideology of the Ganda state. The image that emerges in my mind of the spirit medium as a kind of “crusader knight” goes against everything I have seen or read on the workings of practitioners of spirit possession ceremonies. Although it is a fascinating exercise of historical imagination, it is one that I think ultimately fails. Perhaps I can suggest why?
Early in his exposition, Kodesh derides an earlier scholarship that focused on the process of state formation in the Great Lakes area to the exclusion of what he sees as more fruitful hypotheses. He sees this as coming from a naive and now discarded evolutionary theorizing about “the formation of the state” in meta-historical terms. Having disposed of it, when he encounters political violence, territorial aggrandizement, and the centralizing efforts of the Ganda dynasty, he feels compelled to link that to the processes of public healing, clan ideological development, and the peaceful growth of community that he demonstrated in the early chapters. I think this causes him to miss a more convincing interpretation: that secular authorities capitalized on the growing sense of a wider community created by the portability of public healing to enhance their own power and authority over land and people. I think that spirit mediums were not themselves military leaders, but were subordinated to royalist ambitions becoming something more like army chaplains than crusader knights. There is considerable testimony and scholarship that claims that many local practitioners of the healing arts remained hostile and opposed to secular authorities at the same time as the central shrine and clan leaders became minions of the state. This would allow us to retain the kernel of truth in seeing spirit possession as a counterweight to official statist ideology while recognizing the process by which the Bacwezi spirits and the lubaale deities became part of the Ganda state religion, a somewhat subterranean faith beneath the acceptance of Christianity and to a lesser extent Islam as religious orthodoxy in the colonial and postcolonial eras. This view would also add to Kodesh’s achievement a contribution to those passé discussions of state formation. Instead of having to choose between a strictly conflict model of state formation in which one group is able to impose its authority on the mass of the population through conquest or class, ethnic, or material advantage on the one hand, and a functionalist interpretation of the state as a system that develops out of the perceived advantages of submitting to the authority of rulers due to their the ability to provide safety, security, and well-being on the other, Kodesh has (inadvertently?) shown us that the two processes of conquest and territorial aggrandizement and of the functional provision of a sense of security and well-being can go hand in hand in the overall process of creating centralized political authority and the state.
A few minor points before I close. The book is carefully edited and well presented by the publishers. One case of some laxity can be found in the maps on page 4 and page 72 which I found misleading. They show Buganda at its largest extent as claimed by the royal and colonial authorities during most of the twentieth century. It includes the so-called “lost counties” of Bungangaizi and Buyaga, lost to Bunyoro in the cataclysmic war that the kingdom fought against British and Baganda invaders in the last decade of the nineteenth century and only returned to Bunyoro sub-sovereignty by the Museveni regime in recent years. In addition, the map on page 28, the only one to show the various Ssaza or county boundaries, shows the enlarged counties of Ssingo, Bulemezi, Gomba, and Buddu, and the new ones of Bwera and Buwekula (Mubende district, also a “lost county” but unreturned to Bunyoro), annexed by Buganda from its western neighbors by the 1900 Uganda Agreement. Yet these maps purport to describe the early and the precolonial kingdom. Either Kodesh has been careless in using a colonial era outline and boundaries for his historical maps or he has been gulled by Ganda expansionist braggadocio into accepting this bloated image of Baganda’s precolonial extent and importance.
Finally, I want to draw the reader’s attention to Kodesh’s perceptive treatment of the problem of fertility in the healing practices of Ganda (and other) spirit possession adepts. Here building on works by Richard Reid and Steven Feierman, he offers us a compelling and insightful new understanding of “the social purposes of natality,” the process by which childbirth, fertility, and fecundity are not just individual concerns but serve the community as a way of recognizing the attainment of insider social status.[1] It is a particularly well-chosen example of how the personal is political and social and how private illness is also a focus of public healing. There are many other examples throughout the book of such “precious glimpses” into the talented and disciplined historical imagination of Kodesh.
Note
[1]. Steven Feierman, “Healing as Social Criticism in the Time of Colonial Conquest,” African Studies 54, no. 1 (1995): 73-88, quoted in Kodesh, 152.
Citation: Ed Steinhart. Review of Kodesh, Neil, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. November, 2010.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30971This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Suggested Books
- Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda
- Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (African Studies)
- Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Social History of Africa Series)
Other Africa Anthropology books
Book Review : My Nigeria, Peter Cunliffe-Jones
Lagos Nigeria
[Photo credit: airpanther]
Peter Cunliffe-Jones, My Nigeria, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 238 pp. $26.00 (Hbk). ISBN 978-0-230-62023-0-52600
Reviewed by Dr Maggie Canvin
How to get a copy
My Nigeria: Five Decades of Independence
Review: Nigeria – Colonial legacy in a developing power, a personal memoir
As Nigeria celebrates  50 years of independence this book aids the understanding of both the colonial legacy and the challenges facing the country. Written in a personal manner by a veteran journalist whose family have been deeply involved in Nigeria’s history, this very readable account is a worthy addition to the corpus of post-colonial history books, and should be of interest to both historians and the general public.
The book leads us from an introduction to the author’s connection to Nigeria through three arrivals into colonial and more recent history.  Cunliffe-Jones’s  great-grandmother’s cousin Edward was the first to arrive in Nigeria in 1883. He came to the country as part of the colonising enterprise and his job was to sieze land, through whatever means, to expand the Empire. By the time Cunliffe-Jones’s grandfather, Sir Hugo Marshall, arrived some 40 years later in 1928, Nigeria was under the firm control of the British Empire and he was there to govern in a paternalistic mode. The author’s own arrivals in 1988 and again in 1998 were for more personal reasons and the book explores these.
Firstly we are plunged into contemporary Lagos where Cunliffe-Jones lived from 1998 as a journalist and we see the city through the author’s eyes. Lagos has had the reputation as a dangerous city and Cunliffe-Jones account reinforces that. The racy style of the writing helps the reader to experience life in Lagos with its dangers and delights. Always underlining the narrative is the sense of the history and politics of the place.  Vignettes are placed in the text to add first person accounts to the political history. There is a sense of reality, lived-in history, not just dry facts and figures. The contemporary context for the historical is explored. Nigeria in the late 1990s was a dangerous place. Some of these stories in Chapter 2 will shock you by their brutality. Even Cunliffe-Jones, the hardened journalist, is sickened. It is not an easy chapter to read in parts.
From Chapter 3 onwards the focus changes to historical exploration. Cunliffe-Jones explores the reasons behind Nigeria’s current troubles by looking at the country’s history and culture through the lens of his own family.  Picking up the threads from the Prologue he starts with the arrival of his ancestor, Edward Burns in 1883 and introduces us to the long 40,000 year history of human settlement in the area, ranging from the nomadic early settlers; the kingdom states of the northern Kanem-Borneo Empire of around 850 AD which included the introduction of Islam in the 11th century, trade routes to Egypt and quite extensive development including schools and military forces; to the Hausa states of the 11th to 13th centuries AD and the Yoruba kingdoms. The shaping through conquest of what would later become the country of Nigeria is covered including the coming of the trans-Atlantic slave trade which changed society in Nigeria. From this point on, the history of Nigeria is inextricably linked to external trade, Empire building and finally the fight to end slavery.  The narrative makes clear that if persuasion did not work, then force was used to expand the European grasp of territory.  Colonial rule was seen as ‘development’ but above all, the country of Nigeria was born of financial expediency to become a colony and there was no unity or involvement of Nigerians themselves in that.
The age of colonial government is seen through the eyes of Cunliffe-Jones’s grandfather who starts off in 1928 with good intentions and who helped craft the country’s constitution and helped prepare the way for independence. He left in 1955 feeling that too little had been done to prepare people for the elected government that was to come with independence in 1960. This feeling was born out by the descent of the newly independent Nigeria into civil war and the subsequent military rule or rather ‘misrule’. These chapters make grim reading but I found this one of the most interesting sections of the book.
The investigative journalist reappears in the latter sections of the book as Cunliffe-Jones seeks to understand what went wrong and where the future may be going. He explores the new dimensions rich mineral deposits brought to already strife-ridden Nigeria. Oil was discovered in 1956 in the Niger Delta but despite these ‘riches’ local people remain as poor as ever, malaria is rife, and they cannot fish and farm as before.  Corruption is a word often associated with Nigeria and the book explores some of the facets of this. The sad thing is that it has become ‘normalised’ and expected. The religious divide between Islam and Christianity is explored but Cunliffe-Jones sees some signs of integration, both of religious and ethnic groups.  At the same time he sees a failure of people being able to work together both locally and nationally. Finally the failure of leadership is explored, and perhaps comes in for the most damning criticism.  As for the future, Cunliffe-Jones is hopeful. New technology aids campaigning, giving power back to people and giving the possibility of positive change. Political reform is possible, and it is Nigerians themselves who will decide the direction the future takes.
Suggested Books
- A History of Nigeria
- The Trouble with Nigeria – Chinua Achebe
Visit Amazon’s Chinua Achebe Page
Disclosure: I was provided with this a free copy of this book to review by Palmgrave Macmillan
Surfaces: Color, Substances, and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture
Dogon door, Mali
[Photo credit: 10b travelling]
Leonard Kahan, Donna Page, Pascal James Imperato, eds.  Surfaces: Color, Substances, and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture. Bloomington  Indiana University Press, 2009.  523 pp.  $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35251-4.
Reviewed by NDUBUISI C. EZELUOMBA (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Surfaces of History and Significance
Exhibits in the catalogue are about patina–the material residue of use that not only contributes to the value, meaning, and aesthetics of a work, but also signals its age and history.[1] It may indicate the frequency with which the sculpture was put to use as well as how it was handled. Although the works discussed have been taken out of their original context–through exchange, trade, or even appropriation–they carry their history and culture with them through patination. Removing that patination does as great a violence to the work as removing a reliquary guardian figure from its bundle or box of skulls, or mutilating the figure by removing its genitals (a Victorian tendency–and not restricted to African sculptures). Though the works may now be experienced in a different environment, patina remains a significant, though not totally reliable avenue through which their authenticity can be ascertained (p. 384). The essays in this volume bring together a wealth of information gathered ethnographically to reveal how important the surface of a piece is to understanding the culture that once possessed it.
In the first chapter, Leonard Kahan’s historical background of African art gives a critical review of the journey of the forms and objects when they first entered Western consciousness in the nineteenth century. His analysis is in-depth, and he accesses modern taste as well as appreciation of African artifacts. He reiterates Marshall Mount’s 1973 classifications in twentieth-century African art, although he calls attention to their inconsistencies. Going further, he advocates for a more nuanced analysis of the art forms. This is a clever suggestion especially as current methodologies adopted for the study of African art are quickly becoming outmoded because of new research methods. In chapter 2, “Agents of Transformation,” Donna Page is able to analyze the complex process of creating surfaces through the examination of the sequence of applications as they are made by different individuals in different African cultures. Her analysis corroborates what is still observable today. For example, in Olokun earthen sculptures and worship objects, it is only when the herbs and other ritual substances necessary to activate the forms are added that it becomes active for ritual and healing purposes. The third chapter focuses on the analysis of color. Although taking its cue from Victor Turner’s “forest of symbolism,” color symbolism has an implicit universal acceptability when accessed from different cultural backgrounds.
As I have observed during fieldwork in Benin on Olokun sculpture, the surface quality of the sculptures and objects are not of significance except in that they echo the age and longevity of the forms. This contrasts with Pascal James Imperato’s essay on Bamana sculptures, in which he concludes that “the surface of Bamana sculptures carry important cultural messages” (p. 189). Through surface treatments of color, patina, encrustation, and design, the Bamana infuse sculpture with _nyama_ and maintain linkages between the living and the spirit worlds. In Benin, the qualities of surface treatment are parameters that define the concept of beauty or _imose_, but do not enhance the ritual potency of the sculptures.
In the fourth chapter, Charles Bordogna gives a vivid description of Yoruba _ibeji_, showing how the surface qualities of these figures create a sense of visual, tactile, and olfactory participation. In chapter 5, Bolaji Campbell discusses Yoruba color symbolism, arguing that the parochial triad of red, black, and white does not hold in the Yoruba context. In the sixth chapter,”Surface Conditions of Wood Sculptures,” Kahan further elaborates upon the symbolism embedded in some wooden sculptures. Despite their continued existence, today many wooden sculptures have only minimal significance in the cultures that once produced and possessed them. The reason for this abandonment is linked to the ravenous ways Christianity and Islam have taken over many indigenous belief systems. Modern African cities have had their share of growing Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Orthodox churches. There is also a steady rise in mosques within and around cities. The activities of these foreign religious groups contradict tenets of indigenous African religion as practiced in the past. Churches discourages their members from having any dealings with deity worship in general, even though some members, and even pastors, have been recorded as going to centers of worship at unsociable hours to obtain medicines and charms for good luck and success in business. Muslims have been more tolerant of the traditional religion.
The last chapter of the catalogue is a detailed compilation of substances used as agents to encrust as well as to color sculpture in Africa. The compendium is rich and Page is able to provide botanical references for all the plants associated with the various substances applied to these sculptures.
Not only are the essays in this volume comprehensive in scope and based on meticulous scholarship, but they also greatly illuminates an important feature of African sculpture, the meaning of the surface. An aspect of the book that I found significant is the methodology adopted by Kahan and Imperato. They based their analyses largely on ethnographic data gathered from the respective African cultures where the pieces originated, and consequently were able to reconstruct a valid history of the pieces. By pushing the boundaries beyond stereotypes through the incorporation of the voices of the people that owned and used these artifacts, the text has achieved another milestone in the study of African material and visual culture. I must add that, an effort such as this must act as a stimulus to other scholars to search for the salient symbolism of numerous African sculptures locked away in Western museums.
The book is well organized, has extensive references, and contains a substantive bibliography. It also has exceptional color and black and white illustrations that focus on surface rather than sculptural form. It represent a valuable contribution to the expanding literature on African art. The color plates and informative essays provide the reader with a good introduction to the deeper meanings embedded in the surfaces of the various masks and statuary from the West African cultures that produced them. The volume is particularly welcome given the lack of material published on the subject.
Note
[1]. Suzanne Blier, _Art of the Senses: African Masterpieces from the Teel Collection_ (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2004), 11.
Citation: NDUBUISI C. EZELUOMBA. Review of Kahan, Leonard; Page, Donna; Imperato, Pascal James, eds., _Surfaces: Color, Substances, and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture_. H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews. September, 2010.
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